Phew! is all that I can say about this year. It began with a frost event in the early morning hours on February 4. At 1:30 a.m. the temperature went to -5 oF and steadily declined until it reached a low temperature of -9.5 oF at 7:00 a.m.! This event killed many of our primary buds in the vineyard. But the second blow came on May 18 when there was a frost event that killed most of the growing shoots in the south end of our vineyard.
This was our first experience with a frost event in mid-May and we were unsure how to handle the growing shoots which were now frost bitten. Fortunately, we decided not to touch the south end of the vineyard and focussed our attention on the north end of the vineyard that appeared to have survived. The north end required disbudding and shoot removal which we did for the rest of May. We then turned our attention to the south end to remove the dead shoots. This took about one week. There were a few flower buds here and there on the south end of the vineyard, but the majority of the flowers were at the north end of the vineyard. In June and July the shoots had their grand growth phase and it surprised us that even though the shoots came from what was probably secondary and some tertiary buds, they were quite vigorous! We attributed the vigor to the lack of fruit that would have kept the shoot's vigor in check.
For the rest of the summer, we were busy removing excess shoots, shoot tucking, and hedging. Fortunately, we had help from our 14 year old granddaughter who learned how to drive our John Deere lawn mower adapted to pull a cart into which we put the countless trimmings for her to take to the compost pile. Our friends and their families also came to help us.
Although we knew that our harvest would be small, we took care of the vineyard and whatever fruit was there to nurture. We did have a modest amount of fruit for each of the varieties. Jonathan Edwards and his people helped us with the pressing of the Chenin Blanc and the destemming of our red varieties. The beauty of having a manageable amount of juice was that we were able to ferment all of the harvest in our industrial facility!
2023 marks the 10th year since we first planted our vineyard and although in some ways the time has flown by, in other ways, it does take 10 years to comply with the Federal, State and local laws in order to be able to sell wine.
You can see all of the vintage notes which appears under the tab here: Vintage Notes
Wishing you all a very Prosperous and Happy New Year!
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Thursday, December 28, 2023
2023 Harvest Party
The second Sunday in December is when we hold our annual harvest party. We have been doing this in our industrial space since 2021.
Here is a look back at the previous harvest parties:
2021 Harvest Party
2022 Harvest Party
This is a time for us to thank all of the people who helped us bring in the various varieties of grapes that we harvest and a time for everyone to mingle. We had close to 40 people attend the harvest party, including our son and daughter-in-law and their two children.
The theme of the food this year was Greek! Our friend Jenny procured for us real Greek feta, grape leaves and sour cherry to make the spoon sweet dessert. Our son made hummus and eggplant spread (melitzanosalata) from scratch and it was very well received! My husband and I split the rest of the cooking duties.
To go with the Greek theme, my husband procured some Greek wines.
Once again, there was the traditional annual drawing of prizes. We thought our nearly 7 year old grandson might want to help with this, but he demurred. His sister, however was only too willing to lend us a hand and stepped up to the task of drawing the three lucky winners.
We hope that everyone had a good time and we want to thank all of our friends who came to help us with our 2023 harvest!
Here is a look back at the previous harvest parties:
2021 Harvest Party
2022 Harvest Party
This is a time for us to thank all of the people who helped us bring in the various varieties of grapes that we harvest and a time for everyone to mingle. We had close to 40 people attend the harvest party, including our son and daughter-in-law and their two children.
The theme of the food this year was Greek! Our friend Jenny procured for us real Greek feta, grape leaves and sour cherry to make the spoon sweet dessert. Our son made hummus and eggplant spread (melitzanosalata) from scratch and it was very well received! My husband and I split the rest of the cooking duties.
We hope that everyone had a good time and we want to thank all of our friends who came to help us with our 2023 harvest!
Wednesday, December 27, 2023
Progress of the Botrytized Chenin Blanc
On December 22, I blogged about Vintage 2023: Last Harvest of This Year and some details of the harvest, pressing and cold settling. In today's blog I will continue with the inoculation and fermentation of the botrysized Chenin Blanc.
On December 3, when we went to the winery, we saw that the juice had settled quite nicely and the heavy sediment was clean enough that we did not feel the need to rack the juice so we proceeded with the yeast hydraton, tempering and inoculation.
We estimated that we had 4 gallons of juice, so we rehydrated 4 grams of QA23 yeast in 50 mL of spring water at 100 Fo, and every 10 minutes added 15 mL of the botrysized Chenin Blanc juice. Inoculation of the rehydrated and tempered yeast occurred on December 3 at 12:15 pm.
When we came back to the winery on December 4, we saw that the fermentation had begun evidenced by the foam on the surface of the juice. On December 6, the juice was becoming more turbid, more foam was appearing and the bubbler was showing the escape of carbon dioxide.
On December 6, we took videos of the fermentation which was really humming along at this time.
By December 19, the fermentation seemed to be essentially over but there was still a little activity indicated by the bubbler. What was interesting was the color change from the start of fermentation. The December 19 photo shows that the juice was becoming a little clearer and had a lemon yellow color.
The glass carboy was a little deceptive as it appears that the sediment was about a third of the way up from the bottom, but looking more closely, the actual sediment was at the very bottom of the carboy.
Next steps include testing the evolving wine and continuing to monitor the fermentation.
