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 […]
Tag archive: syrah
Paul pressed out the syrah this week, and then racked the juice off of the gross lees into carboys to start the MLF. It looks like we only got about 10 gallons of juice, and he also kept a bucket of “sludge” that looked like it might settle out and yield a little more volume. […]
Time to check out the primitivo must. Brix are at about 26-26.5; pH is up at 4, and TA is ~9.5-10 g/L. Not perfect; I decided to add a half gallon of water with 14 grams of dissolved tartaric acid to each can, and also added pectinase. When I retested, the brix were at about […]
I take the weekend punching duty for the wines in the server room. I tested the syrah, the brix are down to 6 in one can and 2.5 in the other already! I’m pretty sure I added too much nutrient, so we’re not going to add any more (which is convenient for my home wine […]
Time to get the syrah started. I met Dave at the office, and he set up the “server room winery” with plastic sheeting while I revved up the yeast. I heated up some water and dissolved in go-ferm, then added ICV-D254 yeast and let it wake up for about 15 minutes. Then I added some […]
A group of my friends (some that also blog) agreed to get up and meet at our house at 6 am on Saturday to pick grapes. Amazingly, they all showed up early, and had some breakfast then headed out to Fallbrook. Most of the rest of the gang were already there, so we spent a […]
Got an email from Mike Hoffman this morning about the syrah – they’re at 23% brix and pH of 3.29 already! He said next weekend will be harvest time!!!!!
I saw a classified on the SDAWS site for local syrah grapes, and convinced Dave to go in on 500 lbs. Paul is also going to take 500 lbs to make at home. This syrah is grown at Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook, and we get to take part in harvest when the grapes are […]