2019: A Pictorial Year in Review

Recently, I uploaded some photographs and it took me back to what we were doing this past year in the vineyard, so I thought that I would share it with you. We thank all of our two legged, four legged, and winged friends for their contributions to our 2019 season.

Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 3 The Importance of Acidity

I am back to doing more digging into the role of malic acid. I have blogged about tartaric and malic acids in the following posts:

• Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 1 Our Titratable Acid Conundrum
• Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 2 Chemical Structure and pKa

In the first blogpost, I wrote about the conundrum we faced when our red grapes were harvested at a very nice level of Brix, but the titratable acidity was very high. In the second blogpost, I wrote about the chemical structures of the two most prevalent acids in grapes and how they respond in a juice/wine environment based on pH.
In this blogpost, I will try to further elaborate on the roles that both malic and tartaric acid play in the ripening grapes.
Why is acidity important?:

• it influences the ageing potential or the shelf-life of wine
• it determines the physical, biochemical and microbial stability of wine
• it ultimately determines wine quality in terms of the perceived organoleptic and aesthetic character

Without acidity, a wine can be very flabby and unbalanced. With the appropriate levels of acidity, a wine can become sublime. But knowing what the right level of acidity is, is a tricky business.
The principal organic acids in grapes are L-tartaric and L-malic acid. L-tartaric acid is often found at higher concentrations than L-malic acid and is the stronger acid of the two. I have already blogged about the Two Stages of Grape Berry Development. During the first stage of berry development, there is the rapid storage of L-malic and L-tartaric acid in the vacuoles leading to an increase in size of the grape berry cells. During the lag phase between stage 1 and stage 2 of berry development, berry acidity reaches a maximum concentration. The concentration of L-tartaric acid is relatively constant, while L-malic acid is the only high proportion organic acid that is actively metabolized throughout the ripening of grapes.
It is this metabolism of L-malic acid that is important to us in trying to understand what happened this year when our Brix level was high and our titratable acid was high in our Cabernet Sauvignon and our Cabernet Franc. Stay tuned for more about malic acid metabolism.
References:
1. H. Volschenk , H.J.J. van Vuuren and M. Viljoen-Bloom, "Malic Acid in Wine: Origin, Function and Metabolism during Vinification", South African Journal of Enology & Viticulture, 27(2):123-136, doi:10.21548/27-2-1613.
2. Crystal Sweetman, Laurent G. Deluc, Grant R. Cramer, Christopher M.Ford, and Kathleen L.Soole, "Regulation of malate metabolism in grape berry and other developing fruits", Phytochemistry, Volume 70, Issues 11–12, July–August 2009, Pages 1329-1344.

How to Build a Cult Brand

Marketing is one part of the business that we know the least about and recently I came across this article, How Do You Build a Wine Brand That Achieves Cult Status? Quietly. I believe in "quiet", I am a proponent of "quiet", so the article sucked me in. Here was the advice contained therein:

• For a brand to be memorable, its product has to evolve from vintage to vintage, but maintain a consistent and recognizable signature.
• The people curating your wine must understand what the brand is bringing and distinguish the brand's distinct approach to the craft.
• Consumers associate wine with their memorable dining experience, so have your wine served at special restaurants.
• It’s essential to embrace the other brands in our industry.
• Millennials are now the largest consumer of wine in the world. They care about craft, sustainability, and above all else — a wine that will be memorable to share with friends.
• In the wine category, consumers want to learn with every glass, to further inform their palate and to also connect the dots between different regions, varieties, vintages and food pairings. As a result, we add the most value when we’re giving our fans what they want—when we teach them about wine. The goal is to share insights (big or small) in every place, whether on our website, on social media, in our tasting rooms and even on our bottles.

The above points are what I gleaned from the article. Most of the bullet points are what my husband and I discuss when we talk about how to market our wines. I'm not sure the article addressed how "quiet" this strategy is, but it is worth noting.

