Waiting for Cup Airlock Bubbling

My husband and I started the fermentation of our Auxerrois at 8 p.m. on September 25th. This is a tense time of waiting for bubbling from the airlock, especially when the fermentation is in a non-see through stainless keg. I was trying to convince myself that I could actually smell the beginnings of fermentation, each time I lifted the freezer lid to check on the airlock. This morning, a full 60 hours after the yeasts were put into the keg, I was having serious doubts about my yeast rehydration procedure and was wondering if I needed to rehydrate another batch of yeast.

It turned out that I didn't need to worry because this year, my husband decided to invest in a micro inspection camera. The camera came yesterday and my husband tested it out last night. Around 9:30 a.m. this morning, he set up the device and we went down into our fermentation cave (aka basement) to check on the Auxerrois. Using his micro inspection camera, we found that although the bubbler was mute, the yeast were in an active state of reproduction! This stage is probably part of the lag phase where the yeasts are undergoing rapid division. Once we opened the keg to look inside and resealed it, the bubbler started to show signs of carbon dioxide evolution. I know, Murphy's Law, right!

Kicking Off Auxerrois Fermentation

On September 21, we harvested approximately 100 pounds of Auxerrois grapes that gave us about 7 gallons of juice. We put the juice into 2 glass carboys and into a 50 degree temperature controlled modified freezer to cold settle. On September 24, we combined the juice into a 7.75 gallon keg and retrieved 35 mL of juice to get the starting parameters prior to beginning fermentation.
       Brix = 16
       pH = 3.21
       TA = 5.5 g/L
       SO2 = 10 ppm
We made 1/4 teaspoon of SO₂ in 5 mL of distilled water and put it into the keg and stirred it. We put the keg into the 60 degree freezer to raise the temperature overnight.
On September 25, in preparation for kicking off fermentation, I looked back to a previous post on tempering yeast to figure out what I needed to do. I ended up putting 7 grams of QA23 in 70 mL of Poland Spring water at 100 degrees F to initially rehydrate the yeast. To that, I added 40 mL of Auxerrois juice in 4 mL aliquots every 2 minutes. The ending temperature of the rehydrated yeast was 65 degrees F when it was added to the Auxerrois juice.
You can also watch this YouTube Video:
       Chr. Hansen Yeast Rehydration Protocol.
Our Auxerrois juice looks rather orangish and the Brix as well as the titratable acids are on the low side. Our hope is that this will make a light bodied easy drinking wine.

2017 Chardonnay Harvest

On Saturday, our crew, Mary and Barry plus one, Urs, came to harvest the Chardonnay. We are still trying to fine tune our harvest parameters, so we began again at 7 a.m. putting the netting up off the Chardonnay and harvesting into our lugs. This part of the harvest goes quickly. With 5 people we were done in 45 minutes. In the end, we had 6 lugs worth of fruit. The photo below was taken in mid-picking.

For the Chardonnay harvest, we had a problem with yellow jackets that made holes in the grapes and made mummies out of the berries. Mary and I were the designated cleaners and we thought that this fruit was better off than the Auxerrois we harvested on Thursday, September 21. We filled a mash bag to it's limit and this time, Urs was the stomper. Stomping began around 8:30. Every once in a while, Barry would spritz the mash bag with a very dilute solution of potassium metabisulfite, (one teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite in one gallon of water).

While Urs was stomping, Mary and I were cleaning the second bolus of Chardonnay. The cleaning is really the rate limiting step. Due to the cleaner fruit, one more person to help, and better preparation, we were able to finish the process at 9:45, which is 3-1/5 hours faster than our first trial with the Auxerrois.
The 6 lugs of fruit gave us around 7 gallons of juice. In the end, the Chardonnay juice was much greener than the Auxerrois juice due to the spritzing of the potassium metabisulfite during juicing, indicating that there was less oxidation going on.

Here is a video of Urs stomping the grapes:

Aux Harvest: Proof of Concept---Part 2

On Thursday, our friends, Mary and Barry met us at the vineyard to harvest our very small crop of Auxerrois. It took only about 45 minutes to harvest the grapes, which weighed in at 100 pounds but it then took 2-1/2 hours to clean the grapes. After the cleaning, the harvest fit into 5 lugs.

After the cleaning, we took a little break for some sustenance. Then we put the grapes into 2 mash bags. We stomped on the mash bags to extract the juice. Here is a photo of our intrepid stomping crew.

When all was said and done, 100 pounds of fruit gave us nearly 7 gallons of juice. We put the juice to cold settle in our modified freezer. We ended the day 6-1/2 hours later.

