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!

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:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc	1410	120 gallons	20	3.05	8.7 g/L

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!

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:

Year	Harvest date	#Pounds	Volume	Brix	pH	TA
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

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!

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:

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

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!

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.

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:

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

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!

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!