2018 Chateau Yvonne Saumur-Champigny L’ile Quatre Sous

We are on a quest to understand how Cabernet Franc is made and have gone to one of the sources of where this grape has been grown, the Loire. I have blogged about the 2016 Melaric Clos de Messemé Saumur Puy Notre Dame crafted by the husband and wife team of Aymeric Hillaire and Melanie Hunin.
We tried this expression of 100% Cabernet Franc, the 2018 Saumur-Champigny L’ile Quatre Sous. The wine was clear and looked dark purple in the glass.
The grapes are grown and hand harvested from a one hectare plot of vines ranging from 15 to 50 years in age. Native yeast is used in the fermentation which is done in concrete vats for 3 weeks without pumpovers to limit extraction. The wine is aged for 8 months in concrete vats. Bottling is done with filtering or fining and no additions unfined and unfiltered besides minimal sulfur dioxide. 500 cases of this wine was produced.
We enjoyed this Cabernet Franc. We find it interesting to know that this is a wine that has been fermented in concrete vats as opposed to oak or stainless steel. It is eminently drinkable for it's youth. This wine can be procured for less than $30.00. We are enjoying our continuing education on how Cabernet Franc can be fermented in different ways.

Our Harvest Luncheon

Recently, we had our harvest crew over for a thank you luncheon. We hope to do this as we continue our journey as grape growers and winemakers. Here is what we offered our crew in terms of food.

In addition to the antipasto as the first course, we also had lamb sliders for which we had condiments including tzatziki. To go along with the tzatziki, we made spanakopita. A gluten free pasta salad was also provided.

For dessert we had fresh fruit, palmiers and my husband made a tray of key lime squares.

To pair with all of the food, we brought out our white wine lineup.

We had a great time with our friends and hope that we can continue this harvest tradition. Once again, we thank all of our friends who helped us with this year's harvest!

Our 2019 Harvest at a Glance

We are currently growing 6 different kinds of grapes, but that doesn't necessarily limit one to just 6 different kinds of wines. This year, we were able to harvest small amounts of Auxerrois, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Our sixth varietal is Barbera, which was too young this year to lay down any canes.
Here are the harvest numbers at a glance.

Variety	Harvest Date	Weight - Pounds	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	9/23/2019	636	50 gallons	19.6	3.26	7.4 g/L
Chardonnay	9/28/2019	291	26 gallons	21.5	3.16	9.3 g/L
Chenin Blanc	10/14/2019	3930	280 gallons	21.6	3.06	13.5 g/L
Chenin Blanc	11/19/2019	50	3.5 gallons	25	3.52	11.2 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/25/2019	377	30 gallons	23	3.32	11.3 g/L
Cabernet Sauvignon	11/3/2019	332	25 gallons	21	3.25	11.1 g/L

This year, we are attempting to make a very small amount of late harvest Chenin Blanc. For us, Chenin Blanc is a very versatile grape and we have made a pétillant naturel (pét nat) a type of sparkling wine in the ancient style where the lees are left in the bottle, as well as two types of still wines, a dry style and a Sussreserve style where unfermented juice from the current season is added back to the fermented wine.
Last year, we made a rosé from the Cabernet Sauvignon and this year, we are making a still wine from the grape.
With the exception of the late harvest Chenin Blanc, all the other wines have finished fermentation and are now in their "ageing" stage. This allows us to turn our attention to other tasks that we have left undone.

2016 Melaric Clos de Messemé Saumur Puy Notre Dame

My husband opened this wine, a 2016 Melaric Clos de Messemé Saumur Puy Notre Dame and we paired it with a chicken pot pie that my husband made.
Drinking this wine which is a Cabernet Franc is part of our continuing education in our quest to understand what cool climate Cabernet Franc can taste like.
The nose on this wine was of black fruit like dark plum, bosenberry, and dark cherries.
The wine itself was clear and sparkling like the garnet gem in liquid form. The wine was medium bodied with delicious fruit flavors with a balanced acidity and just a hint of tannins. We really liked this wine.
We learned from the Domaine Mélaric Site that wife and husband, Melanie Hunin and Aymeric Hillaire are the winemakers. They make wines from Chenin, Cabernet Franc and Grolleau grapes that come from four plots on the slope of Clos de Cerisae looking towards the village of Puy-Notre-Dame.
My husband was able to purchase this wine for around $26.00. We will definitely be buying more of this wine.