On December 3, when we went to the winery, we saw that the juice had settled quite nicely and the heavy sediment was clean enough that we did not feel the need to rack the juice so we proceeded with the yeast hydraton, tempering and inoculation.
We estimated that we had 4 gallons of juice, so we rehydrated 4 grams of QA23 yeast in 50 mL of spring water at 100 Fo, and every 10 minutes added 15 mL of the botrysized Chenin Blanc juice. Inoculation of the rehydrated and tempered yeast occurred on December 3 at 12:15 pm.
When we came back to the winery on December 4, we saw that the fermentation had begun evidenced by the foam on the surface of the juice. On December 6, the juice was becoming more turbid, more foam was appearing and the bubbler was showing the escape of carbon dioxide.
The glass carboy was a little deceptive as it appears that the sediment was about a third of the way up from the bottom, but looking more closely, the actual sediment was at the very bottom of the carboy.
Next steps include testing the evolving wine and continuing to monitor the fermentation.
Friday, December 22, 2023
Vintage 2023: Last Harvest of This Year
I took a long hiatus from blogging. Today is the first day of winter. Our last harvest of the year occurred on December 1, a Friday before an impending storm on Saturday. It's been like this since the end of summer.
We called on our friends, Mary and Barry to help us harvest 9 half rows of wedding bagged Chenin Blanc grapes. We convened at 9 am, raised the nets and began harvesting. Raising the nets took the better part of the time, we were done harvesting the approximately 750 bags by 10:30. Our entire bounty fit into 11 yellow lugs.
We then took the harvested grapes to our industrial space and began the job of unbagging 750 wedding bags of their botrytized contents.
We were able to fill 4 lugs with the grapes and estimated their weight to be approximately 80 pounds. Typically, 80 pounds of grapes will yield 6.4 gallons of juice so the botrytized fruit gave us 0.625 of the typical yield. (So, next year, if we were to bag half of a row of Chenin Blanc grapes, estimating a yield of 500 pounds, instead of the typical 40 gallons of juice, we would get approximately 25 gallons of juice.)
After all of the grapes were removed from the wedding bags, they were put into mash bags and then put into the press that Barry brought over.
The juice was ferried to the 5 gallon carboy using plastic pitchers. We tried not to waste even a drop of liquid gold. The process was a slow one because it takes a lot of ratcheting to squeeze juice from almost raisins. However, we were done by noon! The carboy was then put into a bin and then ice was packed around it to bring the temperature of the juice down to 30+ degrees. This ensures that any particles that makes the juice dark settles out. In the pictures below, the left shows the juice after pressing and the right shows the juice after cold settling for 48 hours.
The juice had achieved a golden yellow color and we were ready for the next steps. Stay tuned to read what we did with the botrysized juice!
We called on our friends, Mary and Barry to help us harvest 9 half rows of wedding bagged Chenin Blanc grapes. We convened at 9 am, raised the nets and began harvesting. Raising the nets took the better part of the time, we were done harvesting the approximately 750 bags by 10:30. Our entire bounty fit into 11 yellow lugs.
After all of the grapes were removed from the wedding bags, they were put into mash bags and then put into the press that Barry brought over.
Monday, December 4, 2023
Luxury Condo Addition in the Vineyard
We are members of the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and since 2022 have participated in the Conservation Stewardship Program. As part of this program we were asked to put up bat houses in our vineyard in 2023. My husband sourced the parts and purchased two bat houses in April. He also had a plan for the construction of the bat houses. Time passed and the next opportunity he had to actually put his plan to practice was in September, a few weeks before the NRCS would come to inspect the bat houses.
If you are familiar with vineyard work, September is when we ramp up for harvest, so it was a busy time for us. My husband built a scaffold for the bat houses. He began digging a hole for the bat house with a post hole digger and he soon realized that this was a task for his backhoe. Unfortunately, the backhoe was enveloped in invasives which he had to manually remove with loppers. Having done that, he attached it to the tractor and crossed his fingers that the hydraulics were all working. Yes! Back to the bat house. The backhoe did the trick and in a few days huge boulders were removed from the hole and it was time to put the bat house up.
The first thing was to fix the post into the ground with concrete. This was done on day 1 and allowed to cure for 2 days. The next step involved our friend Barry. My husband designed the scaffold so that it could pivot from an upright position to a position near the ground to allow for easy access to cleaning. The scaffold that the bat houses were on was remarkably heavy. Barry suggested using the tractor and bucket.
Barry's extensive experience with ESPN cameras in high places came in handy as he balanced the bat houses on the tractor bucket and had ropes to steady the scaffold as the bucket lifted it to a more and more upright position. My job was to bang in the bolt and secure it with the nut so that once the scaffold was upright it wouldn't fall over.
Amazingly, this operation didn't take too long and the bat luxury condominum was ready for inspection.
A few days later, Courtney, Annabelle and Mike from the NRCS came to inspect the bat houses and said that it was the best constructed bat house that they had ever seen!
Now all we need are the occupants!
If you are familiar with vineyard work, September is when we ramp up for harvest, so it was a busy time for us. My husband built a scaffold for the bat houses. He began digging a hole for the bat house with a post hole digger and he soon realized that this was a task for his backhoe. Unfortunately, the backhoe was enveloped in invasives which he had to manually remove with loppers. Having done that, he attached it to the tractor and crossed his fingers that the hydraulics were all working. Yes! Back to the bat house. The backhoe did the trick and in a few days huge boulders were removed from the hole and it was time to put the bat house up.
