The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: syrah

Cleaning Airlocks

We are planning to bottle the syrah soon, and I will also probably bottle the primitivo as well. The merlot and petite sirah in the barrels have not picked up enough oak for our tastes, so we’re going to leave them for another year. I realized I haven’t cleaned out the airlocks on my carboys […]

Syrah Malo and Oak into the Barrels

It’s been about 4 weeks since I added fresh malolactic bacteria to the syrah to try to get MLF going again.  I’ve been stirring it once or twice a week and keeping a heat pad on it overnight and in the cool parts of the daytime to keep the temperature between 70 – 80?F.  I […]

Trying MLF Again on Syrah

Since our syrah never finished malolactic fermentation, and since the free SO2 is below 10 ppm, I decided to try to restart the MLF with some fresh bacteria.  I set up 200 mL of filtered water with some acti-ML nutrient and added 2 grams of dry “Bacchus” MLB.  While that was incubating, I rechecked the […]

Wine Chemistry Day

I’ve been meaning to set up a free SO2 aeration/oxidation (A/O) system for a while to test our wines. I’ve mentioned before that the “quick tests” are difficult to read (especially for red wines, since it relies on a color change in the purple range) and are notoriously inaccurate.  From the information I could find, […]

Pruning the Vines at Live Oak Vineyard

Most of the east coast is blanketed in snow today.  Meanwhile, we finally got our southern California sunshine back — just in time to prune the syrah vines at Live Oak Vineyard. Mike Hoffman gave us a short tutorial on pruning for his vineyard; he already cut off the bulk of the canes, so we […]

Wine Update, Syrah Taste, and Giving Up on PS Sludge

I got an email from Dave today, he and Paul checked out the merlot and petite sirah on Friday. Since this is our second year in the barrel, neither wine is very oaky yet. By this time last year the wine in the barrels had much more oak.  The petite sirah is a little more […]

As the Lees Settle

Another full day of wine racking and shuffling!  Dave sent me an email that the merlot barrel needed to be topped, so first I racked off the smaller bottles of merlot and took 2 cleared bottles to the office winery to top off the barrel.  I thought I had enough to top off and leave […]

Hanoi Towers of Wine

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 […]

Wine Wrangling Weekend

Lots to do this weekend!  Of course, there were 2 trips to the office winery to punch down the newly pitched Petite Sirah.  By the evening, the temp was up to 78 degrees (in an air conditioned room) and there were serious caps on all of the buckets.  Then I had to deal with trying […]

Putting the New Press to Work and Testing MLF Progression

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 […]