The proof of concept with the bin in our driveway and a hose to the basement works! Now to brainstorm what we will need to do to scale up for our Chenin Blanc harvest.

Aux Harvest: Proof of Concept---Part 1

This is the last year that we think that we can make wine in our basement. Previously, I blogged about Accoutrement Preparation for Fermentation, where we purchased two more freezers to be adapted for low temperature fermentations as well as eight 15.5 gallon kegs.
We hope to have a larger harvest of Chenin Blanc this year, increasing from approximately 175 pounds to maybe 800 to 1000 pounds. Keeping that in mind, we had to change some of our procedures. In 2015, when we had our first very small crop, we stomped on our grapes in a cooler to extract the juice, and everyone had a lot of fun. This same procedure was repeated last year, 2016, but this year, we needed to think of another method to crush the nearly order of magnitude increase in grapes that we hope to harvest.
I still wanted to stomp the harvest so my husband accommodated my wishes. We went to our local fermentation supplier and bought a fermentation bin, usually used for red wine fermentation. This is a 50 gallon bin that my husband adapted with a bulk head fitting to accommodate a spigot.

Since we wanted to do a gravity flow of our juice into the glass carboy, our thought was to put the fermentation bin in our driveway and use a hose to bring the juice into our basement.

Everything looked fine, but we needed to test our new method. Fortunately, we have a small crop of Auxerrois that we can harvest to run a proof of concept test. Stay tuned to see if this worked.

Dodging Hurricane Jose

Computer models of the southeastern portion of Connecticut where we are located showed that we were supposed to be in for some very wet weather courtesy of Hurricane Jose yesterday. Until Jose began veering off to the east, we were supposed to get 10 inches of rain, instead we received about 0.3 inches. For that, we are very thankful. Today, the forecast is for wind gusts of 30 mph.

Michigan Leaf Removal and Cluster Thinning Experiment

From taking the U.C. Davis online course, I was familiar with the advantages of leaf removal. I was, however, unaware of the timing and the removal of certain leaves as well as the advantages of cluster thinning. The article that I am reading now¹, was certainly a timely one since we project that our Chenin Blanc grapes are possibly at least two weeks behind in sugar accumulation.
In reading the article, I felt that I needed to go back to basics to get a better understanding on what leaf removal and cluster thinning can do for grapes.
My husband was also looking into cluster thinning and found an online article and pointed me to Crop Thinning: Cluster Thinning or Cluster Removal, written by Patty Skinkis.

• Leaf removal is an adjustment of total vine leaf area and affects the relationship between photosynthetically active leaf area and yield
• Improves the cluster microclimate
• Allows additional sunlight penetration
• Leads to higher cluster temperature
• Cluster/crop thinning is the removal of flower and/or grape clusters on the grapevine
• Affects vine balance (fruit to vegetative growth)
• Necessary for adequate ripening in cool climates
• Improves fruit, when applied with early leaf removal

In the March, 2017 issue of the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, the Frioni et al. article, Leaf Removal and Cluster Thinning Efficiencies Are Highly Modulated by Environmental Conditions in Cool Climate Viticulture compared experiments done on Cabernet Franc in Michigan in 2011 and 2012, two years with different weather conditions. The following table summarizes the experimental conclusions contained in the article.¹

Treat-ment	Description	Results
C	No thinning, no leaf removal; ~85 clusters	Control
LR	no thinning, leaf removal; ~85 clusters	Cluster morphology and berry size were not changed, when applied at veraison Accelerates anthocyanin biosynthesis Can lead to reduced fruit set and altered cluster morphology, only when applied before or around bloom
TH	thinning, no leaf removal; cluster thinning was applied when clusters reached 50% berry color change, leaving ~50 clusters	Led to a yield reduction consistent with the lower number of clusters per vine at harvest Cluster morphology and berry size were not changed when applied at veraison Particularly effective right after veraison Improved homogeneity of sugars
TH + LR	thinning, leaf removal; cluster thinning was applied when clusters reached 50% berry color change, leaving ~50 clusters	In cooler years, TH + LR was the only treatment that promoted higher amounts of color compounds Accelerates anthocyanin biosynthesis Only method to improve fruit composition at harvest

From the experiments that were conducted, the authors speculated that it is possible that cluster thinning and leaf removal enhance anthocyanin accumulation and have a potential additive effect in cooler seasons. The only method to improve fruit composition at harvest was the dual treatment of leaf removal and cluster thinning. Hmmm.....wondering if cluster thinning might be in our future for our Chenin Blanc, currently with Brix coming in at around 15.
References:
1. Tommaso Frioni, Shijian Zhuang, Alberto Palliotti, Paolo Sivilotti, Rachele Falchi, Paolo Sabbatini, "Leaf Removal and Cluster Thinning Efficiencies Are Highly Modulated by Environmental Conditions in Cool Climate Viticulture", Am J Enol Vitic., March 2017.
2. Patty Skinkis, Crop Thinning: Cluster Thinning or Cluster Removal, July 26, 2012.