The first thing was to fix the post into the ground with concrete. This was done on day 1 and allowed to cure for 2 days. The next step involved our friend Barry. My husband designed the scaffold so that it could pivot from an upright position to a position near the ground to allow for easy access to cleaning. The scaffold that the bat houses were on was remarkably heavy. Barry suggested using the tractor and bucket.
A few days later, Courtney, Annabelle and Mike from the NRCS came to inspect the bat houses and said that it was the best constructed bat house that they had ever seen!
Now all we need are the occupants!
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Chenin Blanc Voyage into Noble Rot Wine
We have made a late harvest Chenin Blanc beginning in 2019 and have kept track of the numbers for each year.
This year, we bagged around 750 bunches of Chenin Blanc grapes in organza wedding bags and to ensure that the varmints running around in the vineyard didn't get tempted to pull at the wedding bags, we dropped the nets on the areas that we had the bagged grapes. We monitored the berries from green grapes to noble rot infected grapes and this is what it looked like:
On Sunday, November 26, we brought in a representative bunch of grapes and weighed it and extracted the juice from it. The bunch of grapes weighed 92 grams and we were able to extract 25 mL of juice from it. The initially extracted juice was greenish dark brown so we let it settle overnight.
We did sample berries from green to raisined in the harvested bunch and this is what we got:
There was no way to extract even a drop of juice from the raisined grapes to get a refractometer reading. So, one of the reasons for settling the extracted juice overnight was to get an accurate reading of the Brix by taking 5 mL of juice and diluting it with 5 mL of water and taking a reading. That worked and showed that the Brix was at 22, so doubling the reading makes the juice at 44 degrees Brix! The pH is 3.62 and the TA is 14.8 g/L. My husband gave it a thumbs up!
This year, we bagged around 750 bunches of Chenin Blanc grapes in organza wedding bags and to ensure that the varmints running around in the vineyard didn't get tempted to pull at the wedding bags, we dropped the nets on the areas that we had the bagged grapes. We monitored the berries from green grapes to noble rot infected grapes and this is what it looked like:
Monday, November 20, 2023
Tasting the 2005 Blain-Gagnard Chassagne Montrachet
We had it with blackfish that our hunter gave us. It was the perfect foil for the wine which is now 18 years old.
The last time we drank this wine was in February, 2016, which might have been the perfect time for imbibing this Chardonnay.
In my previous blog, I didn't do any research into the background so this time I thought I would do a little Internet digging. I learned that the domaine was formed in 1980 when Jean-Marc Blain married Claudine Gagnard, of the Domaine Gagnard-Delagrange family.1
Currently, Jean-Marc and Claudine run this domaine with the help of their son Marc-Antonin. They now control 20.5 acres of vines in Chassagne-Montrachet, including holdings in three grands crus: Croits-Bâtard-Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet, and Le Montrachet.
The grand crus characteristics include: Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet (elegant, mineral, creamy, good length), Bâtard-Montrachet (broad, thick on attack, but tapering to a fine more taut finish), and Le Montrachet (very fine, detailed, rich, mineral and full, grand but discreet, with fine acidity).
This 2005 has grapes from Chassagne-Montrachet which lies towards the southern end of the Côte de Beaune. Les Caillerets is located at the southern end of the village and sits above Les Champs Gain at an elevation between 250 and 280 meters. The name “Caillerets” refers to the chalky soil found here which contributes to the elegance and finesse typical of wines from this site, and is from vines planted between 1954 and 1987.
My husband says that he has more of this wine so we need to drink it fast!
Reference:
1. Winebow: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
2. Burgundy Report, Profile: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
3. The Reserve: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
4. Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
Monday, November 13, 2023
2019-2023 Grape Variety Statistics
The 2023 vintage is in and it is time to sumarize the statistics of that harvest and append it to the harvest of the previous years.
Here are the yearly numbers at harvest for comparison:
This view provides us with a snapshot of how each vintage compares for each variety and if any vintage stands out. We have always thought that our 2020 vintage was a special year and this is one way to verify our recollection.
All of the 2023 harvest has finished fermenting and we are letting the wine sit on the lees for a few weeks.
Again, thank you to all of our friends who helped us to bring in the 2023 harvest! See you all in early December!
