Time For Us to Take Some Numbers

We have been taking refractometer readings of our Auxerrois and Chardonnay and found that the Brix ranged from 18-20 and it appeared that the Chardonnay might be farther along than our Auxerrois. It was time to get some real numbers for those grapes. On Saturday, my husband and I took representative samples from the Auxerrois and because we have two clones of Chardonnay, took representative samples from each of the two clones.
Back at home, we juiced the berries:

Once we got the juice, it was time to take the Brix, pH and the titratable acids (TA) for the three samples. For that, we have been using a little but handy device made by Vinmetrica. Initially, we were also doing the SO₂ test with the Vinmetrica but we have since switched to the Sentia for the SO₂ test. The Vinmetrica kit comes with a pH probe and reagents that allows us to take the titratable acid reading. The setup for us looks like this:

Here are the numbers for the Auxerrois, Chardonnay clone 76 and Chardonnay clone 96.

Variety	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	19	3.04	6.7 g/L
Chardonnay clone 76	20	2.90	9.6 g.L
Chardonnay clone 96	20	2.95	11.3 g/L

What these numbers are telling us is that we need to seriously think about harvest dates and get ready! Also, it appears, (as is usually the case) that we will be harvesting the Auxerrois first and we have a little bit of time between that harvest and the Chardonnay harvest. Phew!