Hello again. I apologize for the down-time. But, I am back at my favorite cafe. It's sunny (the past few days have started out foggy and cool) and there is already some kind of Arts Festival setting up in the Healdsburg Square. Dog lovers are gathering. Bicyclists are in force. Weekends are great around here.
Today, we are getting in possibly the last of the Chardonnay from a vineyard way out on the Sonoma Coast. The Platt Vineyard is 6.5 miles from the Ocean near the town of Bodega! David Ramey helped with the design of this vineyard. The layout of this cool-climate vineyard allows the smaller, earlier-ripening Chardonnay clones to be harvested at a more consistent ripeness and often at lower brix (sugar levels) to produce lower alcohol wines. (so the theory goes). I'll be working on those grapes here in a few hours. (cleaning the press is work).
As I mentioned in previous epsisodes, after getting the grapes into the tank, we soak them until they start to ferment on their own. No cultured yeasts, wild or indigenous yeast that are on the grapes begins the fermentation in about 5-7 days. more or less.
Right now 6 tanks have red grapes. Four are in the fermentation stage, two are still in the 1st stage-soaking or maceration, as they say.
The maceration is a very effective way of releasing color and flavor from the skins. However, eventually the pomace forms a floating cap of solids while the juice is trapped beneath it. This is a rich environment that can convert the vat into vinegar overnight! Lots of warmth, oxygen and acetic bacteria. So, to avoid that terrible result, we hook up hoses and gently pump juice from the bottom of the tank into the top of the tank, with a fitting that goes just inches under the surface to keep that cap moist. It is the hard cap that creates the danger zone. On the soaks, we do this procedure once a day for anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes depending on a formula that the winemaker sets up in relation to volume.
When you stick your face into that tank top and it knocks you back with a good dose of CO2 and you cannot breathe (a very scientific technique) then fermentation has begun and we switch to pump-overs.
The pump-overs are similar to the process above. The main difference is that we use an irrigator on the top. You can see one side of it in the above picture. Now the cap is being pushed up by heat and carbon dioxide. Basic formula: grape sugars + yeast = alcohol & carbon dioxide. That spraying arm extends and twists to the other side and sprays in the opposite direction. It spins in circles to moistened the entire cap (again for 10 to 30 minutes or so).We do pump-overs twice a day. Right now it is 6 tanks total. Paul tells me at some point in the near future it will be 20 or so tanks.
So, that's what I've learned so far on the reds. More to come I'm sure. The guys assure me that soon I will not be able to get the Red out of my hands!
Sunday is almost here. Another road trip? Stay in touch.
