Vintage 2021: Barbera Harvest

After harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, we had one more harvest to do, which was our small amount of Barbera. It might have been a larger harvest had we been a little faster at netting the ripening grapes. As it was, we didn't get to it before the deer efficiently ate most of the grapes on the east side of the trellis, which is nearest to the outer perimeter of our vineyard. Well, live and learn!
We were able to fit in the Barbera harvest in the morning, on Monday, October 25, before going to Jonathan Edwards winery to destem the Cabernet harvest that occurred on Sunday, October 24. My husband and I were able to harvest the Barbera in one hour.

We were able to harvest about three lugs worth of Barbera, which we approximated to be 60 pounds. We took the stats for the Barbera and it was:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Barbera	60 pounds	5 gallons	23	3.23	10.3 g/L

Turns out that harvesting the Barbera was the easy part. We hand removed each grape from the rachis (the grape stem), and the berries filled two 5-gallon buckets in preparation for inoculation with our yeast, F83.

On October 28, we rehydrated 5 grams of our yeast, F83 in 50 mL of spring water. After 20 minutes, we added the Barbera juice in 10 mL aliquots every ten minutes. Around 3:02 we inoculated the two buckets of Barbera with the rehydrated and tempered yeast.
We know that fermentation is occuring because the cap is rising to the top due to the release of carbon dioxide. We "punch down" the fermentation twice a day to prevent the cap from being a home to acetobacter.