Winemakers Daily Notebook for 02 Harvest

This discrepancy caused me to look more closely at the numbers and instructions. However precise Excel thinks these numbers are, we wind up with ballpark numbers, so that's how I'd looked at them. (I say "ballpark" because we make very precise calculations, which we then somewhat arbitrarily double.)

I liked your idea of driving things from the number of bins, so I used that to tweek last year's spreadsheet for a comparison. (see enclosed). The two spreadsheets have different ways of estimating the amounts of must and of wine, but they're within 12% and 4% respectively. (Given how much wine I got last year, I believe the lower numbers, but they're close enough.) You rounded up 2.34 to 2.5 on Pasteur Red, which together with the difference in estimates of must explains your 20% higher Pasteur Red number. The Superfood number in your spreadsheet is way low, as noted earlier. The Vinflora and Leucofood numbers only look different: my spreadsheet has a 50% safety pad built in, while yours says we need to add the safety factor.

Picked up three full macrobins waiting for us at Madrone Vineyard Management. Grapes looked good, if perhaps a bit smaller this year. Good bunches. The bins seemed fuller than we'd asked for.

When asked about the grapes this year, Clarence commented that a colleague (don't remember the name) had said that they needed to get to 27 degrees Brix to reach full flavor.

Dropped off two macrobins at Emery in San Jose. Liked working with Mark Nutt at Emery.

Crushed what turned out to be 96 gallons of must with Ben, confirming how full the macrobins were. Had trouble with the gears on the crusher destemmer - very frustrating. As Ben noted, grapes were cool.

Added 30 ppm SO2 (4:00 pm) and transferred wine from the PFCs back into the macrobin.

Cleaned forever, as usual. Called Fred, who recommended a TSP solution for the pinkish coating on the

crusher destemmer. Seemed to reduce the amount of scrubbing required some. 7ish pm. R and I talked about handling a third more must/wine than we had planned for. This affects human resources to do steps where the volume matters (and associated people management) and resources such as chemicals and containers. We both have the amounts recommended by The Wine Lab for Vinaflora and Leucofood, albeit without our safety margin. That's a concern given that restarting malolactic conversion is hard. Richard has plenty of yeast and Superfood; I have plenty of yeast, but need to order more Superfood for the next dose.

Should be a big wine: 26.5 degrees Brix. Must at 62 degrees Farenheit. MIxed the yeast well with the 100 degree water, resulting in mostly lumps.

Took almost 10 minutes of mushing (think kindergarten) to make an even light paste. Adding the yeast to the water continues to be a step where I don't think I have it right.

Added juice to the yeast mixture to acclimate the yeast and then added that to the must. In retrospect I would have added more juice before adding the yeast mixture to the must.

Great smell, beautiful must (providing the reinforcements a parent may need later).

25.5 degrees Brix. Must at 63 degrees. Need to remember that exponential processes start slow.

Picked up macrobins with Mike Pav at Emery Freight at Austin Bergstrom airport. Flight had gone overnight thru the mid West and arrived Saturday morning via air to Houston (11am), then was trucked to Emery Austin (not the original plan). Macrobins were in good shape. One was 1055 pounds gross weight and the other 1037 pounds gross (total of 2092 pounds).

Transported bins to our house. Opened bins...both had settled very slightly from what David had reported as filled to brim when loaded. Approximately 5 inches below the lid. While there was some sign of grape "compression" on the very surface layer of grapes, the grapes looked good, healthy, and were overall cool - despite the transport.

We crushed/destemmed one macro bin at a time into PFCs. Weighed the PFCs and determined gallonage for each. Note for next scale -- method of weighing was inaccurate (see later notes re correction). Cleaned macrobin, then poured PFC must into macrobin, placed in wine making facility.

Added 30ppm SO2 to each bin as it was filled - 4:30pm and 5:30pm, respectively. Note that SO2 was added based on above sizing of gallons per macrobin.

We were uncomfortable that this data did not match analytical expectations from spreadsheet above. Realized that scale used for weighing was inaccurate and that we had not subtracted PFC weight itself. Decided to re-derive weight and volume of the must as it was in the macrobin after filling.

