We Bottled Our Wine

The bottling setup was completed, tests were done on the wine, we are running out of bottling preparations, only one thing left to do---we must bottle the wine!
I think there is always a little fear and trepidation when attempting something for the first time. My husband had purchased all the equipment that we needed to bottle our wine.

We had nitrogen gas equipped with a single stage regulator with two gauges, one for measuring the tank pressure and one for measuring the pressure which was attached to a brass y-splitter that went to the Sanke keg as well as the beer wand. We first did a test of the system with water in one of our Sanke kegs to test for any leaks in the system. In the photo below, the other Sanke keg holds our wine.

We did discover a small water leak where the tubing met the Sanke keg, so my husband tightened the fitting. The next thing was to connect the system to the filter.

We also hooked up our beer/wine dispensing wand to the other end of the filter and tested this setup with the Sanke keg that had water in it. So, the first thing that we bottled was water. We went the whole nine yards and my husband corked the bottle of water.

The moment of truth. My husband switched the Sanke kegs and we were off and filling! When all was said and done, we were able to fill one case of 750 mL bottles and 2 cases of 375 mL bottles. Chenin Blanc 2015!

Preparations for Bottling

We are getting ready to bottle our first vintage of Chenin Blanc. We took some final measurements before bottling and did a few "blending trials" with our sussreserve. Here are the numbers before bottling:
     •   pH = 3.02
     •   TA = 10.0
     •   SO₂ = 40 ppm
My husband has done the setup for our bottling in our basement where our wine is currently in our refrigerator. We will be taking our keg out of the refrigerator so that our wine and our bottles are at the same temperature.
After tasting the wine, my husband is once again of the opinion that the wine is like "jet fuel" and is in a dumb phase. What I can say is that the wine is very acidic but I hope that it will mellow out over time.

Annual Rock Crop Harvest

The warm spring has been keeping us busy. We have a punch list of things we need to get done so we started with pruning and laying down our canes which took us from March 1 to March 17. After that, we went through the vineyard to remove the grapevine cuttings. So far so good. Next task: annual rock crop harvest. We have come a long way since this photo taken on June, 2013.

This time, it took us only 2 days, Tuesday and Wednesday, to pick up our rock crop. Here is my husband dumping our rock harvest at the end of the day yesterday.

2014 Clos de la Cerisaie Anjou

We had a lot of charcoal grilled steak last week so from some of the leftovers my husband made a steak wrap and we drank this 2014 Clos de la Cerisaie Anjou with the wrap. The wine was very dark purple in color and tasted to me of black cherries and blackberries. I have to confess, it kind of reminded me of Luden's Black Cherry cough drops. I don't know, maybe I had a sore throat when I drank the wine and had some kind of taste flashback.
This wine is a Kermit Lynch import so I went to their website to learn more about the wine made by Chateau D'Epire. We have had the 2014 Chateau D'Epire Savennières before and found that it paired very well with oysters.
The nice thing about this Clos de la Cerisaie Anjou is that you can get it for less than $20.00, so it is a nice price for a Loire Cabernet Franc!

A Visit to Paradise Hills

Another vendor that we met with when we went to the Eastern Winery Exposition was Michael Schmidt of Spec Trellising. In fact, it was Michael who gave us the complimentary tickets to get into the Trade Show. We went to the Spec Trellising booth to get a closer look at the Albrigi tank and to thank Michael for the passes. Michael gave us the name of a customer in Connecticut who recently bought an Albrigi tank.
When we went back home, we finished pruning our vines on Thursday, March 17th so on Friday we took a little road trip to Wallingford and headed for Paradise Hills Vineyard and Winery to check out their Albrigi fermentors. My husband initially spoke with Marcello Meno and coordinated our impromptu visit with Marcello. Upon arriving at Paradise Hills, we were greeted by Richard and we explained who we were and why we had come to Paradise Hills. Richard, then took us around their winery and showed us their two Albrigi tanks.

Richard mentioned that he had investigated various tanks and decided that the Albrigi tanks were the best fit for him. He showed us the ins and outs of the Albrigi tanks and the customizable features. He had nothing but good things to say about Spec Trellising and their customer service when the tanks were delivered. After we toured the winery, Richard gave us a tasting of his wines, explaining that when he was a child, he used to help his grandfather make wine. We left with 3 bottles of Paradise Hills wines to share with our friends and a better idea of how the Albrigi tanks function in a winemaking environment.

2010 Muscadet Sevre et Maine

We have been tasting a few Muscadets recently, because they pair so well with oysters. We had this 2010 Muscadet Sevre et Maine with some Manchego cheese and crackers and it was a nice way to begin a meal. This Muscadet is 6 years old and it still tasted fresh with a good dollop of acidity!
There is some interesting information about the 2010 Muscadet Sevre et Maine on the David Bowler Wine Site. The reason why it is called "4" or Quatre, is that the wine has spent 48 months on it's lees! The grapes come from very old vines on granite of Chateau Thébaud. About a third is sourced from vines on the less porous granite of Clisson.

WineLab Touch

Another booth that we visited when we went to the Eastern Winery Exposition in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the Quartz Analytics booth, where they were showcasing the WineLab Touch. We stopped to chat with Carly and Jennifer who showed us how to take a pH reading in minutes.

