Since we are four tonight, I decided it was finally time to do a head-to-head comparison of 2008 Mosti Mondiale Chianti with the 2009 WE Chianti.  Overall, both tasted very similar;  very basic, clean, nice table wines.  We tasted alone and with a spinach salad with blue cheese, toasted walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette.  Both wines were great alone or with food.  The 2008 MM chianti had more of a garnet hue, whereas the 2009 WE chianti was a brighter ruby-garnet in color.  Otherwise, the 2008 MM had more of caramel flavor, and the 2009 WE was fresher, more fruit-forward.  In the end, both kits yielded very nice, reliable table wines that were great with any food.

So, I’m starting by racking off the merlot I already have at home.  It’s time to check the MLF, and happily it’s done!  I’ll add some sulfite and 3 ounces of heavy toast french oak cubes to the 6-gallon bottle., and a half ounce of oak and a pinch of sulfite to 2 one-gallon bottles.

When I went over to the office winery to pull of any recovered petite sirah from the pooled sludge, I was greeted by a swarm of fruit flies!  Needless to say, they had made a very happy home in our bucket o’ sludge, so I left it alone and will let Dave dump it out (he loves cleaning out the buckets!).  I grabbed the extra merlot and headed back home to add it to the rest, and also took a little of the petite sirah from the barrel that had been freshly inoculated with VP41 malolactic bacteria.  I’ll pour that into the syrah and hope *maybe* that will get the MLF going.  I’ll also put the bottles out in the garage to try to warm it up during the day.

After all of that wine shuffling, I still need to put the foils on the barolo and merlot that was bottled last weekend.  Happily, none of the corks seem to be leaking.  The Mosti Mondiale barolo kit came with corks and foils (as well as labels, but I made those myself), so I used those for finishing off the bottles.  It really sets those apart, plus then I will remember that this is the mega-expensive kit wine when I open them in a few years.  Hopefully it will be worth it!

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 months ago in the zinfandel kit. So far that wine has been fine, so I’m hoping the barolo will be too — especially since this was quite a pricey kit!  It tasted pretty damn good:  A little acidity in the nose, with good fruit and spice. VERY clear, beautiful dark garnet in color. Spicy and oaky, good fruit, very rich and complex. This is a very nice wine, hopefully it will pay off over the next few years.

It was also time to bottle the 2008 merlot that we racked out of the barrel earlier this month.  Unfortunately, the merlot did not settle out very well after adding the lysozyme last weekend, so I tried to rack off as much clear wine as possible, and pooled together the remaining dregs to let that settle out for another 2 months (I know I won’t get to it before then!).  I still ended up carrying over a little cloudiness, so this wine won’t win any awards!  It will taste amazing, though.

Last task of the day was to check the MLF progression on the syrah.  Last week it seemed to show the appearance of lactic acid, indicating MLF was finally going.  However, the malic acid test today still shows pretty high levels of malic acid.  Hopefully next week the levels will at least drop, and this might just be a slow malolactic fermentation.

The instructions say to rack the Barolo when the SG reaches 1.040-1.050, and the SG today is 1.038.  I guess I didn’t expect it to go so fast, although after racking, it’s obviously still in vigorous fermentation.  The oak chips get added at this point, they can been seen floating in the foam at the top after racking.  I also added the pack of yeast nutrient at this point, something I haven’t yet seen in a kit wine.  The raisins get squeezed out with cheesecloth to extract all of their goodness, and this is also added to the juice in the carboy.  I ended up with about 1 liter of overflow wine, which I put into a separate 1 L bottle.  I’m sure I’ll need it after the next racking.

I started my second reserve wine kit today, a barolo.  This is my first kit from Mosti Mondiale.  It’s “all juice” (read as:  even heavier than the muller-thurgau yesterday), and has all sorts of fancy stuff, including “select oak” a bag of “red raisins.”

Bentonite was stirred into the juice, and no water was added.  Staring SG was at 1.098, which should give a final alcohol of about 13.8%.  The yeast was sprinkled on top, and the bucket was moved to the shower. The raisins get added tomorrow.

I also tried to restart the MLF in the merlots.  I rehydrated the dried VP41 malolactic bacteria in water for about 15 minutes, then stirred it in to each carboy.  Here goes nothing!