On Sunday, December 7, we brought in our last harvest for 2025, our late harvest chenin blanc. When we went to the vineyard, we saw a bit more devastation as we got to the middle of the vineyard. In spite of the damage, we were able to harvest 6 lugs of organza bagged botrytized chenin blanc and brought it back to our winery space at Taugwonk Spur.
In the past, we have taken out the grapes from the wedding bags to put into the basket press in a mash bag, but this year, we put the grapes into the press, bag and all. By doing this, we cut out one step and got the process of pressing going.
We were able to fit two lugs worth of organza bags before we began the press. We learned from using the press last year that the blocks that go into the press must be paired properly since they were of various sizes.
The juice that came out of the press was slightly viscous and golden yellow in color. We took the Brix reading with a refractometer by taking 5 mL of juice and diluting it with an equal amount of water. The Brix was 32 degrees!
We let the juice settle in the glass carboy and on December 9, we rehydrated the yeast to inoculate the juice. My husband did some research into the proper yeast to use in fermenting a late harvest, high Brix juice so this year, we are trying SM102. This yeast is a slow fermenter and is easily stopped when the alcohol levels reach 12%.
The photo on the right shows that the fermentation is going!
We will continue to monitor the fermentation during the days to come.
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