Trip to Long Island Wine Country

What did we do on our day off? After the harvest is in and the wines are fermenting, what a better time than to go to Long Island to visit Wine Country. It's fair to say that we can't get enough of wine and learning about wine.
We had a specific reason for going to Long Island and it dates back to Our First Visit with Charles Massoud at Paumanok in 2011.
As it turned out, Monday was a beautiful day and when we reached Orient Point, the temperature was 64 degrees! Last year, when we made this same pilgrimage, the weather gods were kind to us and provided us with possibly the only two beautiful days in an otherwise very miserable fall of 2018.

We had an 11:30 appointment with Charles and Kareem Massoud at Paumanok.
We were a little early for our appointment so we made a detour to Lenz Winery, one of our other favorite wineries to visit on Long Island.
A new thing that I saw at the tasting room was that the winery now offers something called "tastings" in which you can select specific wines to taste for a slightly larger pour than the regular flight of tastings. We opted to taste a 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2014 Merlot. My husband and I really liked both the 2016 and 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon so much that we purchased some bottles to take home with us. After this small detour, we headed to Paumanok.
We met up with Kareem and he showed us his 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon which had finished fermentation and was now being pressed. It was just amazing to see so much Cabernet Sauvignon being pressed. The aromas coming out of the juice was just amazing!

During previous rendezvous, Charles always brought out all kind of cheeses and pates for us, so this year, we brought some light bites from Connecticut with us, including smoked bluefish and summer sausage, complements of our hunter.

We met up with Charles and had a wonderful visit and then it was time to run off to catch the ferry back to New London. We thank Charles and Kareem for their hospitality!

Malic Acid in Grapes: Part 1 Our Titratable Acid Conundrum

This year has presented us with a bit of a conundrum when we began to check on the Brix, pH and titratable acidity (TA) of our various grapes. We have always encountered high TA in our Chenin Blanc, but this year, we encountered high TA in our Cabernet Franc as well as our Cabernet Sauvignon. The puzzle was that the Brix were also high. In looking back at this year's growing season, we felt that we had good weather throughout the summer which would explain the high Brix, but what was puzzling was the high TA which never seemed to come down even though we let the grapes hang on the vines as long as possible.
Here are our numbers in the order in which the varieites were harvested:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	September 23, 2019	19.6	3.26	7.35 g/L
Chardonnay	September 28, 2019	21.5	3.17	9.4 g/L
Chenin Blanc	October 14, 2019	21.6	3.15	13.5 g/L
Cabernet Franc	October 26, 2019	23	3.32	11.3 g/L
Cabernet Sauvignon	November 3, 2019	21	3.00	14.9 g/L

Looking at the high titratable acids, we wanted to know more about the role of malic acid in grapes. There is a beautiful diagram that shows grape berry ripening and the changes in grape metabolites during ripening.¹

I used the above diagram in a previous blogpost called Two Stages of Grape Berry Development, but in that blogpost, I focussed on the changes that occured in the grape berry in stage one and then in stage two.
In this and subsequent blogposts, I'm going to focus on the fate of malic acid in the ripening grape. Stay tuned!
Reference:
1. Moschou, Panagiotis & Aziz, Aziz & Roubelakis-Angelakis, Kalliopi, Chapter 7, Polyamines and grape berry development, The Biochemistry of the Grape Berry, (2012), 137-159.

2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

We called on our friends for one more harvest, our Cabernet Sauvignon. We harvested on November 3 on what was a perfect Sunday fall afternoon.
We began at noon, with our early bird friends who came to help us with raising the netting. We accomplished that task by 12:30. So, even though the harvest time was set for 1, we began harvesting. Some of our friends came after 1 p.m. and while they were too late to harvest, they helped us to gather up the lugs and store it in our container for transportation to Jonathan Edwards Winery on Monday morning.
Here is our crew celebrating the penultimate harvest for this year.

On Monday morning, we brought our harvest to Jonathan Edwards Winery and learned that our harvest weighed 332 pounds!

The grapes will be destemmed and gently crushed and sit overnight before inoculating with the yeast, F15.

2019 Cabernet Franc Fermentation

We harvested our 2019 Cabernet Franc on Saturday, October 26, 2019 and took the harvest to Jonathan Edwards Winery on Monday, October 28, 2019 where the harvest was weighed, destemmed and mildly crushed. The must sat in the half ton bin overnight.
On Tuesday, October 29, we rehydrated the yeast of choice, FX10 with the help of winemaker, Michael. Our choice of yeast for this year is a departure from last year, when we used F15 to ferment our first Cabernet Franc.
Michael estimated that we might get approximately 32 gallons of juice. Using that estimate, we rehydrated 32 grams of FX10 in 320 mL of water and waited for it to bloom, which took around 20 minutes.
In the meantime, Michael gave me a taste of their Chardonnays that were fermenting in the barrels as well as the Chardonnays fermenting in their stainless steel tanks. It was delicious!
After the time was up, we took an aliquot of the Cabernet Franc from the half ton bin:

We used the juice to temper the rehydrated yeast:

The must was inoculated with the tempered and rehydrated yeast at 10:40 a.m. The must at the beginning of fermentation was:

Variety	Brix	pH	TA
Cabernet Franc	23	3.32	11.3 g/L

The fermentation began on October 31, 2019. Michael and Alex decided to move the must from the half ton bin into a 55 gallon blue barrel. Daily punchdowns are being done. Today, it was our turn and my husband took photos of me doing the punchdown. The cap initially is a little difficult to break through but once the cap is breached, the rest of the punchdown is easy to do.