Vintage 2020: Next Steps for the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc

We left the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Cabernet Franc in their half ton bins at the Jonathan Edwards Winery undergoing a "cold" maceration until Sunday, October 25, 2020 when we went back to inoculate the must. Jonathan Edwards was harvesting his Cabernet Franc at this time so we were able to repay his kindness by helping to harvest his grapes. Around 1 p.m. we rehydrated our yeast, F15 for the Cabernet Sauvignon and FX10 for the Cabernet Franc.

We calculated that we might have at most 80 gallons of juice. The yeasts that we had chosen came in convenient 80 gram packets so the two yeasts, F15 for the Cabernet Sauvignon and FX10 for the Cabernet Franc were rehydrated in 800 mL of water at 100 degrees. The F15 seemed a little bit more reluctant to be rehydrated and the FX10 was faster at rehydrating and "blooming". The must for each of the two varieties was at a very hospitable 62 degrees Fahrenheit so after the 20 minute rehydration, the 800 mL of must was added in two aliquots each spaced 10 minutes apart. A little after 2 p.m. both bins were inoculated with their respective yeasts and covered with a special half ton bin covering that my husband (Procurement Officer) purchased.

Beginning on October 26 we went to Jonathan Edwards Winery three times a day to do punch downs. During this time, the yeasts were in their lag phase, beginning to get accustomed to their grapey environment. What we did see was that the weather was going to turn decidedly cold on Friday so on Tuesday evening, my husband purchased a small rotating heater to help the yeasts along. We set up the heater on Wednesday morning, October 28, 2020:

After the heater was put in place the yeast began their activity of converting sugar into alcohol. We monitored this by the change in Brix that we observed:

Variety	10/19	10/25	10/27	10/28	10/29	10/30	10/31	11/1	11/2
Cabernet Sauvignon Brix	22.4	20.5	20.5	19	16.6	15	13.5	12.2	10.6
Cabernet Franc Brix	23.5	23.2	21.0	19.5	18	15.5	14	12	10.4

After the heater was put in place, the yeasts came out of their lag phase and entered their rapid division phase and the decrease in Brix attest to this. It is still a slow fermentation so we hope to capture some nice aromatics in the process.

Vintage 2020: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Harvest

Our last harvest for this growing season that was large enough to bring to Jonathan Edwards Winery occurred on Thursday, October 22, 2020. For this harvest, we had a small group of motivated and hard working harvesters that came at 8 a.m. when the skies were misting and the nets were wet with dew. We only have 4 rows of these red grapes so chances were that the harvest could go very quickly. Here is our harvest crew:

There was a little break between harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon, which the crew did first and then the Cabernet Franc which was next. Our friend helped us to pick up the Cabernet Sauvignon filled lugs and put them in the half ton bin during this break. When our friend and my husband put the initial row of Cabernet Sauvignon into the half ton bin, we knew we had a problem. The grapes from the lugs filled an entire half ton bin and we only had 3 of those.

The crew got busy harvesting the Cabernet Franc. That did not take very long and around 12:30, the crew was finished and it was time for a well deserved lunch break. During the lunch break we served our 2017 Chenin Blanc Pétillant Naturel, something that we do to celebrate bringing in the last of our harvest.

After the harvest crew left, one of our friends stayed to help us collect lugs from one row of the Cabernet Franc, which went into the last of the three bins that we had.
We took the Cabernet Sauvignon to Jonathan Edwards Winery and picked up another half ton bin and went back to our property to load up the last lugs of the Cabernet Franc. We did this and went back to the winery with the Cabernet Franc where it was put into the winery for destemming the next day.
We arrived at Jonathan Edwards Winery on Friday, October 23, 2020. We cleaned the two half ton bins that the destemmed must would go into and Jonathan Edwards had a perfect place for the bins. We helped to set up the destemmer and the must pump. When everything was in place, the destemming occurred.

First came the weighing of the grapes, handled by Jonathan Edwards and then the destemming. Jay raked the grapes into the destemmer, I controlled the must pump and my husband managed the 2-inch hose from which the must was delivered to the bins. This was the weight of the bins in the order in which it went into the destemmer:

Variety	Bin Order #	Row #	Weight	Tare	Final Weight
Cabernet Sauvignon	Bin #1	Row 2	594	93	501
Cabernet Sauvignon	Bin #2	Row 1	480	93	387
Cabernet Franc clone 327	Bin #3	Row 2	445	92	353
Cabernet Franc clone 214	Bin #4	Row 1	611	92	519

The final weight for each of the two Cabernet varieties were:
Cabernet Sauvignon 888 pounds
Cabernet Franc 872 pounds
The must from these grapes each fit into their designated half ton bin.