| Variety | Harvest Date | Brix | pH | TA g/L |
Lbs | Gals |
| Auxerrois | ||||||
| 9/23/2019 | 19.6 | 3.23 | 7.35 | 636 | 50 | |
| 9/17/2020 | 19.0 | 3.07 | 7.5 | 1670 | 133 | |
| 9/28/2021 | 18.0 | 3.25 | 7.5 | 1638 | 130 | |
| 9/25/2022 | 20.0 | 3.16 | 7.1 | 3097 | 248 | |
| 10/2/2023 | 18.6 | 3.4 | 5.6 | ~500 | ~40 | |
| Chenin Blanc | ||||||
| 10/14/2019 | 21.6 | 3.15 | 13.5 | 3930 | 305 | |
| 10/11/2020 | 23.3 | 3.09 | 12.1 | 8201 | 655 | |
| 10/17-18/2021 | 20.4 | 3.17 | 14.6 | 6200 | 496 | |
| 10/16-17/2022 | 21.0 | 3.07 | 8.9 | 4901 | 392 | |
| 10/22/2023 | 20.0 | 3.05 | 8.7 | 1410 | 120 | |
| Chardonnay | ||||||
| 9/28/2019 | 21.5 | 3.17 | 9.4 | 291 | 26 | |
| 9/24/2020 | 23.5 | 3.0 | 10.0 | 1136 | 80 | |
| 10/3/2021 | 20.4 | 3.28 | 8.2 | 2625 | 210 | |
| 10/2/2022 | 22.5 | 3.05 - 3.11 | 7.5 - 8.9 | 2306 | 185 | |
| 10/5/2023 | 18.8 | 3.4 | 9.9 | ~500 | ~40 | |
| Cabernet Sauvignon | ||||||
| 11/3/2019 | 19 | 3.25 | 11.1 | 332 | 30 | |
| 10/22/2020 | 22.4 | 3.08 | 10.7 | 888 | 80 | |
| 10/24/2021 | 20.1 | 3.07 | 10.4 | 561 | 45 | |
| 10/21/2022 | 21.0 | 3.26 | ~1300 | 104 | ||
| 10/31/2023 | 18.8 | 3.15 | 10.4 | 369 | 30 | |
| Cabernet Franc | ||||||
| 10/26/2019 | 23 | 3.23 | 11.3 | 377 | 32 | |
| 10/22/2020 | 23.3 | 3.27 | 11.3 | 872 | 80 | |
| 10/24/2021 | 19.8 | 3.20 | 7.4 | 402 | 32 | |
| 10/21/2022 | 22.0 | 3.27 | ~1200 | 96 | ||
| 10/31/2023 | 20.4 | 3.24 | 7.9 | 287 | 23 | |
| Barbera | ||||||
| 10/21/2022 | 22.5 | 3.00 | ~600 | 48 |
All of the 2023 harvest has finished fermenting and we are letting the wine sit on the lees for a few weeks.
Again, thank you to all of our friends who helped us to bring in the 2023 harvest! See you all in early December!
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Details of Our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Fermentation
In the previous blogpost, Vintage 2023: Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera I wrote up to the point of fermentation.
On Friday, November 3, we began the process of rehydrating and tempering the yeast that we would use for the fermentation. We chose FX10 and began the rehydration at 10:46. In general, we spend 30 minutes at the rehydration stage and then we add the appropriate juice in 10 minute intervals to acclimate the yeast to the environment of the juice.
We used 40 grams of FX10 in 400 mL of spring water for the Cabernet Sauvignon because we calculated that we had approximately 30 gallons of juice and used 20 grams of FX10 in 200 mL of spring water for the Cabernet Franc for approximately 23 gallons of juice.
After the completion of the rehydration and tempering steps, we inoculated the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc at approximately 11:50. On Saturday, November 4, when we went to check on the inoculated grapes, the fermenation had begun!
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Vintage 2023: Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera
As grape farmers, we are always looking at the weather. This time it was to decide when to harvest our red varieties so that it could achieve the best level of ripeness that this season was going to give us. We wanted to take advantage of the warm days coming up and avoid the rain that was in the forecast so it happened that our penultimate harvest of this season occurred on Tuesday, October 31.
A great group of 15 or so of our friends came to help us on a week day. Since there were 6 rows of red grapes with two rows of each variety, we harvested two rows at a time so as not to confuse the Cabernet Sauvignon with the Cabernet Franc.
We began at 9:30 and finished up at 11! By that time, the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. Our friends got together to have a bite to eat which included a hearty Cowboy bean soup provided by our friend, Laurie.
After lunch, Curt graciously offered to help us take one of the half ton bins to Jonathan Edwards so that it could be weighed and destemmed.
Zak and Jon helped us with the destemming of the grapes. During part of the destemming, my husband noticed the abundance of rachis and jacks falling into the destemmed grapes. Although he asked if there was a speed control on the destemmer, we finished the destemming without any adjustments to the machine. Curt and my husband brought the two half ton bins of destemmed Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc back to our industrial site where they sat overnight.
The following morning, we did our best to remove the jacks and rachis from the two bins. We calculated the amount of juice that we would get from the weight of the grapes and the theoretical yield would be 23 gallons of Cabernet Franc and 30 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon. This amount of juice was very reminiscent of our 2019 harvest and when we referred to the blogpost Progress Report on Our Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon we found that the grapes and juice were fermented in a 50 gallon plastic container. My husband, aka Procurement found that Misto Grapes carried those containers, however, when he called, the containers were in high demand and sold out for the season. We went to Plan B, which was to put the grapes and juice into 44 gallon plastic Brute containers. We scooped the Cab Franc into the container first and in the process found a bolt that must have come off from the destemmer at Jon's. We brought it back and learned that Jon also thought that the destemmer was running too fast, so hopefully he made the adjustment for his harvest.
Back at the industrial space, our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc were in the 44-gallon containers continuing to extract out color from the skins. Next up, fermentation!
A great group of 15 or so of our friends came to help us on a week day. Since there were 6 rows of red grapes with two rows of each variety, we harvested two rows at a time so as not to confuse the Cabernet Sauvignon with the Cabernet Franc.
Back at the industrial space, our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc were in the 44-gallon containers continuing to extract out color from the skins. Next up, fermentation!