Recap of Vintage 2019

It's that time of the year to recap the vintage year that was 2019. Winter 2019 seemed to spare us with the very cold temperature that was coming across the country in January. Our first major snowfall was in March 2019, just when our thoughts were turning toward the pruning duties that lay ahead of us.
Vineyard duties began at the end of March with pruning duties that lasted until late April. The take home lesson for us from this past spring and pruning in March is that some of the tasks we did such as cutting tendrils from the trellis wires need to be done much earlier. We also came to the conclusion that we can do the first cut of pruning in the cold dormant season, which will make pruning tasks a little faster when the time comes to deciding which canes we need to lay down for 2020.
May brought budbreak in our vineyard, with the Chardonnay being the first to send out young leaves into the chilly, Connecticut spring. Throughout May and June we waited for bloom. The late bloom allowed us to keep on shoot thinning in the first two weeks of June.
During one particular weekend in late June, most of our varieties began to bloom. It started with the Chardonnay, which we have come to learn is the first in our vineyard to bloom. Chardonnay was followed by the Auxerrois, then the Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc and last, the Cabernet Sauvignon.
The day of the summer solstice, June 21 brought 3/4 inches of rain. The effects of rainfall on bloom was evident in some of the early blooming Chardonnay where the flowers were not fertilized and withered on the rachis.
Summer was a halcyon time with rain occurring at least once a week or during the evening, allowing us a full work day. The remnants of tropical storm Barry brought 2-3/4 inches of rain on July 18th followed by a heat wave during the third week in July.
During this time, we were busy with the endless task of shoot positioning and leaf pulling. Summer was a blur of work while we waited for veraison. The first variety to reach veraison was the Auxerrois in the third week of August. While leaf pulling the Chenin Blanc closest to the Auxerrois, there was a noticeable difference in the softness of the Auxerrois compared to the Chenin Blanc. The Chardonnay was the next to ripen followed by the Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc. All through the waning months of summer, the varieties accumulated sugar in a way that we had not seen before and it was totally gratifying.
Our first harvest was the Auxerrois on September 23. While we anticipated harvesting 1500 pounds of grapes, we actually came in with 636 pounds which went to Jonathan Edwards who helped us with the pressing of these grapes. We harvested the Chardonnay on September 28. Since we only had a little less than 300 pounds of fruit, we resorted to our methodology of foot stomping these grapes and vinifying it in our basement.
The Chenin Blanc came in on October 14, with the help of approximately 30 of our friends. It amazed us that the 12 rows of Chenin Blanc were harvested in 2 hours! The weight of the Chenin Blanc was just short of 2 tons at 3930 pounds and once again, Michael and Alex at Jonathan Edwards helped us by weighing and pressing the grapes.
The Cabernet Franc came in on October 26, but we waited until November 3 to harvest the Cabernet Sauvignon. We were able to wait that long because the weather cooperated, but not enough to change the high titratable acid numbers.
The last harvest that we made for this year was our experiment in the wedding bags, the late harvest Chenin Blanc which we harvested on November 19.
So, our annual cycle of growth chart for 2019 looks like this:

We thank all of our friends and Jonathan Edwards staff who helped us with this year's harvest!

2019 Late Harvest Chenin Blanc Next Steps

We brought in our late harvest Chenin Blanc on Tuesday, November 19. We might have had about 50 pounds of fruit which gave us around 4 gallons of very dark juice. We emailed our friends and mentors Charles and Kareem Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards.
Originally, we had the juice in a 54 degree fermentation chamber for settling for a day, but Charles advised that the settling should be done under much lower conditions so on Wednesday, November 20, we moved the carboy into a fermenter where we set the temperature to 38 degrees. The carboy sat in the cold fermenter until Sunday, November 24. In the 5 days of settling the juice resolved itself from a dark olive green color to a lighter yellow color.

The result of the cold settling amazed us. We thought we would still get a dark juice, but it clarified to a nice yellow color! What was left behind in the sludge was most of the undesirable dark pulp. We racked the clarified juice over to a 5 gallon keg.
When we took the numbers on the clarified juice, it appeared that we lost a bit of tartrates during the cold settling:
Brix = 25
pH = 3.5
TA = 9.1 g/L
We let the juice come up to 54 degrees overnight and then inoculated the must with VIN13 on Monday, November 25 at 3:45 p.m. Our next task is to carefully monitor the fermentation so that we can stop it at the desirable level of residual sugar in order to create the moelleux style that we are hoping to achieve.

