Santa Delivers

It says everything about my frame-of-mind these days to note that the only thing I wanted for Christmas this year was a fully fermented Chardonnay.  So imagine my relief when despite every indication to the contrary, Santa placed me squarely on the “nice” list and delivered just what I had hoped for.  Once again, the chromatography test provided the verdict.  In the picture here, the sheet on the left is from a month ago.  The three scattered dots on the left represent the malic, lactic and tartaric control samples, respectively.  The three columns next to it are the results from the wine carboys, and show a presence of all three acids at that time.  Contrast that to the sheet on the right, where the three columns on the far right no longer show a dot in the middle.  That missing dot means there is no malic acid present in the wine.  Translation: malolactic fermentation is complete. 

That news meant it was finally time for me to rack the wine off of its gross lees, the large sediment remaining from the crush almost three months ago.  Since it’s now too cold to perform the transfer outside, my still under re-construction basement was conscripted into the duty.  It’s virtually impossible to rack several carboys of wine without making a mess, and today was no exception.  Luckily, as this picture demonstrates, I take a very liberal approach to showering during the holiday season, so while the basement now requires even further clean up, I on the other hand, was no worse for the wear.

Oak it Up

Every home winemaker starts with the dream of aging their wine in new French Oak Barrels, just like they do in the caves of Burgundy.  Likewise, each time an acquaintance learns of my hobby for the first time, one of the first questions they ask is whether I use oak barrels for my aging.  When I start to explain to them the reasons why using oak barrels is impractical for the home winemaker, I can see in their faces that without knowing anything about winemaking, they’ve already concluded that I’m a piker. 

Nonetheless, oak barrels are ridiculously expensive, leak, are difficult to maintain and require a volume of production that make them unrealistic resources for those of us who make wine in our garage/basement.  But that doesn’t mean we have to give up on imparting that delicious oaky flavor to the wines we produce.  On the contrary, oak chips will do the job just fine – or so the books say. 

This weekend I added 2 ¼ cups of oak chips to my 2010 Pinot Noir, or ¼ cup per gallon.  For the first couple days, the chips float near the surface, but once they get thoroughly soaked with the wine, they will drift down to the bottom along with the other sediment.  After 3 or 4 weeks, I’ll rack the wine into fresh carboys, and just like that, I’ll have a perfectly balanced Pinot with just the right hint of oak, for 1/100 of the cost of a barrel.  Genius.

Nashville Twist

I’m in Nashville this week for work and was able to meet up with my old buddies Adrian and Nick for dinner last night.  If you know Adrian, then you know that means I’m hungover right now.  He shares my passion for wine, and shows it in his 500 bottle cellar, which has a heavy tilt towards Cabernets and Rieslings.  That’s why I was quite pleased when Adrian started gushing about the bottle of 2009 Dry Run Pinot Noir we were sharing. 

A salesman by profession, by the end of any conversation with Adrian you will have somehow convinced yourself that what you really need in life is a new $30,000 mattress, which he can get you on discount.  I took him on his word, therefore, when he told me he would like to be commissioned to sell 12 to 24 cases of Dry Run wine to his friends and family each year.  So is this how it starts?  I remember hearing that KFC was founded from Colonel Sanders selling chicken out of the trunk of his car.  24 cases a year doesn’t exactly make for a global franchise, but it does help pay for a new crusher/destemmer.  Never mind that I lack both the license and the capacity to deliver.

Back on Track

With over a week passed since my second attempt at inoculating my Chardonnay with malolactic bacteria, I feel I can now say with some confidence that my liberal application of the chemicals in question did not, in fact, ruin my wine.  On the contrary, rather than completing the MLF process in record pace, the fermentation seems to be tracking along at the usual rate.  I can see very small bubbles rising to the surface of the wine, not unlike a spiked club soda, indicating the acid conversion process is ongoing.  This visual evidence is a lot easier to track in white wines than in red, so with regular checking I should be able to tell when the process is complete in the next couple weeks.  As an aside, Uncle Lindsey’s quilt doesn’t seem to have had any discernible effect on the temperature of the Chardonnay, but the wine looks so cozy wrapped in it I just can't bring myself to strip them away.