The instrument has the following attributes as mentioned on their site:

• System - Photometer with temperature controlled at 37°C
• Measurement - Solid state opto-electronic devices
• Photometric Range - 620nm, 578nm, 520nm, 420nm, 366nm, 280nm (wavelengths)
• Photometric Module - 8 channels with different wavelengths each, in 4 reading cells
• Incubation Module - 37°C thermostat block with 16 positions

The WineLab Touch can take the measurements for the following:

• Acetic Acid
• Total Acidity
• L-Lactic Acid
• L-Malic Acid
• Malolactic fermentation
• Free and Total SO₂
• Glucose and Fructose
• Fermentable Sugars
• Alcohol
• pH
• Acetaldehyde
• Glycerol in wine and must
• Copper
• Gluconic Acid
• Yeast assumable nitrogen (YAN)
• Anthocyanins in wine and must
• TPI – Total Polyphenols Index at 280nm
• Polyphenols
• Catechins
• Colour intensity and tonality

It seems like an amazing little instrument which uses only 50 µL of sample. The WineLab touch comes with the pipetter. You will have to buy the reagents that come premixed and ready to use in it's own cuvette to do the necessary measurements. The equipment that is shown is approximately $7000.00, but there is a smaller format WineLab Touch that costs about $4000.00. Maybe someday.....

Pruning Time in the Vineyard

We have been pruning since March 1, with a little break for our short jaunt to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The weather has been very warm and we are finding that when we prune, the sap is running. This is nothing compared to the 80 degree temperatures that occurred in Lancaster, PA when we were there on Wednesday and Thursday. Some places in PA are calling for bud break this coming week.
We are certainly at least a month behind PA, but we need to get moving and prune and lay down our canes. Although we have made one pass through the entire vineyard, trimming back the vines and leaving the renewals and the canes we will be laying down, it is still time consuming work. This is really the first time that we are pruning and laying down so many canes and that is good news! It doesn't help our productivity that we stop and gawk at sight like this:

We have learned from experience that we don't automatically destroy life in the vineyard until we find out if it is friend or foe. So, when we went home, we learned that these are the eggs of the common garden spider, or Argiope aurantia Argiopes are carnivorous and spin an orb web to capture small flying insects such as aphids, flies, grasshoppers, wasps and bees. Definitely a friend! We will leave these egg sacs alone and see what hatches.
References:
1. Animal Diversity Web: Argiope aurantia.

Trip to Eastern Winery Exposition

We had not planned to go to the Eastern Winery Exposition being held this week but members of Vintage Nursery were there so at the last minute, we packed our bags and drove to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We felt that it was important for us to meet the people who have purchased Mercier, the nursery that originally took our vine order so that we are all on the same page for the shipment of our vines in a few weeks. We were only interested in attending the Trade Show portion of the meeting so we got up early on Wednesday morning and drove the 6 hours to Lancaster. It was a very fruitful meeting with Dustin and Dave from Vintage Nursery.

There are a few things that we needed to clarify and doing it face to face was the best thing. Dustin confirmed that they received our budwood (shippped on February 22, 2016) for the grafting of vines that we will receive next year. We also provided him with the number of vines that we are short this year. I think it is always a good thing when the opportunity presents itself to meet with people so that a face can be placed to a name.
Not only did we meed with Vintage, we also met with the people from Inland Desert, who will be shipping Auxerrois budwood to Vintage to fulfill next year's order. We spent more time with a few other venders and I'll report on those in upcoming blog post.

Thinking About Replanting Our Vineyard

We knew that this day will come sooner or later and right now we still have a little breathing room before we are faced with replanting our vineyard. We ordered 6,000 vines in January, 2015 which meant that those plants would be available for planting in spring 2016. The thought of replanting 6,000 vines is very daunting. Unlike the first time we planted our vineyard, where we hired a crew from Long Island to do laser guided planting, this was not an option for us this time since we already have our trellis system in place.
We went to see our John Deere Dealer in January to see what kind of equipment he had for drilling holes. Tim showed us his excavator to which we could hook up a beefy looking auger. One problem with this solution is that the excavator is almost as wide as the width of our rows. Which would give us little room for error. (I can envision trellis wire being tangled in the auger---not a good thought.)

My husband is always on the look out for equipment and information that will help our cause and a few days ago, he came upon the following YouTube video "Planting the Grape Vines at the Breitenbach Valiant Vineyard" using a mini-skidsteer:

This video makes planting a vineyard with trellis wires in place a doable proposition. Meanwhile, we received information from our nursery that they would not be able to deliver the entire order and could only send 4,000 of the 6,000 vines that we had ordered. For some deep seated psychological reason, the task of planting 4,000 vines doesn't seem as daunting as 6,000 vines, but unfortunately it does extend the date of a full vineyard harvest for at least 2 more years.

E. Carrel Sparkling Wine

A few nights ago, we had this E. Carrel Sparkling Wine. Eugene and Paulette Carrel farm 23 acres in Savoie in the village of Jongieux, about 40 miles southwest of Geneva. The sparkling wine had a nice, acidic finish which went well with the aged Manchego cheese that we paired it with. The sparkling wine is made from 80% Chardonnay and 20% of local grape Jacquere in the traditional method. This sparkling sells for around $17.00 and has made my list of Wines Under $20.00.

Vintage 2016: Pruning Has Begun

The weather forecasters have said that the winter of 2015-2016 has been the warmest on record in Connecticut. With the exception of a few days in January and the Valentine's Day weekend, where temperatures dipped into the teens and lower with the windchill, this winter has been very mild, the polar opposite of last winter. So, we have sharpened our pruning shears and advanced ourselves into the vineyard to begin pruning.

This year my husband has procured for us a new cane tying tool called the Prothec system. It takes a little getting used to, but it is a very handy tool for securing the cane to the fruiting wire.

My husband and I were out there today, but the 25 mile an hour winds made the temperatures feel as if it was below freezing so we only managed to finish up one of the rows of our Chenin blanc that we began yesterday before mutually deciding to call it quits.