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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

The Fate of Our Very Late Harvest Chenin Blanc

I blogged about this very late harvest Chenin Blanc here: The Most Expensive Wine, facetiously equating our wine with a Tokaji Essencia that sells for $40,000 a bottle.
As a recap, we harvested this very late harvest Chenin Blanc on December 11, 2020. The grapes were in wedding bags, which probably saved them from being eaten and attacked by any number of varmints.
After squeezing the raisins, we were able to get out approximately 300 mL of liquid. When we measured the Brix of the juice it was at 38 oBrix! We added a pinch of our yeast, QA23 and crossed our fingers.
The juice just sat there in the bottle for a number of days, but on December 15, we saw evidence of a few bubbles rising to the surface of the juice. We knew that there was some fermentation going on!
We took the Brix of the wine and it was at 26 oBrix, so clearly some fermentation had occurred. After fermentation, the resultant wine was put into our refrigerator in our effort at clarification and there it sat, forlorn and forgotten. Ocassionally, when we "found" the wine, we did the next steps such as filtering the wine through a coffee filter and putting it into a bottle that would accomodate the juice with very little headspace. A few nights ago, this bottle of wine was discovered on the top shelf of our refrigerator and we decided to give it a try.
At 26 oBrix, the wine was very viscous. There was a note of sherry on the nose but I asked my husband what he thought of the wine. Quoting my husband, "Ohhh, it was like liquid gold." What was notable to me was that it wasn't cloyingly sweet because it had a good acid backbone.
If we dispense it like a Tokaji Essencia in a crystal spoon, we have a few servings left!

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