In a mood to celebrate, I decided to taste all three of my wines in progress to assess how they were tracking.  As expected, the Chardonnay tasted very much like a wine in transformation, but a distinct citrus flavor gave a hint, perhaps, of what’s to come.  The high alcohol content of the Pinot seems to have mellowed out considerably, and the light body gives a consistent impression of the wine I am trying to create.  Closest to a final product, the Malbec provides a little heavier body.  There is still a little harshness in its finish, but that characteristic seems to be dissipating at a steady state.  All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they’re progressing, a welcome reprieve from an otherwise annoying week.

Damage Control

This morning we discovered that our wine cellar, also known as the basement, was flooded from a sewer backup.  Since some of you may have just eaten, I’ll spare you the details on the smell, but suffice it to say that we immediately brought in the experts from Duraclean to rip out the playroom carpet and utility room tile, along with the baseboard molding and dry wall around the bathroom.  All in, several thousand dollars of damage, not to mention the headache in getting all that repaired during the holiday season. 

Now, my Pinot Noir and Malbec wine carboys were resting peacefully on the counter on the far side of the basement, so they were in no immediate danger.  However, as the Duraclean staff prepared to depart, they pulled me aside to say that the dehumidifiers and other equipment they were leaving behind had a tendency to raise the temperature in the area considerably, which, along with the decrease in humidity, could potentially damage my wine. 

My internal processing of this information went something like this:  How the hell do these guys who clean sewage damage know so much about wine?  Wait, how come I didn’t think of that?  Crap, how can anyone be expected to make world class wine in these conditions? 

Ultimately, I got over it, and moved my red wines to the dining room to join the Chardonnay.  Crisis avoided, for the moment.  But I still can’t help but feel like this would be a whole lot easier if I could just drill a cave in the side of the Mayacamas Mountains in Napa and store my wines in there.

Desperate Measurements

When a person applies 45 spf to their body, then tops that off with an additional layer of 15, have they just improved their protection to a total of 60, or diluted themselves to 30?  That question was on my mind last night as I completed my second and final attempt at launching malolactic fermentation in my chardonnay.  My point being this, when a person messes with chemistry that they don’t understand, the results could be painful.

In my case, at issue was the chemistry of freeze dried malolactic bacteria, specifically Viniflora CH35, which I had recently acquired due to its marketing pitch of being specifically formulated to get difficult white wines through MLF fermentation.  The thing is, it comes in a 2.5g pouch appropriate for inoculating 66 gallons of wine.  I have 6 gallons, but the left over contents won’t keep, and this wine is really starting to piss me off, so doesn’t it follow that what works for 66 gallons should work even better for 6?  Meanwhile, I’ve acquired a specially formulated malolactic nutrient to ensure that the bacteria gets the vitamins and minerals in needs to be effective.  The instructions with the nutrients are thorough, but what they don’t tell you is what dosage to apply when you’ve made the bizarre decision to apply 11 times the necessary dose of bacteria to your wine.  Do I add enough nutrients as if I were fermenting 66 gallons, or do I go with the amount necessary for 6?  Having no idea, I split the difference, of course.

When I added the dissolved contents to the wine it produced a loud hissing sound, not unlike the noise two Alka-Seltzer tablets make when you drop them into a glass of water.  A bad sign?  I’ve never seen that reaction to an addition to wine before, but the MLF process is supposed to produce the release of gases as the malic acid converts to lactic.  Maybe I just witnessed the positive effects of my increased dosage, and a process that usually takes a month will be finished by the end of this weekend.  Or, maybe I just ruined my wine.

The books suggest that the ideal temperature to complete the MLF process is 75 to 85 degrees.  There’s no place in my house that fits that description.  In such event, a common recommendation is to wrap your carboys in electric blankets.  Well, I don’t have any of those, and if I wouldn’t buy any when Kim asked for them it seems like a mistake to buy them for the wine, so I wrapped them in the handmade quilt that my uncle gave me as a wedding gift instead.  What could go wrong?

