Got Juice

I am a little behind in posting the activities that occurred on Saturday, September 26th after the grape stomping. The videos were located on my husband's camera and he uploaded it for me today. So, here is a video of the juice that came out of one of the bags that we stomped ala "I Love Lucy".

We collected the juice in the sanitized Poland Spring 5 gallon jug. Following good sanitation practices, my husband cleaned all of the equipment we used with PBW followed by a distilled water wash then, Saniclean followed by a distilled water wash.

As we collected the juice, we put in 1/8th teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to kill any microorganisms as well as to prevent oxidation. After we got all of the juice, we pitched in the other 1/8th teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite so that we had approximately 50 ppm free sulfur dioxide in the juice.
We took the Brix (22 ^oBrix) and specific gravity readings (1.089) with the hydrometer.

The juice then went into our refrigerator for the cold settling step to remove grape solids. We are dedicating our spare refrigerator to the fermentation. On day 2 of settling, the juice looked like this:

Crush 2015

After harvesting our Chenin Blanc, the key thing was to take the fruit to the crush pad (aka home basement) as soon as possible. Since our home is minutes away from our vineyard, this was not a problem. We weighed the harvest and it came in at 65 pounds. I was a little disappointed because I had done a pre-calculation and was hoping for approximately 90 pounds, since I thought that 90 pounds would give us about 5 gallons of juice.
Prior to harvest, one of the dilemmas was how to crush such a small amount of fruit under sanitary conditions to extract the juice. We didn't have a problem with the lack of a distemmer because we had already decided to press the grapes on the rachis, i.e. whole cluster pressing.
Our solution was to use our cooler, which is food grade and put the grapes into food grade nylon bags used by beer brewers for steeping their hops and grains. Our friends filled up the bags with the grapes. Once the bags were filled with grapes, it went into the cooler. Okay, now what, you ask.

Well, I am really found of the traditional way of doing things so I would often tell my husband that I wanted to stomp on the grapes like they used to do in the old country. This year, my wish came true. In preparation for grape stomping, our friends put on the very effective foot protection, called a Hefty Jumbo Bag with adjustable sliders then they stomped on the grapes in a good rendition of "I Love Lucy---Grape Stomping Episode". Okay, I know that some of you are too young to remember "I Love Lucy", so here is the link to the Grape Stomping Episode. Here is our own version of channeling Lucy:

This turned out to be a very gentle and but effective way of getting out the juice because from 65 pounds of grapes, our yield was 6 gallons of juice!

Harvest 2015

Yesterday, Saturday September 26, was harvest day for us. We couldn't have picked a nicer day with temperatures in the mid 50's at 7 a.m. with no breeze. Our picking crew arrived and we began the harvest of our Chenin Blanc. The early morning is a good time to pick grapes because the bees are not out, although it must be said that the netting we used kept all manner of flying insects away from our developing grapes so that they remained very healthy and intact.

From previous count, we know that we have around 360 bunches of grapes to harvest and 153 plants that are bearing this fruit. The plants are scattered in 17 rows so my husband drove his tractor while we followed and harvested two rows at a time. It took us from 7:15 to 8:45 to harvest the Chenin Blanc. In the photos below, my husband has picked out one of the Chenin Blanc clusters that grew with a wing.

Harvest, done!

2010 Domaine Huet Le Mont

We are in the process of preparing to harvest our 320 bunches of Chenin Blanc. Our gold standard for Chenin Blanc is Domaine Huet. Recently, we had this 2010 Le Mont and it was sublime. So, the question is, how do we try to emulate our gold standard. We only have 320 bunches which we think will yield approximately 5 gallons of juice. My husband has been doing a lot of online research into the appropriate accoutrement for the making of the best wine in small lots. One of the articles he consulted was called Research On Chenin Blanc published in 2006 by Wineland and written by Dr Johann Marais of ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij, Stellenbosch. This article lead us to procure the yeast, QA 23 from Lalvin. The summary of the research indicated that:
"Berry size, sunlight exposure, grape ripeness, yeast strain, lees contact, pH, air and nitrogen sparging have a prominent effect on Chenin blanc wine quality and shelf life. Results, obtained under the conditions of this investigation, suggest that yeast strain QA 23 together with enzyme treatment during lees contact, were the best parameters for the production of Chenin blanc wines where lees character and more body are required. The ageing potential of Chenin blanc wine was markedly enhanced by an increase in pH of 0.3 units. Furthermore, it appears that wines produced from grapes with small berries, ripened under shady conditions and harvested at full ripeness showed the best potential to keep longer. Aspects such as oxygen management after fermentation up to bottling are of crucial importance."

