{"id":2323,"date":"2011-08-28T16:19:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T00:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wineintheshower.com\/?p=2323"},"modified":"2011-08-29T06:23:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T14:23:18","slug":"preharvest-live-oak-vineyard-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/2011\/08\/28\/preharvest-live-oak-vineyard-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Preharvest Live Oak Vineyard Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today I took a group of people in my Hands-on Winemaking class at Curds and Wine<\/a> up to Fallbrook for a preharvest Vineyard Visit. We picked a perfect day (read as sarcasm), as a heat wave recently hit and it was sweltering. But, it’s always a lovely, if not hot, day at the vineyard.<\/p>\n

Mike Hoffman, a fellow gold-medal-winning<\/a> winemaker, gave an overview of his vineyard<\/a> then we took a walk through the vines to check out the status of our soon-to-be-wine grapes. We pulled a few random grapes from various points and checked out the brix <\/a>readings on refractometers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>Besides checking the sugar levels with the refractometers, we looked for the physical signs of ripening:\u00a0 the grapes pulling away cleanly from the pedicel<\/a>, the seeds turning brown and getting cruchy, and shriveling or puckering of the grapes.<\/p>\n

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We then headed back to the shade to taste the 2009 vintage syrah and do some lab chemistry on a pool of random samples of the grapes from each block of the vineyard, ‘Este’ the lower vineyard, and ‘Cima Sur’ the upper vineyard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After Mike demonstrated the proper technique for mashing up the samples, he strained out the juice from the pooled grapes to test the brix<\/a> with the refractometer, pH<\/a> with his pH meter, and TA<\/a> with Accuvin quick tests.\u00a0 The readings were as follows:<\/p>\n

‘Este’: brix = 21.5, pH = 3.17, TA = 10<\/p>\n

‘Cima Sur’: brix = 23, pH = 3.27, TA = 9<\/p>\n

The numbers are very close to optimal; we are targeting a harvest at 24-25 brix, ph 3.5, TA 7-8.\u00a0 Mike originally thought harvest would fall on September 11th, but it looks like we’ll be harvesting next weekend!\u00a0 Time to get everything ready for the syrah crush!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I took a group of people in my Hands-on Winemaking class at Curds and Wine up to Fallbrook for a preharvest Vineyard Visit. We picked a perfect day (read as sarcasm), as a heat wave recently hit and it was sweltering. But, it’s always a lovely, if not hot, day at the vineyard. Mike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[99,60,33,61,4,79,62,80,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2352,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions\/2352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/docker.vsl:8080\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}