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?