Rain and the Impending Harvest

Last Wednesday, September 9th, we were keenly aware that a rainstorm was headed our way, so we had to make a decision on whether to harvest our Chenin Blanc or not. The problem with rain this close to harvest is that it can promote disease problems especially for botrytis and other late season rots (bitter, ripe and sour).
The Brix on the Chenin Blanc was about 17 degrees, and via a rather biased sampling and tasting, we knew that we had the flavors but the seeds were still on the green side indicating that ripening was not yet complete. We made a conscious decision not to harvest and to ride out the rainstorm, which brought us 2-1/4 inches of rain.
We consulted an excellent article that can be found online written by Mark Chien titled Rain at Harvest: finishing the end game. Mark Chien begins the article by explaining how the proper site selection, choice of variety, clone and rootstock, as well as vine density, spacing, and trellis and training system choices can all mitigate excessive rainfall close to harvest time. Of all the important factors he considered, Chien mentioned that one of the most important ways to preserve quality in a rainy vintage is to keep your fruit clean and sound by adopting a fruit rot program tailored to the conditions that occur during bloom, bunch closure, and version.
Having made the decision to let the grapes hang a bit longer, now when we go to the vineyard we check for signs of rot. So far so good. Yesterday, we took this photo:

We're hoping that our gamble to ride out the rainstorm will yield us high quality Chenin Blanc grapes.
References:
1. Mark L. Chien, Rain at Harvest: finishing the end game, Viticulture Educator, Penn State Cooperative Extension, September, 2010.

Harvesting our Auxerrois

On Wednesday, in advance of a storm that was heading our way, we harvested our Auxerrois. There were only 14 clusters so the job was an easy one. Here is how it looked in our cooler.

I weighed the bunches and found that the 14 clusters weighed 2.57 pounds.

I covered the bowl with Saran wrap and put it in our basement refrigerator, while I contemplate what I can do with 14 bunches of grapes. My husband took one of the bunches to our local package (aka wine and beer) store and had the owner taste the grapes. He was surprised that the grapes were so small but was so much sweeter than table grapes.

Testing the Chenin Blanc Grape Juice

The two bunches of Chenin Blanc grapes that I harvested for taking the Vital Statistics sat in the refrigerator for a few days. Then, I had an idea to take one more reading. First, I assembled the following: a ziplock bag into which I put the two clusters, a clean glass, and some pH strips that I had around for testing the pH of canned salsa.

First, I squashed as much of the juice out of the two bunches that I could and then I put the juice into the glass. I took the pH strip and dipped it into the juice and got the result that you see to the right.
The color is somewhere in between the first indicator, which is 2.8 and the second indicator which is 3.2. This is really not very precise at all but something that I could do. This juice has some acidity!
I then put the cup of juice into the refrigerator to simulate cold settling that we would do to settle out the grape solids. The juice turned a little brown in the refrigerator, indicating the conversion of caftaric acid, one of the most abundant phenolic compounds in white grapes, into the quinone form by the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO).

Polyphenol oxidase is the same enzyme that turns a freshly cut apple brown. This reaction occurs in the presence of oxygen and can be beneficial in the process of making a white wine, although the presence of too much oxygen can lead to a process known as Hyperoxidation, and that process is not necessarily something that is desired in winemaking.
A close inspection of the photo on the right where the juice has turned brown, shows that the gross lees have indeed settled out. My husband and I tasted the juice and it was sweet with a punch of acidity. Our thoughts are turning to how to make wine from the 320 netted clusters in the vineyard. Stay tuned.

Chenin Blanc Vital Statistics

On Tuesday of this week when we had our Plans Interrupted by the arrival of a voracious flock of turkeys that discovered our sweet grapes, I took the opportunity to pick 2 clusters of Chenin Blanc that we didn't have the time to net so that I could check it's vital statistics. These are like our babies, so they were weighed and measured and checked for Brix level:

Yesterday, when we went to the vineyard to work, it appeared that the grapes were increasing in length as well as swelling. The ^oBrix were now averaging 19!
We also learned that harvest will soon begin for our neighbors to the south on Long Island!

Plans Interrupted

Yesterday, we arrived at the land, as we usually do, with plans for the day. The plan for the day included my husband testing the grape hoe to clear the weeds but as we turned toward the vineyard, my husband said, "Look at the turkeys!" I said, "Where?" and began fumbling for my camera. The turkeys were at the south end of the vineyard with their heads pointed in the direction of our grapes and what big, fat turkeys they were!

We both jumped out of our truck and my husband was flapping his arms and running in the direction of the turkey flock. They did not really go scattering, but went sauntering down the vineyard row as if to get yet another nibble of grape goodness before leaving.

After driving the turkeys out of the vineyard, we both surveyed the damage. The turkeys had just begun their breakfast of grapes from the south end of our vineyard and were on their meticulous and leisurely eatfest down the row. The grapes are at the perfect height for nibbling and they did a good job of pecking and eating each individual grape. The damage had just begun and if we had arrived any later, we would probably have seen a total annihilation of our little crop and not really known what caused the damage.
So, an abrupt change of plan was in order. It is not like we were unaware of bird problems, because we have been putting up netting on our Auxerrois that is already at 16 ^oBrix and getting sweeter. We were more focussed on smaller bird problems, such as starling getting to our grapes and didn't think that the flock of turkeys would partake of grapes. Wrong.
So, we devised a way of using our trailer to unroll the netting that we purchased and went down each row to net the surviving grapes.

So, another lesson learned the hard way....turkeys love grapes.