Vintage 2020: Late Harvest Chardonnay

In between our big harvest of Chenin Blanc and harvesting our red varieties, we had a little time to comb through the vineyard looking for grapes that were not harvested. Full disclosure: when we harvested our Chardonnay, we only harvested the very best of the crop because we were too late to put the nets over 4 of the 8 rows of Chardonnay that we grow. These unnetted rows still have some very nice fruit that we are bagging with organza wedding bags for a late harvest Chardonnay.

At this point, some of the grapes are shriveling up into raisins. I took a sampling of the Brix and those raisinated grapes are at 31 Brix!

Vintage 2020: Chenin Blanc Cold Settling and Inoculation

I've written two blogs regarding the 2020 Chenin Blanc harvest: Vintage 2020: Chenin Blanc Harvest and Vintage 2020: Chenin Blanc Pressing at Jonathan Edwards Winery. Those two events happened on Sunday, October 11 and then on Monday, October 12. We did get a day of rest on Tuesday and then on Wednesday and Thursday it was cold settling then inoculation.
The Chenin Blanc parameters from the juice taken on Monday was:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc	8201 pounds	655 gallons	23.3	3.09	12.1 g/L

On Wednesday, Jonathan Edwards was racking the cold settled juice into the holding tank. I went to see if I could help. I was in charge of the must pump, making sure that the holding tank did not over flow and the pump did not cavitate.

The cold settled juice from tank 2 was transferred first. Tank 2 contained mainly Chenin Blanc clone FPS-1 juice. It was interesting to note that the juice was a bit cloudy in the holding tank. The tank became completely full in the process of racking, so tank 2 contained 350 gallons of juice.

Jonathan showed me the gross lees that were left on the bottom of the tank. We don't add any yeast nutrients when we do our fermentations, so I removed three buckets of this gross lees because this is what we use as nutrients for our yeast. After that, what was left in the bottom of the tank was discharged from the drain valve onto the winery floor. I asked and was given the task of cleaning the tank. I was surprised at the amount of skins that were on the inside of the tank and it took me a while (30 minuntes?) to get the tank clean. Once the tank was cleaned the three buckets of "nutrition" was put in the bottom of the tank and the juice was returned to tank 2.
Before moving the juice from tank 1, we put a bit of this juice into tank 2 anticipating that we had more juice in tank 1 and not wanting to overflow the holding tank. Then we did the same thing for the cold settled juice in tank 1. The juice from tank 1 appeared a bit clearer. When the transfer was done we had 275 gallons that was in the holding tank. The gross lees from tank 1 looked a bit cleaner.

After cleaning tank 1, putting in the nutrients, putting back the racked juice, my day was over. I felt like a real "cellar rat"!
The following day, Thursday, October 15, I went over to the winery to inoculate the juice that was at 60 degrees. We use QA23 for the fermentation so, the first step was to rehydrate the yeast in 100 degree F water. I also removed some juice from each tank to temper the yeast once it was rehydrated. I could see that the juice from tank 1 was clearer than that from tank 2, which is what I expected.

The rehydration and tempering took from 3:20 to 4:10 p.m. When the temperature reached approximately 75 degrees, the tanks were inoculated. Jonathan asked if I wanted to climb to the top of the tank to pitch the yeast, but I demurred. Hopefully the happy yeast that we pitched into the tank will change our Brix to ethanol! Now we have a bit of a respite before our last harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes occurs.

Vintage 2020: Chenin Blanc Pressing at Jonathan Edwards Winery

We went to Jonathan Edwards Winery at 10:30 on Monday morning, October 12, 2020. We were involved in the cleaning of the press. Then the weighing of the bins, destemming and pressing of the grapes began.

Bin Order #	Row #	Weight	Tare	Final Weight
Bin 1	Rows 5-6	849	93	756
Bin 2	Rows 8-9	836	91	745
Bin 3	Rows 4-5	799	93	706
Bin 4	Rows 15-16	733	93	640
Bin 5	Rows 2-3	808	93	715
Bin 6	Rows 10-11	866	93	773
Bin 7	Rows 7-8	816	91	725
Bin 8	Row 3-4	821	93	728
Bin 9	Rows 12-13	846	93	753
Bin 10	Rows 16-17	429	91	338
Bin 11	Rows 1-2	825	91	734
Bin 12	Rows 13-14	679	91	588

After the first six bins were loaded into the press, we took a break. The free run juice from the first six bins was put into the first stainless steel tank. Then after the break, the free run juice from the second six bins was put into the second stainless steel tank.
During the pressing the pressed juice was put into both the first and the second stainless steel tanks. The pressing was over around 3:30 and thankfully, the anticipated rain held off. We helped the crew clean the press and helped them to put their Chardonnay into the press. When this was done, it was 5 p.m. and the Monday torrential rain forecast did not occur during this process. Phew!
For our purposes, we wanted to know how much weight in grapes came from each of our rows:

Row #	1-2	2-3	3-4	4-5	5-6	7-8	8-9	10-11	12-13	13-14	15-16	16-17
Final Weight	734	715	728	706	756	725	745	773	753	588	640	338

Since the grapes that came from each row was not enough to fill each bin, some from the next row was added so that the bin was topped off. Row 1-12 and half of row 13 is our Chenin Blanc clone 982 and half of row 13 to row 17 is our Chenin Blanc clone FPS-1. For the rows that are planted in clone 982, those vines have been producing grapes since 2017. This is the first year that clone FPS-1 is producing grapes. You can tell by the above table that the production from this clone was less than that for the 982.
We want to extend our thanks to the crew at Jonathan Edwards Winery and Jonathan Edwards himself that put the pressing of our harvest before his and helped us to press our Chenin Blanc!

Vintage 2020: Chenin Blanc Harvest

My last post was called Vintage 2020: Getting Ready for Chenin Blanc Harvest written on October 8. Already 9 days have passed and much has happened. We prepared for harvest on Saturday, October 10, 2020 and put out a call to all of our friends for help on Sunday with the Chenin Blanc harvest. Most of our vineyard, that is 17 of the 36 rows is planted to Chenin Blanc so this is our largest harvest in any given year. This year, we anticipated harvesting between 5-6 tons of fruit.
Our friends came at 8 a.m. to help with the raising of the netting.

Harvest commenced around 10 a.m.

The lunch bell rang at 1 p.m. Everyone was ready for a break!

Our harvesters found creative ways to rest their weary bodies for the lunch break. Note to owners: get more picnic tables!

It was time to pick up the filled lugs and transfer the grapes into the 1/2-ton bins.

We were able to fill twelve of these 1/2-ton bins, with the twelfth bin being half full.

The day wasn't quite over. Our stalwart friends hurried to get in the remaining rows of Chenin Blanc before darkness fell and the threat of rain on Monday made harvesting on Sunday an imperative. The remaining filled lugs were picked up from the vineyard, our friend Bill, the owner of a flatbed truck arrived around 6 p.m. and the 12 bins were loaded onto his truck.

It was 7 p.m. when the last bins were loaded onto the truck in darkness.

Bill drove the flatbed truck and we followed behind to Jonathan Edwards Winery. By the time we reached there it was 7:30. Jonathan Edwards and his crew were still working to destem their harvest of Chardonnay. Like us, they were rushing to pull in their grapes before the rain on Monday. Jonathan Edwards stacked our bins three high and moved the 4 stacks into his winery.
With that done, our day was over.
We want to thank all of our friends who came to help with the harvest! You are the best! More posts regarding the Chenin Blanc harvest to follow.

Vintage 2020: Getting Ready for Chenin Blanc Harvest

Two of our varieties have been harvested. The Auxerrois was first on 2020 First Harvest Auxerrois September 17, followed by the Chardonnay 2020 Chardonnay Harvest, a week later on September 24, 2020.
We are now preparing for the Chenin Blanc harvest on Sunday October 11, 2020. The majority of our vineyard is dedicated to Chenin Blanc but we have two clones, 982 and FPS-1. This is the first year that we will be harvesting Chenin Blanc clone FPS-1.
Here is what the FPS-1 looks like:

The FPS-1 clone is a looser cluster than the 982 and the berries are bigger. We love seeing these grapes as the sunlight shines through them. It is a beautiful yellow!
We have two data points for our two clones of Chenin Blanc:

Variety - Clone	Date of Sample	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc - Clone 982	9/26/2020 10/4/2020	281 g 211 g	135 mL 100 mL	20.6 21.4	2.76 2.96	11.8 g/L 9.9 g/L
Chenin Blanc - Clone FPS-1	9/26/2020 10/4/2020	207 g 264 g	100 mL 125 mL	19 20.5	2.66 2.90	16.8 g/L 10.4 g/L

2016 Agetha Bursin Lutzeltal Pinot Noir

This is the second Agathe Bursin Pinot Noir that we have had. The first one was her 2016 Agathe Bursin Strangenburg Pinot Noir which we tasted in February of this year. It's unusual to find a Pinot Noir that comes in an Alsatian wine bottle, but this it a great find. The color was dark purple and medium to heavy body. There was enough fruit and acidity to make this a wine that will age wonderfully. We had this wine with roast chicken thighs, green beans and smashed potatoes that my husband has honed to perfection.

References:
1. Wood Winters Wines and Whiskies, Agathe Bursin Pinot Noir Lutzeltal 2015.