Problem in the Vineyard

A few days ago, we went out into the vineyard to sample grapes for determining the Brix level and found a rachis totally stripped of its grapes. In the past, I've blamed turkeys for this type of evidence left in the vineyard, but this time, the stripped rachis was in a wedding bag, so, turkeys were not to blame. Instead, there was a small hole in the wedding bag and in the bag were yellow jackets!
My husband and I were both stunned to see how yellow jackets could peck a hole into an organza

wedding bag and totally devastate a cluster of grapes. We saw yellow jackets in the netting here and there but, we were not aware as to the extent of damage the yellow jackets could do to our grapes. It was time for action.
My husband looked on line to see what we could do to get rid of these destructors. He made up an apple cider, sugar water solution with an old banana peel and put it into an empty water bottle and he also went to get some pheromone traps. My husband corrected me on this, the trap is not a pheromone trap, it is an attractant trap for yellow jackets. We went back to the vineyard to set up these traps. The apple cider, sugar water trap was not as effective at trapping yellow jackets, but two days later, the attractant trap had yellow jackets.

Charting Our Brix Levels for the Chardonnay

We have been monitoring the Brix readings for all of our varieties, Auxerrois, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay clones 76 and 96, in order to determine the appropriate time for harvest. I didn't take the readings on specific days, so note to self, next time, be more consistent!
But, here are some of the data plotted for our Chardonnay:

From the above plot, it appears that there is a plateauing of the sugars for about a 2 week period before the sugars begin to increase.
Selecting a harvest date according to the Brix level, or the quantity of sugar per berry is only one of the indicators.
Other indicators include:

• titratable acidity, malic and tartaric acids
• pH
• berry tasting
• tannins
• anthocyanins

Other considerations include impending weather conditions and the availability of harvest field hands (read friends). If the Brix reading for the Chardonnay keeps on increasing at one Brix per day, harvest for that variety could be in the next few days.
My husband looked at my graph and expressed a little disbelief that the Brix were rising again. It could be that the Chardonnay is going into the over ripe phase. My "excuse" is that this charting is not as rigorous as it should be. I'm on a learning curve.
Reference:
1. Alain Deloire, The concept of berry sugar loading.

1998 Chateau Pape Clement

Last night, we did a little happy dance, having finished the last of the bottom cinching of our 10 rows of netting. We celebrated by having this 1998 Chateau Pape Clement with a steak that my husband put on the grill and slowly smoked it with hickory chips, a technique that he has honed to perfection. Yes, Bordeaux and steak is a very good pairing.
The wine was very dark purple in color. When I held the glass to the light, there was no color change tinge on the perimeter of the wine, indicating that for a 19 year old wine, very little oxidation had taken place. The bouquet was a deliciously fruity one and the flavors to me were of black currants, black raspberries, a little cedar and great acidity. The tannins were very well integrated and was a joy to drink with our meal.
I looked on the Internet for more information about Chateau Pape Clement and found The Wine Cellar Insider where I learned how they make their wine:
To produce the red wine of Chateau Pape Clement, the fruit is whole berry fermented. The grapes are manually destemmed. Vinification takes place in large, temperature controlled wood vats that range in size, corresponding to the size of the parcels. The large, oak tanks vary in size from 50 hectoliters to 150 hectoliters. There is a manual punching down of the cap. The red wine is run off directly into 100% new, French oak barrels via gravity flow, without any pumping over. Malolactic fermentation takes place in barrel. The red wine of Pape Clement is aged in 100% new, French oak barrels for an average of 18 to 20 months before bottling.¹
What caught my eye was the sentence "the grapes are manually destemmed"! I need to run this by my husband for next year when we hope to get a small harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.
Reference:
1. The Wine Cellar Insider

Accoutrement Preparation for Fermentation

Fall like temperatures have arrived in the Northeast so it is really nice to go to the vineyard and work. We have a few more weeks before we will be harvesting, but until then, it is really up to Mother Nature to provide the optimum weather for the end game. We believe that this year, we will be harvesting close to 1000 pounds of Chenin Blanc, which put us in a bit of a quandary. My husband thought long and hard about renting an outdoor cooler, but that was not in the realm of feasibility. We finally decided that for one more year, we could clean our basement to accommodate two more chest freezers that we would modify to hold our kegs for a controlled, low temperature fermentation.
The two freezer chests came yesterday.

