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.