Last Harvest of the Year

This year we conducted an experiment in the vineyard. We still have a few rows of Chenin Blanc that are not producing enough fruit to warrant putting up netting, so we resorted to our tried and true method of putting wedding bags on the scattered Chenin Blanc grapes. We had about 500 wedding bags in the vineyard and decided to leave them on the vine after we harvested the bulk of our 2019 Chenin Blanc on October 14.
Our goal was to see if we could make a sweet wine, in the style of Domaine Huet Vouvray Le Haut-Lieu Moelleux. So, we left the grapes on the vine until it was more than a month past our last harvest. On Tuesday, November 19, we went to harvest the Chenin Blanc. We went to the land at 2:30 and finished harvesting all the wedding bags at 3:45. The more time consuming part was ahead. We had to debag the grapes and stomp them!
Here is what our late harvest Chenin Blanc grapes looked like:

It's not the prettiest looking grape and had undergone several freeze/thaw events but they were still intact. We resorted to our typical stomping of grapes and got perhaps 4 gallons of juice.
We were so surprised that the juice was almost black in color. Looking on the Internet, however, showed that this is kind of typical for late harvest juice. We took the numbers for the juice and here is what we have:
Brix = 25
pH = 3.52
TA = 11.2 g/L
We initially had the juice settling in a 54 degree environment, but upon advisement, we lowered the temperature to 38 and are continuing to setting the wine. I'll give updates on our experiment so stay tuned.

Progress Report on Our Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon

We harvested our Cabernet Franc on Saturday October 26 and our Cabernet Sauvignon on Sunday November 3, and brought both harvests to Jonathan Edwards Winery to have Michael and Alex help us with the destemming, crushing and fermentation.
During the fermentation, we participated in punchdowns over the weekend and now it was time for the wine to be separated from the spent grape skins and seeds. We were very fortunate that Michael had a small basket press that was never used. We went to Jonathan Edwards Winery on Monday, November 19 around 2 p.m. and Michael and Alex had already done one pressing of the Cabernet Franc.

This is what the spent grapes looked like and the wine that was pressed from the fermented grapes.

Since Michael and Alex had never done a pressing on such a small quantity, they devised this clever idea to get the juice into the waiting barrel. The basket press on a pallet was elevated by a fork lift above the waiting barrel.

The Cabernet Franc grapes/wine must was put into the barrel.

Even before the pump was turned on, the free run came out of the grapes. After turning on the pump to inflate the bag inside, the wine was released from the grapes. The pressure applied to inflate the bag was 1 atmosphere, or 12 pounds. I felt the spent grapes and it was like dust!
Here is a photo of the wine flowing from the press.

Alex thought that we might have 30 gallons of wine! The wine will sit overnight in the barrel and then be racked into a 30 gallons closed top barrel for malolactic fermentation.
Thanks Michael and Alex! We really appreciate your help!

Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 2 Chemical Structure and pKa

Recently, I wrote a blog about Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 1. In this blog, I'm going to take one step back and spend a little time on the chemistry of malic and tartaric acids.
The chemical structure of malic and tartaric acids looks like this:

Malic and tartaric acids are dicarboxylic acids. The red circles indicate the hydrogens on each molecule that ionizes in solution to yield free hydrogen. The ionizable hydrogens are part of the hydroxyl group of the carboxylic acid [-COOH] moieties. A solution’s pH is really just a measure of the concentration of these free hydrogen in the solution.
The strength or weakness of an acid, or how readily the hydrogens ionize from their parent molecule is defined as the pka, each acid’s pKa value(s) provides some indication of the degree to which each acid is ionized.
Malic and tartaric acids are weak acids. The pka of these weak acids refer to the conditions under which these molecules will allow the separation of hydrogen into the solution, in our case, we are talking about wine being the solution.
Here is a chart of the pka values for malic and tartaric acids. The blue line represents the fraction of the acid that is unionized, the red line represents the singly-ionized acid, and the yellow line represents the doubly-ionized acid.

Since malic and tartaric acid both have two protons which may be lost to the solution, there are two pKa values for each acid. For malic acid, the pka values are 3.4 and 5.2 and for tartaric acid, the pka values are 2.95 and 4.25. The chart shows that acids with different values of pKa will have differing effects on pH.
At the lowest levels of pH, the acid exists in solution in the un-ionized state, but at pH levels between the two pKa values, the singly-ionized state is the most populated, and then at pH levels much above the higher pKa value most of the acid is present in the doubly-ionized state.
At a typical wine pH of 3.4 (the value of pKa1 for malic acid) half of the malic acid would be un-ionized and therefore contribute nothing to the pH of the wine. However, in the case of tartaric acid at pH 3.4, most of the acid will be in the singly-ionized state, and there will also be some un-ionized and doubly-ionized states present, contributing to the pH of the wine.
References:
1. Rochester Area Home Winemakers.
All structures were drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.