Sunday, October 29, 2023
Chenin Blanc Juice Coming Home
In a typical year, our Chenin Blanc harvest is much more than we can handle so the juice gets fermented at Jonathan Edwards winery.
But this year, the amount of fruit that we harvested was low enough that we were able to bring it back to our industrial space.
After pressing our grapes, Jonathan Edwards and his crew held our juice for us and did the cold settling step. On Wednesday, October 25, we went back to the winery with our tank in tow.
When we got to the winery, Zak had the pump and hoses all set up to clean the tank. He showed us how to use the cleaning ball to get to all of the surfaces of the tank.
This step did not take very long at all and soon we were pumping the juice from the two stainless steel barrels that they were in, into the tank. Zak set up the sight glass so that we could see the color of the juice we were pulling over. We typically take some of the settled pulp to serve as food for the growing yeast. After we were done with transferring the juice, we tipped the barrel over into a bucket. We might have lost about 3 gallons of settled pulp in the process.
The next step was to put the tank with the juice into our truck. Zak put the tank in with care. We were off!
We inoculated our Chenin Blanc at 4 p.m.
Approximately 120 gallons of Chenin Blanc is being fermented at our location!
After pressing our grapes, Jonathan Edwards and his crew held our juice for us and did the cold settling step. On Wednesday, October 25, we went back to the winery with our tank in tow.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Vintage 2023: Chenin Blanc Harvest
Our Chenin Blanc harvest is when we need all of our friends to come and help us and Sunday, October 22 was slated for this year's harvest. Prior to Sunday, we had to run the gauntlet of rain on Friday and Saturday and heavy winds on Sunday. Once again, we resorted to crossing our fingers for no lingering rain on Sunday morning and no gusty winds. The weather gods were kind to us and the rain on Saturday ended around 5 p.m. with winds that gusted for two hours after that. In our minds, that was perfect because the winds dried the wetness on the grapes and canopy and made for near perfect conditions for harvest.
Our friends who know our pre-harvest drill came to help us raise the nets on 17 rows of Chenin Blanc and when 9:30 arrived, the rest of our crew came and began the harvest.
Based on feedback from our previous harvest, the yellow cart that we have was a hit with the crew so we purchased one more. With the cart, there is less bending down and the harvested grapes can be delivered to the people who volunteered to clean the clusters.
Most of the grapes were harvested by noon and by that time the sun was out so that our friends could relax with lunch. After lunch, our conscientious friends helped us clean every single bunch of grapes so that we would bring only the best bunches to get pressed. This took until 3 p.m.
Our son from Massachusetts stayed to help us shrink wrap the two pallets of grapes, which constituted the entirety of the harvest and we put a tarp over the bounty to protect it overnight.
The following morning, our friends Bob and Betsy came to transport one of the pallets to Jonathan Edwards Winery and we took the other pallet. When we arrived at the winery around 9, Jon was there to help us unload the pallets.
Dan helped us to weigh the pallet with the filled lugs. Dan and Josh put the whole clusters into the press from the lugs, since whole cluster is the way we like to press our grapes. After the grapes went into the press, the pallet was weighed again with the empty lugs to get the final weight of the grapes.
Pallet 1 which contained 35 lugs weighed 751 pounds and the second pallet which contained 28 lugs weighed 659 pounds for a total of 1410 pounds of Chenin Blanc.
The press cycle began around 11. We had two clean 75 gallon stainless steel barrels in which to transfer the juice. Our friends Mary and Barry came to watch the press in action and brought Clyde's Cider Mill donuts and cider!
When the juice was in the press pan, we shared it with our friends and it was delicious! We also took a sample so that we could record these numbers:
The pressed juice was then allowed to cold settle for approximately 40 hours which gave us a little respite.
We want to thank all of the people who came to help us harvest the Chenin Blanc we could never do it without you! Also a HUGE thank you to Jonathan Edwards and his people who have now become our friends!
Our friends who know our pre-harvest drill came to help us raise the nets on 17 rows of Chenin Blanc and when 9:30 arrived, the rest of our crew came and began the harvest.
Based on feedback from our previous harvest, the yellow cart that we have was a hit with the crew so we purchased one more. With the cart, there is less bending down and the harvested grapes can be delivered to the people who volunteered to clean the clusters.
Our son from Massachusetts stayed to help us shrink wrap the two pallets of grapes, which constituted the entirety of the harvest and we put a tarp over the bounty to protect it overnight.
The following morning, our friends Bob and Betsy came to transport one of the pallets to Jonathan Edwards Winery and we took the other pallet. When we arrived at the winery around 9, Jon was there to help us unload the pallets.
Pallet 1 which contained 35 lugs weighed 751 pounds and the second pallet which contained 28 lugs weighed 659 pounds for a total of 1410 pounds of Chenin Blanc.
of Juice |
|||||
| Chenin Blanc | 120 gallons |
We want to thank all of the people who came to help us harvest the Chenin Blanc we could never do it without you! Also a HUGE thank you to Jonathan Edwards and his people who have now become our friends!
Friday, October 20, 2023
Chenin Blanc in Organza
This year our property got hit with a spring frost on May 18th and killed the growing shoots in the south half of the vineyard. In the early spring, we were uncertain as to what the vines would do, but they amazingly recovered and some of the shoots even had grapes, although it was very sparse. Since the grapes grew on secondary shoots, they were delayed in ripening and we thought that including these grapes in the harvest might skew the Brix, pH and titratable acids.
