Today was a game of wine shuffling. My hubby commented I’m playing Towers of Hanoi with the wines. Here’s what I have to do: I have 2 carboys of the syrah, and Paul needs those carboys back, so I need to move them into 5-gallon better bottles. The only 5-gallon better bottles I have are […]
Tag archive: merlot
It’s finally time to bottle the barolo that has been bulk aging since March. I wanted to avoid bottling any of the goop that has settled out at the bottom, so I racked off the clear wine into a bucket. I noticed a white film at the top similar to what I saw a few […]
With four different varietals in various stages of progress, as well as the last of the 2008 merlot to bottle, every weekend is going to be quite busy for a few more weeks. Since I was out of malic acid tests last weekend when the primitivo was racked, sulfited, and oaked, I took a sample […]
Today we pick up the Petite Sirah grapes from Chris van Alyea at his new digs up in San Marcos. Unfortunately, the grapes arrived later than expected, although it’s not too bad, Paul and I had a lot to do before we head up to get them. We spent about 4 hours racking the merlot […]
All of our wines are fermenting fast this year, the merlot was already at 0 brix by Friday. Dave retested all the cans Saturday morning after we had all gathered for pressing, and noticed that the hydrometer he had used was broken — there was juice inside of the hydrometer. But, luckily the juice was […]
It is kinda cool to look up and see jets flying in formations overhead while you’re bottling your wine. We all got together to bottle the rest of the merlot hanging out in the barrel, and it happened to be the day of the Miramar Air Show. We got our bottling line set up outside […]
Yep, harvest season is in full swing. Our merlot from Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma arrived Tuesday. The plan was to do a 4-5 day cold soak, then pitch the yeast on Sunday — except it started spontaneously fermenting on Friday! Paul ran out and got the yeasts to pitch, ICV-D21 and BM4x4. Chris recommended […]
Although this blend is still very young — only about 2 months in the bottle! — I really wanted to try it out. Decanted very briefly. Very sharp, acidic nose. Hint of raspberry and blackberry with spice. Very clear, garnet-purple in color. Very vegetal flavors of green pepper, raspberry, plum, and oak. After about an […]
My goal was to fill all of these bottles today. It turned out I filled over half, but decided to wait to fill the rest next weekend. Why do today what you can do a week from now, eh? I did at least put together all of the blends. ‘Fiesta Islad Cab’ will be mainly […]
I had some friends over last night to taste the cabernet sauvignon and 3 merlots made from fresh grapes. We first by tasted each individually, starting with the cab and then the barrel merlot, merlot A, and merlot B. It was very interesting how much all of the wines have changed even since my last […]