Trip to Long Island Wine Country

What did we do on our day off? After the harvest is in and the wines are fermenting, what a better time than to go to Long Island to visit Wine Country. It's fair to say that we can't get enough of wine and learning about wine.
We had a specific reason for going to Long Island and it dates back to Our First Visit with Charles Massoud at Paumanok in 2011.
As it turned out, Monday was a beautiful day and when we reached Orient Point, the temperature was 64 degrees! Last year, when we made this same pilgrimage, the weather gods were kind to us and provided us with possibly the only two beautiful days in an otherwise very miserable fall of 2018.

We had an 11:30 appointment with Charles and Kareem Massoud at Paumanok.
We were a little early for our appointment so we made a detour to Lenz Winery, one of our other favorite wineries to visit on Long Island.
A new thing that I saw at the tasting room was that the winery now offers something called "tastings" in which you can select specific wines to taste for a slightly larger pour than the regular flight of tastings. We opted to taste a 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2014 Merlot. My husband and I really liked both the 2016 and 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon so much that we purchased some bottles to take home with us. After this small detour, we headed to Paumanok.
We met up with Kareem and he showed us his 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon which had finished fermentation and was now being pressed. It was just amazing to see so much Cabernet Sauvignon being pressed. The aromas coming out of the juice was just amazing!

During previous rendezvous, Charles always brought out all kind of cheeses and pates for us, so this year, we brought some light bites from Connecticut with us, including smoked bluefish and summer sausage, complements of our hunter.

We met up with Charles and had a wonderful visit and then it was time to run off to catch the ferry back to New London. We thank Charles and Kareem for their hospitality!

Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 1 Our Titratable Acid Conundrum

This year has presented us with a bit of a conundrum when we began to check on the Brix, pH and titratable acidity (TA) of our various grapes. We have always encountered high TA in our Chenin Blanc, but this year, we encountered high TA in our Cabernet Franc as well as our Cabernet Sauvignon. The puzzle was that the Brix were also high. In looking back at this year's growing season, we felt that we had good weather throughout the summer which would explain the high Brix, but what was puzzling was the high TA which never seemed to come down even though we let the grapes hang on the vines as long as possible.
Here are our numbers in the order in which the varieites were harvested:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	September 23, 2019	19.6	3.26	7.35 g/L
Chardonnay	September 28, 2019	21.5	3.17	9.4 g/L
Chenin Blanc	October 14, 2019	21.6	3.15	13.5 g/L
Cabernet Franc	October 26, 2019	23	3.32	11.3 g/L
Cabernet Sauvignon	November 3, 2019	21	3.00	14.9 g/L

Looking at the high titratable acids, we wanted to know more about the role of malic acid in grapes. There is a beautiful diagram that shows grape berry ripening and the changes in grape metabolites during ripening.¹

I used the above diagram in a previous blogpost called Two Stages of Grape Berry Development, but in that blogpost, I focussed on the changes that occured in the grape berry in stage one and then in stage two.
In this and subsequent blogposts, I'm going to focus on the fate of malic acid in the ripening grape. Stay tuned!
Reference:
1. Moschou, Panagiotis & Aziz, Aziz & Roubelakis-Angelakis, Kalliopi, Chapter 7, Polyamines and grape berry development, The Biochemistry of the Grape Berry, (2012), 137-159.

2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

We called on our friends for one more harvest, our Cabernet Sauvignon. We harvested on November 3 on what was a perfect Sunday fall afternoon.
We began at noon, with our early bird friends who came to help us with raising the netting. We accomplished that task by 12:30. So, even though the harvest time was set for 1, we began harvesting. Some of our friends came after 1 p.m. and while they were too late to harvest, they helped us to gather up the lugs and store it in our container for transportation to Jonathan Edwards Winery on Monday morning.
Here is our crew celebrating the penultimate harvest for this year.

On Monday morning, we brought our harvest to Jonathan Edwards Winery and learned that our harvest weighed 332 pounds!

The grapes will be destemmed and gently crushed and sit overnight before inoculating with the yeast, F15.

