The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

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 […]

After picking on one of my fellow winemakers endlessly about drinking his wine too early, I’m opening a “Cabernet Nouveau” for Thanksgiving.  It is too early to be opening it, but my husband’s parents are here, so it seemed to call for a very special wine.  I opened the wine and decanted it about 2 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I checked in with the guys yesterday, the petite sirah was due to be pitched.  In fact, it looked like it was already bubbling away, like what happened with the merlot this year.  But, it looked great — Paul added vinozyme, and the juice was a lovely inky dark purple color. Then I got a […]

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 […]

Since pressing 1500 pounds of merlot plus the incoming 1000 pounds of petite sirah with a one-gallon basket press did not sound exciting, we all went in on a 90-L bladder press. Our new addition arrived today! Good timing, too, the merlot is already below 11 brix and falling fast.