Problem Chard

When last we left our Chardonnay, we had reason to believe that its malolactic fermentation - that process which will give our wine the buttery characteristic we so desire - was not going according to plan.  Since that time I have added several grams of yeast nutrients and stirred the lees religiously, all in the hopes of kick-starting the MLF bacteria into finishing the job it was hired for.  However, after waiting three weeks and conducting the chromatography test again this weekend, I can now confirm that this Chard just isn’t behaving, and my fermentation is officially stuck.

I have some hints as to what wrong - apparently “whatever temperature it happens to be in the basement” is not the ideal condition to bring MLF to completion – but at this point there’s nothing to do but to start the process over.  This morning I ordered a new inoculation kit, which, by the way, is the most expensive ingredient (after grapes) in the wine making process.  If I’m not able to bring this secondary fermentation to completion within the next few weeks, the wine will probably never get there, leaving it more susceptible to disease, at risk of developing a carbonation quality which could pop the corks after bottling, and much worse, it might taste bad.

Spin Room

This weekend we invited our fellow Dry Run enthusiasts to the house to write the tasting notes for the 2009 Pinot Noir.  Having two English majors plus Charlie’s expert palate made the job pretty easy, not to mention that we happen to like the wine.  Where the 2008’s tasting notes were hampered by our efforts to avoid using words like medicinal and acidic, the biggest struggle this year was to choose between “toffee” or “caramel” in our description of the finish.  Here’s what we came up with:

“The winemakers returned to Lodi, California, just miles from Napa Valley, to source the Pinot Noir grapes for this, their sophomore release.  This soft, medium-bodied wine starts with cherry and strawberry flavors with a touch of welcome earthiness.  Smooth and balanced throughout, with a hint of caramel in the finish, this wine can stand alone, but also pairs wonderfully with a variety of foods, particularly your pasta or fish course.  The wine can be enjoyed immediately, and with proper cellaring, should continue to mature well into 2014.”

Still four cases in the cellar, but they’re going fast, so get your orders in quick.

Miracle Flow

We racked the Pinot Noir this weekend to remove the sediment from the carboys.  When I went to check the wine’s acid level I briefly wondered if history’s lamest miracle had occurred, as the neutral reading I recorded on my pH meter seemed to suggest that the wine had turned to water.  My lack of faith was quickly restored, however, when I realized that I forgot to take the cap off the sensor on the meter.

I then moved the Pinot to the basement and lined up my various carboys to admire my works in progress.  With my winery at full capacity, I now have three different varietals at various stages in the aging process, with a total of 23 gallons, or approximately 10 cases in production.  As I prepared the carboys for this photo-op I found myself wishing for a much more ambitious miracle:  Please let this wine not be terrible. 

Acid Trip

Waiting for MLF, or secondary fermentation, to complete can be a bit nerve-racking.  As soon as it’s finished, you want to rack the wine into full carboys and then add sulfites to protect it.  The problem is that once you inoculate the wine with the MLF bacteria, you can’t tell by looking at it whether it’s working or not.  The books say it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.  Fortunately, there’s a time consuming chemistry test you can perform to see how it’s progressing, so with my Chardonnay four weeks and the Pinot Noir two weeks into the process, I decided to do the test and get a progress report. 

The general idea of the test is to put small samples from three different types of acids and each of your wine carboys onto a special type of chromatography paper, than soak the paper in a developing solvent for several hours.  Once you remove the paper and allow it to dry, the samples will leave behind imprints at various heights on the paper, which you can read to determine what type of acids remain in your wine.  Since MLF is the process of converting malic acid to lactic acid, the fermentation is complete once the reading tells you the malic acid has disappeared. 

In my results shown here, you can see from the two columns on the far right that there is no yellow dot in the middle, which means my Pinot Noir samples have completed MLF.  After two weeks!  Really good.  The three columns in the middle show a strong presence of malic remaining, meaning that after four weeks the MLF in my Chardonnay has barely begun.  Really bad.  I’ve never had a stuck MLF before, so I’m not actually certain what to do about it, but I’m assuming the first reasonable response is to cry.