This was especially true for the Chenin Blanc. So, we decided to use this opportunity to see if we can make botrysized (aka noble rot) Chenin Blanc late harvest wine.
We have learned from previous attempts at making botrysized Chenin Blanc late harvest wine that the grapes survive best if they are bagged with organza bags, aka wedding bags. This is how we do it.
After the cleaning and bagging of the grapes are done, it looks like this:
I was interested in learning what we did in previous years and compiled this table:
Although we did bag grapes in 2022, we have no statistics for that year because we failed to pull in the last harvest.
This year we are proactively bagging the grapes and hoping that Mother Nature will provide us with humid nights followed by dry, sunny days. Under those conditions, Botrytis infestation leads to dehydration of the grape, resulting in concentration of the sugars.
This year 750 grape bunches are pretty in organza!
This was especially true for the Chenin Blanc. So, we decided to use this opportunity to see if we can make botrysized (aka noble rot) Chenin Blanc late harvest wine.
We have learned from previous attempts at making botrysized Chenin Blanc late harvest wine that the grapes survive best if they are bagged with organza bags, aka wedding bags. This is how we do it.
| 2019 | November 19 | 50 lbs | 4 gal | 25 | 3.52 | 11.2 g/L |
| 2020 | December 11 | 5 lbs | 375 mL | 39 | - | - |
| 2021 | December 15 | 20 lbs | 1 gal | 31.5 | 3.52 | 14.2 g/L |
This year we are proactively bagging the grapes and hoping that Mother Nature will provide us with humid nights followed by dry, sunny days. Under those conditions, Botrytis infestation leads to dehydration of the grape, resulting in concentration of the sugars.
This year 750 grape bunches are pretty in organza!
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Chardonnay Harvest Day 2
This is a very tardy posting about the fate of the newly harvested Chardonnay after pressing. The Chardonnay that we harvested on October 5 sat in three plastic barrels, one 30 gallon blue plastic barrel and two 5 gallon food grade pails totalling approximately 40 gallons of juice.
The juice sat from Thursday until Saturday, in the plastic containers in order to drop the heaviest of grape parts. On Saturday, we transferred the best portion of the settled juice into three 15-gallon stainless steel kegs.
We took juice samples from each of the three kegs and the numbers were:
Our next step was to inoculate the kegs with our rehydrated and tempered yeast and we did that on Sunday, October 8 at 1 p.m. We used 42 grams of D47 in 420 mL of water at 100 degrees F and let the yeast sit for about 30 minutes. After that time had elapsed, we put in 150 mL Chardonnay juice to allow the yeast to acclimate to their new environment. We did this juice addition 3 times. With each juice addition we let the mixture sit for 10 minutes. We added a total of 450 mL of juice. When this tempering was done, we inoculated the three kegs at 2:00.
When we checked on the fermentation the next day, the bubbler was happily bubbling away! The fermentation had begun!
| Variety | Sample Date | Brix | pH | TA |
| Chardonnay - Keg 1 | October 7, 2023 | 18.8 | 3.40 | 9.4 g/L |
| Chardonnay - Keg 2 | October 7, 2023 | 18.8 | 3.42 | 8.7 g/L |
| Chardonnay - Keg 3 | October 7, 2023 | 18.8 | 3.3 | 11.6 g/L |
When we checked on the fermentation the next day, the bubbler was happily bubbling away! The fermentation had begun!
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Vintage 2023: Chardonnay Harvest
We had tentatively scheduled our Chardonnay harvest for Saturday, October 7, but when the day got closer, we realized that it would be another rainy weekend so we decided to see if we could count on our closest friends to come and help us harvest the Chardonnay on Thursday, October 5.
A small but enthusiastic crew came and started our net raising ritual at 8 a.m. It was a very wet morning and there were spider webs everywhere around the vines. Some of them were very beautiful and I had to stop to take photos!
Harvest began at at 9:30 a.m. Mary, Barry, Laurie, Michael, Bob, and Kelly harvested 8 rows of Chardonnay in 2-1/2 hours! Granted there weren't too many grape clusters but the harvest was spread over 8 rows each 800 feet long!
The haul was similar to the Auxerrois harvest on October 1 so we brought the lugs back to our industrial space. Our friends helped us to set up our Lancman VSPIX 250. We learned a few things from the Auxerrois pressing that we applied to our Chardonnay pressing.
The Lancman was first cleaned and then the press bag was put on the basket. In the manual, the directions calls for the press bag to be folded towards the bellows. Once that is done, the metal flange on the basket is rotated in place to secure it to the metal tab on the base.
There were a few more take home lessons from the Auxerrois pressing. During that press, we had our friends squeeze the grapes in preparation for pressing, according to the instructions in the manual.
However, as the Auxerrois pressing progressed, we realized that squeezing the grapes first might not be what we really wanted to do because it lead to an uneven distribution of the squeezed grapes in the Lancman. So, we asked for feedback from our friends and tried their suggestions.
One suggestion was to partially fill the bellows (we called it the hot dog), put in the whole clusters as evenly around the press as possible until we filled the press. This is what we tried. The first press went very well. The juice came out and had a beautiful light green color. The hydrometer reading for the Chardonnay was 19. Everyone had a small taste of the juice.