See spreadsheet approach: volumetric model. The model calculates volume of must in the macrobin, then uses derived specific gravity (calculated and sanity checked -- close to water) to derive the weight and gallonage of must in each bin. (see the model -- it is valuable for future years!)

We decided to use the results of this re-calculation as reference for all further steps.

Bin 1 - Added 259g of Pasteur Red yeast to 2.59 liters of water at 100 degress F. Waited 20 minutes (temperature had dropped to 90 degrees. Added some must (following approx WineLab instructions). Waited 15 more minutes. Intense frothing of mixture difficult to handle (note - should have had massively larger container for mixture in this case). Yeast mix temperature was 80 degrees. Marginal call, but added yeast mix directly to macrobin must at this point.

Added 174g of Superfood directly to must (will do this twice more with same quantity -- Monday and Wed)

Added 158g of Superfood directly to must. Ditto for Monday and Wed of this week.

Punched down. Beginning to ferment - visible (slight) foaming, clear sound of bubbling.

Pressed 135 gallons of wine from must. Put into 30 gallon barrel with remaining 105 gallons in stainless tank. Added 30ppm SO2.

3.2 degrees with 0-30 degree hydrometer (as are the preceding measurements), 3.4 degrees with the 0-5 degree hydrometer 75 degrees

-0.8 degrees with the 0-5 degree hydrometer, .6 degrees by Clinitest, a big change in contrast to our usual experience of things going slowly. Clearly the late addition of Superfood kicked in. Need to press tomorrow.

Added 50 ppm SO2 to the 2003 Cab and moved it from the stainless steel wine vat to 60-gallon barrel. Added 4 gallons of 1999 to fill the barrel. (More than I would have liked, but I underestimated how much I'd need.)

Purchased new 60 gallon French Oak, medium grain, medium toast barrel from Demptos. Transferred amount of 2003 from stainless steel to it. Added 30ppm SO2 to remainder in tank, new barrel and other 30g barrel of 2003. Tasted 30g barrel. Strong tanin, some oak but not overpowering. No off taste or smell. Opted to leave in 30g barrel for another month or two.

This message summarizes our discussion that we need to be better about actively taking care of our wines:
Both of us will document all wine actions.
David will send everything for Richard to post on the Web.
David will regularly send out a message with next steps needed.
David to take an active role doing what he can for R.

Next steps:
D to check with Fred about Brettanomyces being contagious to other barrels.
D to ask Tania to send 2001 wine labels.
David to get the crusher/destemmer gears problem repaired.
Both to send samples of the 2003 to The Wine Lab.
Both to exchange samples of the 2003 to taste. (When is good for you?) By the way, Fred and I are tasting the 2003 Wednesday.

9/28 9:00 pm

The 60-gallon 2003 had strong vanilla and subdued blackberries in the nose, with the blackberries becoming less subdued after a considerable time. The tannin was very pronounced, somewhat overpowering the fruit in the taste. OK acid.

The 30-gallon 2003 had a bigger nose, with blackberries accented by vanilla, clove, tobacco, and pepper (in that order). By itself there is too much spice in the nose, more like what I’d expect from a petit syrah. Very strong tannin, with good fruit somewhat hidden by the tannin.

We combined (very roughly) four parts 60-gallon 2003, two parts 30-gallon 2003, and one part steel tank 2003. This mix is clearly a quite nice wine that could use more oak.

The next step is to mix the three batches of wine together and evaluate what to do next. (The next step is related to what to do next for the 2004 since the steel tank is the only variable-volume container available for the two vintages.)

bin 1	brix	temp
Sun	24.50	62
Mon	23.75	70
Tues	17.50	78
Wed	12.50	83
Thurs	7.00	84
Fri	3.75	82
Sat	1.50	80
Sun	-0.5	80
Mon	.8 clinitest	79
bin 2	brix	temp
Sun	25.34	62
Mon	23.00	68
Tues	19.50	76
Wed	14.50	80
Thurs	9.25	82
Fri	6.25	80
Sat	3.80	80
Sun	3	79
Mon	.6 Birx	78