2019 Cabernet Franc Fermentation

We harvested our 2019 Cabernet Franc on Saturday, October 26, 2019 and took the harvest to Jonathan Edwards Winery on Monday, October 28, 2019 where the harvest was weighed, destemmed and mildly crushed. The must sat in the half ton bin overnight.
On Tuesday, October 29, we rehydrated the yeast of choice, FX10 with the help of winemaker, Michael. Our choice of yeast for this year is a departure from last year, when we used F15 to ferment our first Cabernet Franc.
Michael estimated that we might get approximately 32 gallons of juice. Using that estimate, we rehydrated 32 grams of FX10 in 320 mL of water and waited for it to bloom, which took around 20 minutes.
In the meantime, Michael gave me a taste of their Chardonnays that were fermenting in the barrels as well as the Chardonnays fermenting in their stainless steel tanks. It was delicious!
After the time was up, we took an aliquot of the Cabernet Franc from the half ton bin:

We used the juice to temper the rehydrated yeast:

The must was inoculated with the tempered and rehydrated yeast at 10:40 a.m. The must at the beginning of fermentation was:

Variety	Brix	pH	TA
Cabernet Franc	23	3.32	11.3 g/L

The fermentation began on October 31, 2019. Michael and Alex decided to move the must from the half ton bin into a 55 gallon blue barrel. Daily punchdowns are being done. Today, it was our turn and my husband took photos of me doing the punchdown. The cap initially is a little difficult to break through but once the cap is breached, the rest of the punchdown is easy to do.

2019 Cabernet Franc Harvest

Our friends were game to come and help us with the harvesting of a small (large for us) amount of Cabernet Franc on Saturday, October 26. This decision was made largely because we saw that on Sunday, there would be a rain event that would bring between 1-3 inches of rain to our region.
So, we decided to harvest at 1:30 p.m. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. Our friends, Bob and Betsy who always exceed expectations came early to help us with the netting and when 1:30 came around, we began harvesting the two rows of Cabernet Franc. With 10 people, the harvest was accomplished in 45 minutes!

The harvest which was accommodated in 29 lugs was stored in our container until Monday. On Monday morning, my husband and I put the stored fruit into the half ton bin and hauled it to Jonathan Edwards Winery.

Once at the winery, Michael and Alex took over and the Cabernet Franc in the bin was weighed. Subtracting the weight of the half ton bin, we came up with 377 pounds of grapes. The next thing was to get the grapes into the destemmer/crusher. The rollers in the crusher was set so that the destemmed berries would be gently crushed.

Once again, we thank all of our friends who came to help us harvest and Michael and Alex for their help at the winery!

Tracking the 2019 Cabernet Franc Numbers

This is the first year that we will be having a good amount of Cabernet Franc to harvest. We have waited this long to harvest the grapes because of an abnormally high amount of titratable (TA) acid in our sampling.
Here is a recap of what we have been seeing:

Variety	Test Date	# of Berries	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Cabernet Franc	9/14/2019	45	47 g	15 mL	16.5	2.68	NA
Cabernet Franc	9/30/2019	40	48 g	17 mL	20.4	2.98	9.1 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/5/2019	40	58 g	15 mL	21.6	2.99	11.9 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/13/2019	40	53 g	20 mL	21.4	3.09	13.3 g/L
CF Clone 214	10/20/2019	30	36 g	12.5 mL	23	3.13	11.5 g/L
CF Clone 327	10/20/2019	30	39 g	10 mL	22	3.04	11 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/23/2019	76	86 g	35 mL	22.4	3.10	9.3 g/L

On October 20, we decided to take readings on our two clones of Cabernet Franc separately to see if they were any differences with the Brix and the titratable acids. Our readings show that they were within range of each other although clone 327 seemed to be a little behind. On October 23 when we took our last reading, we finally had a titratable acidity that we could live with.
The other experiment that my husband conducted was a paper chromatography experiment. Here, we wanted to qualitatively see what the ratio of tartaric acid to malic acid was.
Here are the results:

In paper chromatography, the compound with the lowest molecular weight will move the farthest. Therefore, in lanes 1 and 10, lactic acid is at the top of the chromatogram. Similarly in lanes 2 and 9, malic acid is in the middle of the chromatogram and in lanes 3 and 8, tartaric acid can been seen as being lower than the lactic and malic acids.
In lanes 4-7, my husband spotted the samples of interest to us. Since we know the titratable acids of our 2019 Barbera, 2018 Cabernet Franc wine, 2019 Cabernet Franc juice and 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon juice, we were interested in the qualitative comparisons as determined by the paper chromatography. The 2018 Cabernet Franc wine in lane 5 is the only lane that showed any appreciable amounts of lactic acid, indicating that the wine underwent malolactic fermentation and converted some of the malic acid to lactic acid. Comparison the Cabernet Franc juice in lane 6 to the Cabernet Sauvignon juice in lane 7, a case can be made that the Cabernet Sauvignon juice might have a bit more malic acid.
We are harvesting our Cabernet Franc today and holding off harvesting our Cabernet Sauvignon until a little later in the coming week.