How we blend

The blend we just bottled was blended and put in the kegs in April. We think it came out really good, and you can see why when you see some of the images of us on the mix day...It was Easter Sunday and we all wore our Easter bonnets.........somehow not everyone got in the pictures, but they were appropriately attired as well.

Charlie's Angels (or Terry and the Pirates?)

Started the Riesling press at Sunday (9/24/06) morning 9 am with Charlie and his Angels, or Terry and his Pirates, depending on what you call Mister Mahan.....

The Riesling was pretty juicy, put it in 8 carboys with ample head room for fermentation; and got a yield of somewhere around 35 gallons.

Measured the Brix of the Syrah and was 21, which was down from 22 on 9/23; fermentation was going fine, but still needed to dilute to get the sugar down.

But for Charlie and the Angels, it was out on the Piazza for coffee.

Riesling

500 pounds of Riesling (WWAWA) came on September 16. Again, we were notified on Wednesday, but didn't head out to the Cellar (http://www.cellar-homebrew.com/store/catalog/) for yeast until Friday. We did learn something from the previous week; I called ahead and made sure they have the Rudsheimer that we were wanting, and they had one left.....

The fruit looked great, as you can see. The readings were good: Brix 22.8, TA 0.72 and pH 3.14. The Davis monograph would have the brix be 20.5-22, TA 8-10, and pH 3.2 - 3.4, but our previous good rieslings were not necessarily in this range. Charles, Dr Z and Elaine picked up in the morning and dropped off at the 31st Street Alley winery, and the Z's went off to exercise. We headed up to the Cellar, again, to get acid blend and a hydrometer--hadn't really been able to measure the syrah, since we had appeared to have misplaced the hydrometer. We were thinking we needed to manipulate the syrah and decrease the sugar levels before we would get too much alcohol in the must and it would not ferment to as much dryness as we would want.


Stemming and crushing was done quickly, although there was a bit of a shuffle making sure we had enough containers; the two big 44 gallon fermentors were full of the Syrah. We ended up fitting the must into the two smaller fermentors to sit overnight. We cleaned all the carboys for the next day's pressing of the Riesling. And then, of course retired to Piazza Bitsini for refreshment.

Wine Time Again

It's fall, and time for grapes. They came early this year, and we have been working hard on Syrah, Riesling, and our red blend from last year.

The syrah arrived on September 16 from WWAWA. We got the call on Wednesday evening, and had to make sure we had everything we needed. We decided, based on previous years to use Wyeast yeast (http://www.wyeastlab.com/winery/wineryprod.htm) and in particular, the Bordeaux strain. Had some fun getting it: we went to the Cellar to get it Thursday evening. They didn't have any, but Brian, the owner, called Mountain Homebrew (http://www.mountainhomebrew.com/) to see if they had any, and he would pick it up that evening on his way home, and he would bring into work the next day and we would pick it up Friday evening. Because we didn't need to add the yeast until Sunday, it would have ample time to grow up. So Charlie road his motorcycle out there Friday afternoon after work, and Brian wasn't there and there was no yeast....Charlie let them know that we needed it, (we had already paid for it) and lo and behold the Wyeast delivery came in with 8 packages of Bordeaux, but all going to one customer. Well, one of Brian's customers only got 7 packages. It was time for that customer to learn how to grow the yeast up.

So the grapes: the Brix was quite high: 27, and Jerry Warren gave instructions on how to modify by adding water, and then adding acid blend back to bring up the acid. More on that later. Total acid came in at .62, and pH was 3.56. Optimum for reds is 22.5-24.5 Brix, 6-8 TA and 3.3-3.5 pH (http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/content.php?category=Winemaking ) But for the 16th we were most concerned with steaming and crushing. Dr Z, Miss Elaine, Charles and I got them babies crushed in less than 2 hours. Then we had breakfast at Rudy's here in Magnolia, and it was quite delightful. Headed to the farmer's market and picked up some things then back to work.

By this time it was afternoon, and it was time to bottle last year's red blend. The Zobersts were able come and join the fun.

We had done three blends in each of the stainless steel kegs:
#1: 4:1 2005 Syrah to 2004 Cabernet Sauvingnon with French Oak
#2 3:1:1:1 2005 Syrah, 2005 Grenache, 2004 Cabernet Franc, 2004 Cabernet Sauvingnon with French Oak
#3 3:1:1:1 same as above, but with American Oak.

The oak was from Stavin (http://www.stavin.com/homewines/products.htm), and worked well.

We bottled over 18 cases (just over 6 cases for each blend), so each couple got 2 cases plus a few bottles of each blend.


By this time we were hungry, and we had Creamy Sausuage Pasta, using the Faure/Mahan homemade Italian Sausage. Rounded it out with a salad and bread, and the Ziegler/Zedella's brought a couple of excellent bottles of Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvingon...late '80's vintages, I believe (http://www.quilcedacreek.com/). We enjoyed the meal on the Piazza Bitsini