Les Blog

Just got back the juice panel analysis of the cabernet sauvignon we picked last Saturday:

brix	24.1	degrees
glucose + fructose	25.5	g/100mL
pH	3.57
titratable acidity	0.54	g/100mL
tartaric acid	3.71	g/L
L-malic acid	3.06	g/L
potassium	1760	mg/L
alpha-amino compounds	76	mg/L
ammonia	65	mg/L
yeast assimilable nitrogen	130	mg/L (as N)

Considering other Eastern Washington fruit we’ve picked over the years, that acidity is about as perfect as you can get, and that pH is positively robust. Good structure, good health. The only minor worry is the last number, but we can easily add nutrients to the must to compensate.

All in all, pretty perfect numbers! Now all we have to do is not screw it up!

When we got back with the Cabernet Sauvignon, George was already beginning to set up the press for the Cabernet Franc – the first pressing of 2007. It had fermented essentially to dry, so while we had a crew on site, we figured its time was up.

Pressing is always a joyful time. You’ve tamed the bucking pony of fermentation, and now it’s time to take it out for a ride in your glass. The first step is to simply scoop and pour the must from the fermenter into the press – the juice that runs out, before we’ve applied any pressure, is aptly named “free run.” Especially because the Franc had so many un-pollinated, tiny and bitter green berries, we took extra care to scrape off the cap and liquid first, leaving the dregs (seeds and green berries) lurking on the floor of the fermenter.

Soon, the press was full, and it was time to put our backs into it …
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Just a little after 6am, Whit and I unlocked the Flexcar truck, stowed tarps and tie-downs in the back, and headed east through foggy, deserted streets. The chill was penetrating, but in that autumnal way that betrays a certain lack of conviction: soon enough, it would dissolve into a warm, Indian summer day.

A few miles past Hood River, the sun began to slice through the mist and dispel it back up into the hills, lifting a cascade of blue-monochrome buttes into view down the Gorge. By the time we crossed the Columbia and pointed north, the sun had cleared the way for a perfect grape run into the Yakima valley.

The grower had already picked a few thousand pounds for us and another guy who arrived just moments later. My spot test with the refractometer, trying to pick a random assortment of berries, pegged the sugar somewhere between 23 and 27 – pretty ripe at the upper register, maybe just shy of ripe at the bottom. Any harvest short of Château d’Yquem‘s berry-by-berry picking regimen will have this kind of variation: you just hope the spread is relatively tight and the average is where you want to be. So if this really netted us 25 brix, we wouldn’t complain.
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In Rainbows, the long-awaited (by me, anyway) new album from Radiohead, just up for download direct from the band. You pay what you want for it, from 0 to £100. I paid £7.50, which is about $11, about what you’d pay on iTunes except that iTunes doesn’t take all but $1.50 of it.

That’s right, a major rock band self-distributing: no label or retailer in the middle, which has ’em quaking in their Alberto Guardianis, especially since it seems to be working.

My first pass through the album doesn’t disappoint (“Bodysnatchers” is a particular standout): if you love Radiohead, you’ll love it.

If you don’t, well, you better not click Her_e!

This just in from the grower: Cabernet Sauvignon this Saturday.

He didn’t sound incredibly enthusiastic about it, though. It’s been more or less as rainy and cool has it has been here, in the Willamette Valley. He hadn’t run any recent numbers, but he’s pulling the fruit off and that’s that.

So we get what we get. Looks like it’ll be reasonably dry between now and then, at least. Sugars should be high enough, but he predicts pH will need some adjustment – to say the least.

All aboard!

The Franc’s really leapt out ahead of the Merlot in the race for dryness (15 brix versus 20), and my guess is that’s in large part because it’s in a container that holds heat better (plastic versus stainless steel). Luckily, the conductivity of the steel walls also theoretically means insulating it around the outside will have at least some effect, so that’s what I tried tonight. Click on that picture: isn’t it adorable?!

With luck, the swaddling (yoga mats and a sleeping bag – yes, this is a left coast winery) will warm the merlot’s cockles overnight so we’re at least into the 70s for ferment temperature tomorrow.

That still leaves us about 10 degrees shy of where we need to peak, which is somewhere around (but not much above) 85 degrees. What we’re counting on is that as the wild yeasts currently powering our brew start to flag toward the end of the ferment, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (the “true” and more alcohol tolerant yeast varieties) will swoop down from the rafters and take the ferment all the way home. What I don’t know is if those strains will also kick out more heat and take us at least briefly through the full temperature range that will get us the rich, complex wine of our dreams.

My suspicion is that we shouldn’t count on it, and had better have a heating backup in our holster. In the past, we’ve rigged little plastic-sheet walls around the fermenters and stuck a space heater inside, something I’ve never been really jubilant about (as someone living in the wooden house just above it), but will probably have to consider. Certainly it’ll be easier with the stainless, since that will conduct heat in as easily as it conducts heat out (versus the plastic).

Any ideas? We’ll see how things go in the next 48…