It took a while for the remaining pressing to happen because of unforseen problems with the pump my husband was using that was hooked up to his truck's battery. Fortunately for us, our neighbors in our industrial space are electricians!
They had an outdoor hose which they let us borrow. After a few more fits and starts, we were able to get their hose to fill the press bellows and we were once again in business. Laurie and Curt stayed until all of the grapes were pressed and the area around the press was cleaned. Thank you both so much! We want to thank all of our friends who came to help us with the harvest and pressing.
More information on the fate of the Chardonnay juice to follow. Stay tuned.
Harvest began at at 9:30 a.m. Mary, Barry, Laurie, Michael, Bob, and Kelly harvested 8 rows of Chardonnay in 2-1/2 hours! Granted there weren't too many grape clusters but the harvest was spread over 8 rows each 800 feet long!
The haul was similar to the Auxerrois harvest on October 1 so we brought the lugs back to our industrial space. Our friends helped us to set up our Lancman VSPIX 250. We learned a few things from the Auxerrois pressing that we applied to our Chardonnay pressing.
The Lancman was first cleaned and then the press bag was put on the basket. In the manual, the directions calls for the press bag to be folded towards the bellows. Once that is done, the metal flange on the basket is rotated in place to secure it to the metal tab on the base.
However, as the Auxerrois pressing progressed, we realized that squeezing the grapes first might not be what we really wanted to do because it lead to an uneven distribution of the squeezed grapes in the Lancman. So, we asked for feedback from our friends and tried their suggestions.
One suggestion was to partially fill the bellows (we called it the hot dog), put in the whole clusters as evenly around the press as possible until we filled the press. This is what we tried. The first press went very well. The juice came out and had a beautiful light green color. The hydrometer reading for the Chardonnay was 19. Everyone had a small taste of the juice.
They had an outdoor hose which they let us borrow. After a few more fits and starts, we were able to get their hose to fill the press bellows and we were once again in business. Laurie and Curt stayed until all of the grapes were pressed and the area around the press was cleaned. Thank you both so much! We want to thank all of our friends who came to help us with the harvest and pressing.
More information on the fate of the Chardonnay juice to follow. Stay tuned.
Friday, October 6, 2023
Auxerrois Harvest Day 2
On the day after our harvest (Vintage 2023: Auxerrois Harvest), we went back to our industrial space to get some clarified juice to take some numbers. The harvest fit into two 30 gallon plastic bins. Bin 1 contained the first press and Bin 2 contained the second press.
It was a good thing that we went to check on our settling juice because the clarified juice in Bin 2 was beginning to smell a little like nail polish. My husband had the foresight to check our newly purchased bag of potassium metabisulfite. He did not react to the bag with the usual backing away of the head when smelling a pungent odor that assaults the nostrils. He became a little suspicious and touched the white material and was able to do so without any ill effects. He then realized that the bag of potassium metabisulfite for all intents and purposes was no longer active, if it ever was. Fortunately, my husband had a year old bag of potassium metabisulfite which was still good so we were able to put 25 ppm into our clarified juice.
We did bring home samples from both bins to check the Brix, pH and TA.
Here are the results:
On October 3, we went to check on the Auxerrois juice with the intention of moving the juice into their fermentation kegs. We used gravity flow by putting the pallet with our blue bins on the fork lift and raising it above the receiving kegs. We elected to put the juice from Bin 2 (the second pressing) at the bottom of each of the three kegs and then topped it off with the juice from Bin 1. We also choose to bring over some of the settled, heavier pulp from the must when we did the transfer to serve as nutrients for the yeast. It took about 45 minutes to do the transfer.
Next we rehydrated our yeast, QA23. From the days of fermenting small lots we have used the proportion 1 gram of yeast for every gallon of must. We estimated that we had 40 gallons of must so we rehydrated 40 grams of QA23 with water at 100 oF.
We don't add any food when rehydrating the yeast. Our strategy is to try to mimic the conditions that the rehydrated yeast will multiply under. We have been doing this method for all of the wines that we have fermented.
Hydration took approximately 30 minutes and after that, we tempered the hydrated yeast with 125 mL of must, every 10 minutes. We put a total of 375 mL of must into the yeast and measured the temperature after each addition. Our must was at 68 oF, we we were shooting for a temperature close to that for the rehyrated and tempered yeast. At the end of this procedure, we pitched the yeast into the three kegs and labeled it 1, 2, and 3. The air-lock was placed on each of the kegs and a silent prayer was said for each of the kegs.
When we went to check on the yeasts on October 5, keg 1 was undergoing fermentation based on the bubbling from the airlock. This morning, Kegs 2 and 3 were also showing bubbling from the airlock! Prayer answered!
We did bring home samples from both bins to check the Brix, pH and TA.
Here are the results:
| Variety | Sample Date | Brix | pH | TA |
| Auxerrois - Barrel 1 | October 2, 2023 | 18.8 | 3.36 | 6.5 g/L |
| Auxerrois - Barrel 2 | October 2, 2023 | 18.2 | 3.55 | 5.1 g/L |
We don't add any food when rehydrating the yeast. Our strategy is to try to mimic the conditions that the rehydrated yeast will multiply under. We have been doing this method for all of the wines that we have fermented.
