Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Inoculating Our 2019 Chenin Blanc

Our 2019 Chenin Blanc was harvested on October 14, 2019 and the pressing occurred on October 14 and 15th. The first step that we do after pressing is a cold settling, which occurred on October 15 and 16th. On Thursday, October 17th, we headed back to Jonathan Edwards to work with winemaker, Michael Harney to rehydrate and temper our yeast, QA23. This was no easy feat to go to Jonathan Edwards Winery because the roads were made impassable by the storm that came through on Wednesday night bringing gusts in excess of 70 mph.
Once we got to the winery, Michael had already moved the cold settled wine into the tank destined for fermentation. He showed us how clear our juice already was!
We proceeded to rehydrate 300 grams of QA23 in 3 liters of water at 104 degrees F. This was done for approximately 20 minutes to allow the temperature to drop before we added some Chenin Blanc juice. We waited until the temperature approached 10 degrees of the temperature of the juice in the tank to inoculate.
The 300 gallons of Chenin Blanc juice was inoculated at noon.
Since the inoculation of the Chenin Blanc on October 17, Michael has updated us on the status of our fermentation. As of today, the Brix has come down from 21 Brix to 15.5!

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