Late Bloomer

This week I gave my 2010 Chardonnay its final racking in preparation of bottling in the next few weeks.  While racking is an exceedingly simple task, I’m apparently unable to complete it without first spilling half a bottle or so on the basement floor.  Nonetheless, I ended up with one 5-gallon carboy and two 750 ml wine bottles of crystal clear Chardonnay remaining to enjoy.  I couldn’t be happier with how the wine is tasting.  It’s buttery, medium bodied with heavy fruit throughout.  Just how I had hoped.  I even shared a pre-release bottle at our Friday night family barbecue and it got nothing but rave reviews. 

I’m now in a routine of spraying my Corot Noir vines once every 7 to 10 days, which will continue until the berries bulge and start to turn purple.  The clusters are currently in their blooming stage, when little, tiny flower caps form, open and fall away.  I’m several years into this winemaking experiment and up until a month ago I didn’t know what a flowering grape cluster looked like.  The education never ceases. 

The shoots of the vines are now growing inches by the week, and at the Hilton estate I took the considerable time to tie each shoot vertically to the wires of the trellis to ensure the leaves receive maximum sun exposure.   Soon I’ll have to begin the regular, tedious process of removing excess leaves one at a time to prevent shading of the many grape clusters, but in the meantime it’s back to the bottle label design.  I’ve got a Chardonnay release party to plan.

Design for Dummies

Over the past three years I have come to determine that if I’m ever to have a successful estate vineyard and winery, I will need to achieve the appropriate mastery of chemistry, meteorology, farming and marketing, for starters.  I can now add graphic design to that list. 

In anticipation of undertaking my first home bottling sometime this Summer, it’s time for me to select that just right label that reflects the perfect blend of sophisticated boutique winemaking with moonshine, seat-of-your-pants processing that I’m going for in the “Dry Run” brand.  After countless hours exploring numerous alternatives ranging from ordering customizable options online to buying and learning new software to design and print the label at home, I still have no clue when I’m going to do.

On the other hand, for the first time in what feels like a long time, nothing went wrong at the vineyard/winery this week.  My Chilean Chardonnay finished its primary fermentation, completing the transformation from juice to “wine,” and I’ve inoculated it to begin the malolactic fermentation.  After more than a week of nervous waiting, the vine in my yard has finally recovered from my insecticide mistake and produced its first batch of new leaf growth.  And most exciting, my row of vines at the Hilton estate is bursting with activity, with each vine sporting from 25 to 40 fledgling grape bunches.  At that volume, provided I don’t again lose the crop to black rot or accidentally kill the vines myself, I should produce enough juice this Fall to make one to two cases of my first ever estate grown Corot Noir wine.  And with about a year and a half to go before that wine is ready to bottle, that should be just about enough time to design the perfect label.

Why Wine is Expensive, Part II

Upon further reflection, it’s clear to me now that almost every post here could appropriately be titled “Why Wine is Expensive.”  Managing a vineyard and winery, even on my ridiculously modest scale, presents a constant set of challenges, and this week was no exception.



Kim and I woke up this morning to discover that our basement had flooded overnight with my fermenting Chilean Chardonnay.  I had two five-gallon carboys sitting on the laundry room counter, and one of them was suddenly half empty.  I was too depressed to take photos, but believe me when I tell you that two-plus gallons of cloudy Chardonnay makes a large mess on the laundry room floor, particularly when it’s laundry day.  As I cleaned the disaster, my mind was racing as to how this could have possibly happened, but in the end the answer became obvious - my newest carboy had a huge crack in it.  How this carboy suddenly cracked and began leaking a week into the fermentation process, I really can’t explain, but at least I know how the wine got out of the carboy.



The remains of the 2011 Chilean Chardonnay.



To her credit, Kim handled the disaster much calmer than I might have anticipated, particularly since she never signed up to have our laundry room double for a wine cave.  In the end, I’m guessing I lost about a case of wine, or almost 1/3 of my production.  It’s times like these that I remind myself that there are many wines available for purchase at various retail establishments throughout the city.  But then, what would I have to blog about?

Why Wine is Expensive

It’s been the most eventful week ever in the young life of my modest home winery and vineyard.  Several things happened which would normally justify their own post and reflection, but as the items kept piling up, I’m forced instead to summarize them as follows:

1)      Is my 2010 Malbec a lost cause?  It’s starting to feel that way.  Already handicapped by an off-putting finish, I discovered this weekend that my ½ gallon carboy had some unwelcome microorganisms growing on its surface.  I’m pretty sure this was a result of failing to top of the carboy with greater diligence after each tasting.  Too much oxygen was allowed to collect at the top, and finally some squatters moved in.  Drew described the resulting smell as “paint thinner,” and the taste was a fair reflection of that, so I dumped the entire carboy down the drain.  I’m still hoping for a miracle cure for the remaining 6 gallons, which might include the perfect blending, but it’s also possible that the balance of the wine could be finding its way down the drain as well.  Given that this was the first wine I made from grapes completely by myself, the outcome isn’t entirely surprising.

2)      Did I just kill my grapevine?  I sprayed the vine in my yard with a pesticide/fungicide according to the recommended schedule, and a couple hours later many of the leaves starting to shrivel and turn brown.  After much research, I’ve concluded that the spray applicator I was using was off in its calibration, in essence drowning the leaves in poison at many times the recommended dosage.  The fix here is to buy a new, more expensive spray applicator and mix the fungicide concentrate myself, so I’m hopeful the damage will be limited to this one vine.  I guess I’ll find out when I spray the rest of my vines tomorrow using the new equipment.  As for the infected vine, it’s possible that the damage will be limited to those few leaves, but it’s also possible that I’ve killed the entire vine, or at least ruined it for the growing season.  The answer will probably be obvious within a few days, because in normal circumstances these things grow like weeds.

 

3)      Is it Fall in Chile already?  Apparently so, because my 144 pounds of Chardonnay grapes arrived this weekend.  After crushing and pressing, I discovered that the juice had a high sugar and low acidity level, the result, presumably, of growing overripe after an indeterminate number of days in transit from South America.  Per the normal protocol, I added acidity, loaded the juice up with protective sulfites and inoculated it with yeast to begin the fermentation.  Everything by the book.  Of course, this was the same book I followed for the lost Malbec, so let’s hope, this time, for better results.