Hydration took approximately 30 minutes and after that, we tempered the hydrated yeast with 125 mL of must, every 10 minutes. We put a total of 375 mL of must into the yeast and measured the temperature after each addition. Our must was at 68 oF, we we were shooting for a temperature close to that for the rehyrated and tempered yeast. At the end of this procedure, we pitched the yeast into the three kegs and labeled it 1, 2, and 3. The air-lock was placed on each of the kegs and a silent prayer was said for each of the kegs.
When we went to check on the yeasts on October 5, keg 1 was undergoing fermentation based on the bubbling from the airlock. This morning, Kegs 2 and 3 were also showing bubbling from the airlock! Prayer answered!
Monday, October 2, 2023
Vintage 2023: Auxerrois Harvest
Our first harvest of this season occurred yesterday, but first we had to weather the remnants of tropical storm Ophelia which decided to make an encore appearance on Friday and Saturday bring a drenching rain. Rain is the enemy of ripening grapes and we were crossing our fingers that the grapes were intact after the soaking. They were!
We have 5 rows of Auxerrois located on the west side of the vineyard. Two events in Vintage 2023 lead to a dramatic decrease in the number of grapes hanging on the vines. The first event was the Vintage 2023: February's Weird and Wacky Winter Weather, which saw temperatures hit a high of 70 degrees and then a low of -9 degrees in our vineyard. We did a bud count after the freeze and found that the Auxerrois seemed to have survived the freeze quite well. However, a frost on May 18th, Vintage 2023: May Oh Oh devastated the south end of our vineyard. Under these conditions, it's a little difficult to calculate how much fruit we would actually harvest, but we knew that it was significantly less than in past harvests.
We asked a small crew of people who have participated in many of our past harvests to come and help us on Sunday. The crew knew exactly what to do. We first unbuttoned the nets by taking off the clothes pins and then raised the nets using the clothes pins. The nets were raised on all 5 rows of Auxerrois in an hour and when the rest of the crew came at 9, the strategy was to harvest two rows of grapes by driving our tractor with the trailor attached and having our friends pick the grapes on both sides of the alley.
The other half of our crew took a small cart and empty lugs and harvested the next two rows. The last row of Auxerrois took approximately 10 minutes or so because the vines there are still young and not mature enough to hang grapes. The entire harvest was done around 10:20!
There was a brief break for snacking and then our harvesters were all game to help us christen our new press at our recently federally bonded industrial facility which is fortunately, only a short drive from our vineyard.
Knowing that we would be having a very small harvest, we could not bring it to the Jonathan Edward Winery for processing as we had done in the past 4 years. Our solution was to purchase a Lancman VSPIX 250 from Oesco who delivered it to us on September 20th.
Christening the Lancman involved cleaning the bladder with water and then cleaning the stainless steel cage with a mild detergent, we used saniclean. The cage was washed with distilled water and the bladder was tested before reassembly.
The manual says that a garden hose can be used to fill the bladder. In our case, testing the bladder was a bit more involved because we don't really have access to running water.
(We are hoping to address this situation soon.) However, in a pinch, my husband used our IBC tank and the pump that he has which runs off the truck's battery to fill the bladder.
Once this test was done to see if the bladder will inflate and the pressure gauge was working, we were in business to fill the press!
We like to process our grapes as whole clusters. Once again, relying on instructions in the manual, which said to squeeze the grapes before putting it in the press, that is what our friends did:
Once the press was filled, the bladder was inflated and the juice slowly made it's appearance!
The last thing we did was to clean the press, lugs, the outdoor space, and bring the pressed grape remains to the compost pile. It was a full day and we thank our friends for helping us with the harvest and the first pressing in our new facility!
We have 5 rows of Auxerrois located on the west side of the vineyard. Two events in Vintage 2023 lead to a dramatic decrease in the number of grapes hanging on the vines. The first event was the Vintage 2023: February's Weird and Wacky Winter Weather, which saw temperatures hit a high of 70 degrees and then a low of -9 degrees in our vineyard. We did a bud count after the freeze and found that the Auxerrois seemed to have survived the freeze quite well. However, a frost on May 18th, Vintage 2023: May Oh Oh devastated the south end of our vineyard. Under these conditions, it's a little difficult to calculate how much fruit we would actually harvest, but we knew that it was significantly less than in past harvests.
We asked a small crew of people who have participated in many of our past harvests to come and help us on Sunday. The crew knew exactly what to do. We first unbuttoned the nets by taking off the clothes pins and then raised the nets using the clothes pins. The nets were raised on all 5 rows of Auxerrois in an hour and when the rest of the crew came at 9, the strategy was to harvest two rows of grapes by driving our tractor with the trailor attached and having our friends pick the grapes on both sides of the alley.
There was a brief break for snacking and then our harvesters were all game to help us christen our new press at our recently federally bonded industrial facility which is fortunately, only a short drive from our vineyard.
Knowing that we would be having a very small harvest, we could not bring it to the Jonathan Edward Winery for processing as we had done in the past 4 years. Our solution was to purchase a Lancman VSPIX 250 from Oesco who delivered it to us on September 20th.
Once this test was done to see if the bladder will inflate and the pressure gauge was working, we were in business to fill the press!
We like to process our grapes as whole clusters. Once again, relying on instructions in the manual, which said to squeeze the grapes before putting it in the press, that is what our friends did:
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