What's going into those freezers, you ask. We have eight half-kegs which will hold 15.5 gallons of liquid. The half-kegs came today. We think (hope) that we will have 80 gallons of juice to ferment. We will use 6 of those half-kegs for fermentation and use 2 for racking.

How Long Does It Take to Net

This year, we were on time to order our netting and we also had a netting unroller platform made for us by our welder, Scott. He ingeniously configured the back of our riding lawn mower with an aluminum platform that could handle the netting.
We have 10 rows of vines that needed netting, each row being 756 feet long.

My husband had to calculate how many anchor clips and bottom clips we needed to accomplish the netting task. The anchor clip, shown on the immediate left goes on the trellis wire to hold up the netting. The clip seen on the far left is what we used to secure the bottom of the netting.
First task, put up all of the anchor clips. Our first netting adventure was on August 29th. With the help of our friend, Bob, we were able to net one row in 30 minutes! It really does take 3 people to make this task feasible. One person to drive the mower and two people to put up the netting. It took us 4 days to put up 10 rows of netting. We are still clipping the bottom of the nets. So far we have done 4 rows. We were in the process of putting on the clips for 2 more rows when a deluge of rain fell and chased us home. I'll update this blog with more photos of what the anchor clips and bottom clips look like when they are on the netting. Here is the photo. My husband informed me that the name for the bottom clip is vin-clip.

The Organoleptic Qualities of a Wine

I am currently reading an excellent article that is available on the Internet called Microbial modulation of wine aroma and flavour. The beginning of this article explains the organoleptic qualities of wine, or how our senses of sight, smell, taste and touch come into play when drinking wine.
We use our senses to analyze the structure of a wine including acidity, sweetness, bitterness, tannin (in red wine), alcohol, palate weight and length, mouth-feel, and mousse (in sparkling wine). When structural elements are in balance and harmony, this leads to complexity experienced as diversity and layers of flavour. Describing this complexity is where knowing the vocabulary of organoleptic qualities of wine come in to play.
I learned from taking the U.C. Davis online course that one can be a "hedonist" which simply means in wine terms that you either like the wine or you don't. I am a hedonist. But for people who want to break down a wine using all of their senses, wine attributes can become complicated.

Sense	Attributes
Sight	cloudy, hazy, deposit in the glass, depth of colour, hue, mousse
Taste	palate; involves sweetness, acidity, bitterness, saltiness and the taste of umami
Smell	aroma is normally used to describe the smell of a young, fresh wine due to chemical compounds with low boiling points that are volatile and detectable by the human nose primary smells originate during fermentation – typically youthful with upfront fresh fruit notes bouquet is the term for an older wine, less fresh but more complex secondary smells stem from oak maturation tertiary smells originate during bottle aging; developed fruit showing more age, with stewed or dried fruit and other smells coming into play
Touch	mouth-feel relates to the body and texture of wine influenced by factors such as alcohol content (sensation of warmth) and tannins (drying sensation)

See how complicated it can be to analyze a wine properly? That is one reason that I am a hedonist. People bring their own experiences to a wine tasting and what one person describes may not be the same as what another person describes. But a lively discussion on the organoleptic qualities of a given wine being tasted is never a bad thing.

References:
1. Swiegers, Jan & Bartowsky, Eveline & HENSCHKE, P.A. & PRETORIUS, I.S.. (2005). Microbial modulation of wine aroma and flavour. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. 11. 139 - 173. 10.1111/j.1755-0238.2005.tb00285.x. (Note: if you click on the link, the article may take a while to load into your browser.)
Illustration extracted from the above reference with modified caption.

A Matter of Scale

Recently, I took a panoramic picture of our vineyard with our iPhone. We have 33 rows of grape vines, so we are almost back to the full canopy that we planted in 2013 of 36 rows and 6800 vines.

There is a little vineyard scooter in the above photo and here is a close up of the scooter.

If you look very closely on the scooter, there is a small dark green thing on the left center of the scooter and a green grape on the top right side of the scooter. At the end of a long day of cleaning the canopy to put up our nets, my husband called me over to check out the scooter. He said, is there a frog on the scooter?

At first, I said "no" since the frog was so tiny. When I looked more carefully, there it was, a little green tree frog. I ran to get my camera. I wanted to put the grape next to the tiny frog but I didn't want to scare it. It must have been comfortable where it was because it let me take many pictures of it. So cute! Seeing the tiny frog was a fun way to end a long work day.