Les Blog

Dateline Portland, Oregon — In what many consider a startling turn of events, fermentation proceeded apace today. According to documents and other data obtained by the New York Times and loaned to this blog, the Merlot has slimmed down approximately 1 brix, while yeasts within the Franc have gone on a comparative binge, gorging themselves nearly 1.5 brix.

A Les Garagiste official close to the bubbling mass, who requested anonymity so he could make up anything he wanted, said the Administration had also added 1g/liter tartaric to the Merlot “so we don’t end up fighting them over here,” and to perk the must up a bit. The slightly reeling factotum also disclosed that recent internal Justice Department memos had cleared the Administration to add another 1g/liter tartaric at a future time, without consent of Congress or the must in question.

Across the Mall, the Franc continued to bubble its way to freedom, but key Senate staffers have reported a slightly disturbing whiff of VA, or volatile acidity, in the must over the last 2 days. Punching down seems to take care of it, they are quick to say, but the Capitol remains on Yellow Alert pending further CO2 production to cover the cap.

Whit and I checked the Merlot late last night and it looks like we have ignition! The cap was just tentatively beginning to rise, and when Whit punched it down, the yeasts bubbled happily through the grape goo.

Then, this morning, I checked the Franc to discover that it has also decided to follow in its brother’s footsteps, so we’re firing on both cylinders. That means a steady regimen of punching down the cap, keeping track of sugar levels and temperature, and coming home every day to a house filled with beautiful fragrance.

Life is good!

Got the numbers back from ETS, and as we guessed from the taste of the grapes, the Merlot should have been picked earlier. The upshot is that we’ll need to strap the Merlot to the treadmill and tone it up a bit, adding some acid to drop its pH into healthier territory and sharpen its fruit, and perhaps add some water to pull the potential alcohol down into balance.

The Franc looks a lot better, but like the Merlot, will need to be monitored through the ferment because of their low yeast assimilable nitrogen content (or more colorfully, YANC). That potentially soporific term essentially characterizes how much nitrogen the yeast have to feed on to keep themselves fit and healthy through the ferment. From a paper by the Food Science and Technology department at OSU:

If the levels of fermentable nitrogen are too low, the total cell biomass produced will be low, the yeast fermentation may be slow, and the fermentation may stop or `stick’ before all the fermentable sugar is utilized. Yeast under nutritional stress due to nitrogen deficiency may also produce hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg) and other sulfur compounds with offodors

So we’ll definitely be adding some yeast nutrient and tasty-sounding di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) to both of these ferments to keep the yeasts happy and healthy.
The complete numbers and some more comments after the jump…

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Grapes in tow, Hal and I got back into town about 5pm or so to find crush transformed. Because while we’d been sitting on our butts chewing bon bons up and down I-84, the Garagistes had been busy.

One of the pitfalls of winemaking is that you only get to practice it once a year. In our case, that means it’s always somewhere around mid-crush when you remember the thing you swore during the last harvest you were going to do the following year. And there you are, up to your elbows in sticky grapes, without that gizmo or process or infrastructure in place, having to wing it again.

But not this year. Oh no. Ride shotgun with me as I back the truck up the driveway and past the fold, smack dab into a new frontier of winemaking technology the likes of which the world (well, our Garagiste world, anyway) has never seen before.

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At about 7am Saturday morning, Hal and I set out with Laura’s truck and trailer to find America – and barring that, ripe Cabernet Franc and Merlot. We’d packed plenty of tie-downs and enough plastic sheeting to Cristo a garage, having learned in previous years that you can’t have too much grape-wrap.

The morning was drizzly in Portland, but as we passed the Dalles, the weather lightened and the low autumnal sun began to slice across the hills, giving them the soft suppleness of suede. As we crossed the Columbia at Biggs and scaled the bluffs overlooking the water, the view downriver was both calm and majestic. It’s a 3-1/2 hour drive each way to the vineyard, but that glance over your shoulder in the early morning light always makes it easier.

Just out of Sunnyside, we pulled into the vineyard, where, as advertised, it was indeed sunny. The grower had already stacked the Franc in small white picking bins, ready for weighing. We’d always rather taste and test the grapes before they’re picked, but this grower just does what he does and you hope for the best.

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