Better Than Cats

Kim and I attended a social function this weekend which provided a first chance to get feedback on the 2009 Pinot Noir from someone other than family and friends, who, let’s face it, are not the world’s most objective wine tasters.  By way of example, after receiving polite nods of approval from the family audience for the 2008 Pinot Noir, a disinterested partygoer gave it the following review: “This makes me want to throw up.”  Honest indeed.  I don’t care how much election coverage you’ve caught over the last two days, it’s hard to spin that positive. 

On this weekend’s occasion, however, I was reassured with the knowledge that I was sharing a much better product, and sure enough the blind reviews were all encouraging.  We got comments like “I love it,” “really smooth,” and “fruit-forward with blackberry.”  One taster even referred to the wine maker as a genius, but I’m pretty sure she had looked at the label, so I’ll hold-off on relocating to Napa for the moment.

Rack and Roll

News flash:  Making wine while hungover is less enjoyable than it otherwise might be.  I can confirm this from my experience the other morning.  I’m not talking “let’s do another tequila shot” hungover.  It’s just that the prior night I enjoyed more in one sitting of the Nicholas Ranch 2006 Chardonnay than is generally recommended.  But it’s just so tasty.  Nonetheless, I fought through the pain, and by lunchtime the new Pinot Noir had been racked into two 5-gallon glass carboys.

The act of racking is really a test to determine your level of greed.  The idea is to siphon the wine from one container to another, while leaving whatever sediment has settled in the bottom behind.  Of course, that sediment is sitting in wine, and the more wine you leave, the less wine you have to drink later.  And there’s the rub - do I try to retain every last drop of wine that I can, knowing that I risk transferring some of the sediment into the new container at the same time, or do I act like a reasonable human, and be willing to spare the cloudy stuff at the bottom for the betterment of the finished product.  I usually fall somewhere in between, and in this case that meant pouring a gallon and a half of mush down the storm drain in the back alley.  I swear there was a decent glass in there somewhere.  After that, I inoculated the wine with malolactic bacteria and stored it in the garage to do its business.  And with that, the aging season has begun.

Pulp Friction

Busy weekend for our winemaking heroes.  On Friday we hosted our first ever winery tour for our friendly neighbors the Geller family.  Plus, since we’re not an officially licensed established, we were even able to let them participate in the process.  Not long after the punchdown shown here, the “cap” on the pinot noir officially dropped.  It took me two years to figure out that when winemakers say that, it means the skins are no longer being pushed to the top by the off-gassing of the fermentation process.  Translation:  It’s time to press!

Yesterday’s pressing was the usual difficult mess.  We were dealing with a higher volume then we had in the past which presented a whole new set of challenges, given that we own the smallest basket press available on the market.  By the end though, we ended up with about 12 gallons of wine in two buckets and a basket full of pressed skins and seeds.  In the past, we’ve added the skins to our compost pile and felt very good about ourselves, but then it finally hit us that this could help explain our growing fruit-fly problem.  As a result, there’s an 80 pound bag of grape pulp in the alley behind our house that we’re offering free to a good home.  You haul.

Hazy Shade of Vintner

As my Chardonnay completes its malolactic fermentation, I’m struggling with what to do about the cloudiness of the wine.  Generally speaking, hazy wines can be either filtered (which is not unlike straining your cooked pasta but with much, much smaller holes) or fined (which involves putting some ingredient into your wine which will bond with the floating particles and pull them to the bottom.)  In my case, filtering is not on the table because I don’t have the right equipment, but fining agents only cost a couple bucks. 

Fining - Putting junk in your wine so that it will pull out the other junk.

The question therefore becomes if and when.  Of course, I’ve never made a white wine before, and have no one I can ask.  In typical fashion, the books don’t help at all.  Some say to fine all whites during fermentation, some say to do it at the first racking, and some say to wait until the very end because you probably won’t need to do it at all.  As a general rule, I’d rather not add anything to the wine, but the longer I wait to see if it clears up on its own, the more risk I run that a late addition could alter the wine’s character without leaving it much time to recover.  Here’s an example why trying to teach yourself a skill may not be all that efficient, particularly when at best you get two tries at it a year.  For the moment, I’ve decided not to do anything.  If I serve you a cloudy homemade wine in the future, however, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your snickering to a minimum.

