Testing Remaining Grape Varieties

On September 26, 2020 we did a test of the remaining grape varieties to see where the sugars (Brix), pH and titratable acids numbers were at.

Here are the results of the testing:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chenin Blanc - Clone 982	281 g	135 mL	20.6	2.76	12.2 g/L
Chenin Blanc - Clone FPS-1	207 g	100 mL	19	2.66	16.3 g/L
Cabernet Sauvignon	121 g	45+ mL	21	2.77	18.4 g/L
Cabernet Franc	141g	50 mL	22	2.87	not measurable
Barbera	27 g	6 mL	22.2	2.60	not measurable

We're waiting for the pH to become a little higher and the titratable acids to become a little lower (measurable).

2020 Chardonnay Harvest

Exactly one week after the Auxerrois harvest, we harvested the Chardonnay on September 24, 2020. Our Chardonnay had seen a lot of bird pecking as well as some raccoon damage. We tried to clean the grapes before putting the netting over the grapes. Despite our efforts to protect the grapes, they were in less than optimum condition and we thought that we might have 600 pounds of Chardonnay when all was said and done.
Our small but hard working crew came and made quick work of harvesting the 4 rows of netted grapes. We had another 4 rows of unnetted grapes, that one of our friends stayed to help us clean. When all was said and done, we had 51 lugs distributed 26/25 on two pallets. We brought the pallets to Jonathan Edwards Winery early the following day.

We were surprised that we got almost twice the number of pounds than we were expecting. The harvested grapes looked like this:

The whole cluster grapes went into the press and the gentlest of cycles was used to extract the juice.

When the press cycle was done, we had one full stainless steel barrel of juice. There was about 5 gallons of the tail end of the pressing still left in the press pan and that juice went into the third barrel of the Auxerrois which contained the moderate lees.
The parameters for this starting juice was:

Variety	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Chardonnay	75 gallons	23.4	3.0	10 g/L

On Monday, September 28, 2020 my husband and I went to the Jonathan Edwards Winery to rack the cold settled juice. Jonathan Edwards cleaned two barrels for us to transfer the juice into.

After racking the juice, we took 80 grams of CX9 yeast and rehydrated it in 800 mL water at 95 degree F for 20 minutes, then added Chardonnay juice in two 500 mL aliquots. The barrels were inoculated with the CX9 yeast at 4:20 p.m.

2020 First Harvest Auxerrois---Part 3

We harvested our Auxerrois on September 17, 2020 and I wrote about it in 2020 First Harvest Auxerrois---Part 1, followed up by 2020 First Harvest Auxerrois---Part 2, which detailed the pressing and information on the Brix, pH and TA. On September 21, 2020 we went to Jonathan Edwards to rack the juice and kick off the fermentation.
The first thing was to transfer the cold settled juice from the settling tanks into the fermentation tanks.

Since we don't add any yeast food (such as diammonium phosphate---DAP), but rely on the lees to provide the necessary nutrition, it was up to us to determine when to cut the transfer. We did this by eye, looking at when the clarified juice became more like light lees in color before becoming decidedly browner indicating the beginning of the heavy lees. We feel that this change of color goes from being relatively yellow-brown to a pressed cider color. We stopped both transfers at this color point and felt that 60 gallons went from the settling tank into each of the two fermentation tanks. We took the temperature of the juice and it was at 57 degrees F. In the photo below, you can see that the heaviest of lees constituted less than half a gallon from the original approimately 67.5 gallons of cold settled Auxerrois juice.

The moderate lees were put into one of the barrels and as Jonathan Edwards explained, will be a fun experiment to ferment. This barrel might contain around 10 gallons of juice with moderately heavy lees.
After the transfer, we rehydrated the yeast, in our case QA23 and tempered the rehydrated yeast with 1000 mL of the Auxerrois juice.

The fermentation was kicked off at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, September 21, 2020.

2020 First Harvest Auxerrois---Part 2

On Saturday, September 19, 2020 I blogged about 2020 First Harvest Auxerrois---Part 1 about our first harvest which is Auxerrois that occurred on Thursday, September 17, 2020. We are working once again with Jonathan Edwards and his crew to process our grapes and shepard our juice into wine.
On Thursday, my husband and I took the last load and a half of harvested grapes to the winery. At the winery the grapes were weighed and put into the press.

Since it was the end of the work day for the Jonathan Edwards crew, we left the grapes in the press and agreed to convene on Friday morning. At 9 a.m. on Friday, September 18, 2020 the entirety of the Auxerrois harvest, all 1670 pounds were pressed using the gentlest press cycle:

The pressed juice was put into two stainless steel barrels and we estimated the juice to be approximately 135 gallons.

We left the juice in the barrels to cold settle over the weekend. Stay tuned for Part 3 of what we did after the cold settling.