Call Me Knight Rider

According to the Blogspot Stats page, I now have over 300 pageviews internationally on this website.  I say “internationally,” because in addition to the two hits I’ve received from Canada, I purportedly have received 11 hits from the Bavarian region.  It appears that, like David Hasselhoff, this blog is huge in Germany.  I’m inclined to assume there’s a flaw in the data collection here.  After all, this website is free.  But in the unlikely event that there are actual people in Germany reviewing this blog, I say “guten tag”, and thank you for making my humble efforts trans-Atlantic.

To celebrate my milestone, and mostly because we were thirsty, I opened one of the gems of our cellar last night – a 1996 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru from Burgundy – a gift I received from Charlie a few years back.  After all those years in the bottle, it remained soft, fruity and balanced.  Just as I imagine the 2009 Dry Run Pinot Noir will taste 13 years from now.

Punchdown

The yeast starter has done its job on the Pinot Noir, and I can confirm from the aroma emanating from the basement that fermentation is now in full throttle.  When fermenting red wines, we leave the juice on the skins in order to impart the color, tannins and flavors that characterize these varietals.  The carbon dioxide and other gasses produced by the sugar conversion process causes the skins to rise to the top of the bucket, forming what’s called a “cap.”  The home-winemaker’s job during this period is to punchdown the cap two or three times a day to ensure that the skins remain in contact with the juice. 

My technique involves a stainless steel potato masher I bought on Amazon.com for just this purpose.  I’m not sure how real wineries do this step in mass production, but since my tool will also have handy Thanksgiving dinner related applications, it’s one of the rare occasions where I think producing wine in small quantities might actually be more cost effective than the alternative.   

Before

After

Attack of the Fruit-Flies

You know you’re arrived as a home winemaker when the fruit-flies become an everyday part of your life.  Last night I went to pour the last bit of the 2009 Dry Run Pinot Noir we were drinking (which is mellowing-out quiet nicely in the bottle I might add) and ended up with five fruit flies in my glass.  Since I won’t be giving up my hobby anytime soon and I’m told there’s no real way to get rid of them, I took that as a sign that we need to be drinking faster. 

Having had 24 hours to recover from the trauma of adding water to my latest production, I was back in high spirits and ready to launch fermentation.  Every variety prefers a slightly different strand of yeast starter, and for this year’s Pinot Noir I chose Lalvin’s Bourgovin RC212.  I combined 3 small packets with 6 ounces of warm water, let stand for 15 minutes to create a milkshake looking mush, then added to the buckets of must.  And with that, our wine will be born.  We hope.

Water Log

My Russian River Pinot Noir grapes just arrived from California and were available for pick-up at Harford Vineyard yesterday.  I had a meeting to go to in DC that morning, however, and since Harford is an hour north of my house, that meant a total of 5 hours in the car.  It sure will be easier when I have my own vineyard.  Ok, maybe easier isn’t the right word.  How about more convenient.

  

Once again I was using the Harford crusher/de-stemmer to crush my grapes, only this time Roxanne gave me a hard time about combing through my 144 pounds one bunch at a time to pick out the bad grapes.  “If you take an hour do this again I’m going to have to charge you double.”  Then she started ridiculing me for removing all the dried-up raisins from my bunches.  “You’re crazy to take those raisins out, there’s good sugar in there.”  Finally she started hovering over me and telling me to hurry up, so in a panic I just ended up dumping the entire 4 lugs in. 

Well, when I returned home I confirmed that I know more about winemaking than Roxanne, as I found this kernel of knowledge in Jon Iverson’s book:  “If a cluster is raisined and hard, discard it and proceed using only fruit that is of sound quality.”  Seems kind of obvious.  Being smarter than Roxanne gave me little solace, however, since I immediately learned that my must now had too much sugar.  At 27 brix, the must would ferment to an alcohol content greater than 15%, excessive even for the least discerning of palates. 

Brix – A measure of sugar content in grape must.  The presence of raisins in your must will effect its reading.

So how does one reduce the sugar content of their newly crushed grapes?  By adding water.  Pouring water into your beautiful Pinot Noir must feels a little bit like getting punched in the gut.  The books say that if you have high sugar then that’s just what you do and there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but that rings like the kind of thing you might say to the one kid in your high school who couldn’t get a date to the prom.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but you’re glad it’s not you.  Nonetheless, it was me, and sense there was math involved in the project, I focused on at least doing that part right.

I've never seen a must with 27 brix before.  I’m pretty sure I could have avoided it if I had stood up to Roxanne and made sure to pick out every raisin one at a time.  On the other hand, I’m sure when those grapes were picked sometime last week they weren’t shriveled.  Funny how a trip across country in a refrigerated truck could effect their quality.  Did I mention I want my own vineyard?

Sugar Free

With my fermenting Chardonnay settling to stillness over the weekend, it was time to conduct a simple experiment to determine whether primary fermentation was complete.  A Clinitest table is deposited into a test tube of .5 ml of wine, which will immediately boil and change color.  The shade of the color, which can range from blue, to green, to orange to brown, tells you what percentage sugar content remains.  In my case, the sample turned a dark green, suggesting only 0.2% residual sugar and marking fermentation as all but complete.  As with each step in the winemaking process, I also tasted my wine for the first time.  Author Jeff Cox correctly points out that you should taste this newly formed wine like you would castor oil, which while sound advice, is still a bit harsh on the castor oil, because at least it has other applications.

I combined the wine into one 5-gallon and two 1-gallon carboys to eliminate the extra space at the top.  From this point on any excess exposure to oxygen should be avoided.  Most reds and full-bodied whites now undergo a step called malolactic (or secondary) fermentation (“MLF”).  The procedure is similar to the primary fermentation, in that a powdered bacteria is added to the wine, but in this case rather than converting sugar to alcohol, the process converts malic acid to lactic acid, while ultimately reducing the wine’s TA and lessening the palate’s perceived strength of the acidity.  To explain this further would require a working knowledge of the characteristics of acid, which I do not possess.  Nonetheless, all the books say that if you want a buttery Chardonnay you should put your wine through MLF, so Land O’Lakes here I come. 

Intro to Black Rot

As I’m waiting for my Chardonnay to ferment and my Pinot Noir to arrive from California, I’m reminded of the much more extreme waiting period that goes with planting your own vineyard.  While the 2009 growing season produced a decent display of leaves and vines, it was the novelty of it all that was most exciting.  For the 2010 season, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a handful of grape bunches starting to form in late Spring.  There were about 20 in all - not enough to make wine out of, but enough to learn how they would hold up in the humid Maryland Summer.

From the books I’ve read about viticulture, I’ve learned that there are basically two primary functions that go into producing a successful vineyard:  managing the canopy through the appropriate pruning, shaping and thinning of the vines; and protecting them from pests and disease through frequent and assorted spraying.  For those of us who shop at Whole Foods, it’s natural to have a romantic notion about growing an organic, spray free vineyard.  I quickly learned that what’s realistic is much different, particularly when you’re in the unfortunate position of only being able to check on your vines once a week or so.

By midway through the Summer, about half of my aspiring grapes had shriveled up and rotted.  By the end of August, there wasn’t a single salvageable grape in the entire row of vines.  While I never intended to make a world class wine from the pound and a half of grapes I might have otherwise collected from two year old vines, I was more than a little disappointed to turn out with nothing.  It was time to reintroduce myself to the wonder of chemicals, and resign myself to waiting yet another year before I would be able to taste a mature grape of my very own.

Black Rot –  A fungus disease common in vineyards east of the Rockies, known to attack both grapes and leaves.  It blows.

The Smell of Yeast

For the home winemaker, there is no finer aroma then the smell of wine during fermentation.  For everyone else, it is a rank stench indeed.  Opening the door to the downstairs basement releases vapors that by all accounts I should never have expected my gracious wife to allow me to bring into the house, yet there it is nonetheless, and with only the smallest of complaints. 

As the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol it off-puts carbon dioxide and other gases.  To allow these gases to be released from the carboy, while keeping out oxygen which could ruin the wine, we cork the carboys with airlocks.  The airlocks I use have three plastic pieces, one of which holds a small amount of water.  The released gases move up the carboy through a hole in the cork and into the water, lifting up a second piece of plastic as the pressure builds, and finally exits the carboy through small holes in the plastic cap on top.  In addition to the hideous (I mean lovely) smell, the airlocks provide a great way to confirm that the fermentation is in process, because at full steam the middle plastic piece will bob up and down on a regular basis as it releases the gas.  Mine is currently popping at about once a second, which means at this rate I should have fully fermented wine in a matter of days.  In the meantime, the two glass carboys look like a lifetime supply of the muddiest, fizziest Sprite you’ve ever seen.  Yummy!

Fun with Chemistry

With the Chardonnay juice off the skins, there was one last step to take before beginning the fermentation.  The perfect glass of wine will reach the ideal combination between alcohol level and acidity to provide a refreshing, thirst-quenching balance.  The amount of alcohol level in the wine is dependent upon the amount of sugar in the grapes, since as we know fermentation is the act of turning that sugar into alcohol.  You can measure the sugar level with a refractometer, which I did, and got a reading of 23 brix.  This equates to an alcohol content of approximately 13.0%.  If your brix are low, then the only thing to do is literally add sugar to your juice, but fortunately I’m right where I need to be, so we managed to avoid that strange act this time.

We also need to use a pH Meter and acid testing kit to measure the TA, or titratable acid, and pH of our juice.  The TA refers to the amount of acid in the juice, and the pH refers to the strength of the acidity.  I don’t frankly understand what that means, but I’m reading verbatim in this book right here, so it must be true.  Our TA of .69 and pH of 3.52 are just within the desired range, although a little towards the low side, so for now we’ve avoided the even more disturbing act of mixing powdered acid into our juice, although I’ll need to continue to track it to make sure it doesn’t fall too much during malolactic fermentation.

TA – Titratable (or Total) Acid.  Not to be confused with "T and A".

With those measures in the book, Drew and I racked the wine into two 5-gallon glass carboys, leaving plenty of room for the rising foam that will be brought on by fermentation.  The final, most important step of the day is actually the easiest.  We dissolved two packets of powdered yeast in a half-cup of lukewarm water, poured it into the carboys, and our work was done.  Done, that is, except for the hour of washing and clean-up that seems to accompany every time you even look at the juice.

Full Chard Press

The books generally agree that if you want to make a rich, full bodied Chardonnay, which I do, then you should let the juice sit on the skins for 8 to 16 hours before pressing.  Thing is, I crushed the grapes at 11:00 am, and it was date night in the Goldberg house, an event more anticipated than Christmas.  If I wanted to hit the 8 to 16 hour window, my only chance was to press the juice after my date, around 11:00 pm, half drunk and by myself.  Well, that’s a recipe for disaster, so the juice got 6 hours on the skins instead, and I resigned myself to a middle-class, medium bodied Chardonnay instead.

Basket pressing is the messiest, most physically demanding step in the home winemaking process.  You scoop the juice and skins from the bucket one pitcher at a time and pour it inside the wooden basket.  Most of the juice will flow right out into a fresh bucket waiting below.  Once you’ve filled up the press, however, you’ll want to apply pressure to the skins to ring out the balance of the delicious juice.  Applying the pressure is the trick, and the press has a ratchet system in place that allows you to crank a long metal pole back and forth, thereby lowering a wooden plate down the basket.  Ultimately, the ratchet becomes difficult to crank, and it’s not unusual to feel like you’re about to pull the entire basket off the table and onto the floor, before catching it at the last minute.  It helps to have a person stabilizing the basket for you to avoid a catastrophe.  You can see why I didn’t want to do it half-drunk by myself.

Anyway, we got it done, and by the end we had 7 gallons of beautiful, muddy, Chardonnay juice, awaiting further instruction.