Hello friends,
I was thinking of ways to modernize our updates when I remembered starting a wine-themed blog, back around the time my kids were born, circa 2008. To my surprise, the blog was still there, having languished since my last post, way back a decade earlier. I've moved some of our earlier wine updates over to the blog, but this is the first one purpose written for our "new" communications channel. For a guy who lives and breathes "digital transformation" in my day job, I'm a bit slow to the game personally. Well, here goes...
We left off in October at the crush, and that was only half the fun for the new vintage. The next step was to take a few measurements and then get down to the business of fermentation, that naturally occurring happenstance that to some happy extent begat and formed the civilization we know today.
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| Analytic Setup for Titratable Acidity |
The rig above is used to determine the amount of acidity in the grape juice. The amount of acid in the wine and its relative strength (pH) have a considerable effect on both taste and fermentation success. Wines too low on acid taste flat and are also susceptible to microbial spoilage. Wines with excess acid can be unbearably tart and not very enjoyable. Because late harvest often equates to unripe fruit and high acidity, I was pretty keen to see where we had ended up. Our acid target turned out to be right on the money, and there was no mistaking the excellent quality of our 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon.
With all the lab numbers looking great, we were ready to add yeast and get the fermentation underway.
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| Prepping the Yeast |
It's a myth that fermentations can occur naturally and produce the relatively high alcohol wines that we enjoy today. Ironically, the ethanol that yeast produce as a byproduct of sugar metabolism is toxic to them and generally kills the wild variety after it surpasses a level of five or six percent. Nearly all wines today are fermented using cultured yeasts, some of which can withstand ethanol levels beyond fifteen percent. If you ever hear a winemaker say "fermented with wild yeast" understand she's either making it up or relying on cultured yeast already in the vineyard from composting grapes skins of previous fermentations.
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| Fermenting in the Garage |
Once the yeast is hydrated in warm water (just like baking bread), it gets added to the fermenters, and the show begins. This year fermentation took eight days to complete. Fermentation creates a lot of carbon dioxide, which can be dangerous to breath. We always ensure the garage door is opened, before we check on the tanks. It is a sad fact that occasionally wine makers are overcome by carbon dioxide and perish. Unfortunately, this tragedy has happened in British Columbia, since we started making wine.
During the fermentation process, the grapes eventually break down into skins and free run juice, or wine. Ultimately, when the mixture is poured into the wine press, the free run juice runs right through the press and into a receiving pail.
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| Darin and Joe loading the Wine Press from the Fermenter Tanks |
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| A Purple Mess is Nearly Unavoidable |
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| "Free Run" Juice (Wine) Passing Through the Press into the Receiving Pail |
Eventually, the press becomes full of skins and the juice that they retain. Oak panels and blocks are placed over the skins, and a ratchet, screw drive assembly is tightened down compressing the skins and separating the remaining juice. This type of press, which dates back over a thousand years, can squeezes the skins hard enough that the remaining mass, called the pomace, is nearly dry and paper like.
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| Wine Skins Remaining Without Free Run Juice |
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| The Ratchet Screw Drive Compressing the Skins |
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| The "Pomace" to be Recycled into Compost |
The new wine remains in garage tanks for a few days to clarify, a process where dead yeast and other solids settle out of the wine and form a mud on the bottom of the tanks. The wine is then transferred by gravity from the garage to tanks in the basement exercise room. During this period of the young wine's life, a secondary process called malolactic fermentation takes place, a process where bacteria convert the sharper (apple tart) malic acids in the wine to milder lactic (milk) acids. This process is nearly inevitable in any wine, so we like it to occur during the winemaking, rather than creating a fizzy bottle of wine on your supper table.
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| Wine Travelling by Gravity from Garage to Basement |
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| A Receiving Tank in the Basement |
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| Brand new 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon |
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| New Wine Resting in the Gym |
After a month or two, with the window partially open to keep the wine around 18 degrees Celsius, everything is transferred into 225 litre French oak barrels in the cellar for long term aging. Our cellar is temperature and humidity controlled. A wine cellar that is too dry, promotes undue evaporation of the wine from the oak barrels, reducing the overall yield and "giving too much to the angels." We lose about one litre of wine a month from each barrel at 65% relative humidity - this is typical.
This year, for the first time in 15 years, one of our new barrels leaked. We follow a standard procedure for preparing barrels that includes filling them partially with hot water prior to use. This one was okay till the wine was added, and then it was quite the mess. Fortunately, it looked worse than it was, and we only lost a couple litres of wine. In the interim, I plugged the leaky oak staves with barrel wax. Over a few weeks, the staves swelled up with wine and solved the problem. Still a bit unsightly!
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| Slightly worried that a new ($2000) barrel was leaking wine like a sieve! |
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| What a mess on the underside |
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| Leak arrested. The dark patches are barrel wax |
With the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon squared away for the foreseeable future, we turned our attention to the 2018 Syrah, which was pumped out of the barrels to tanks in the garage. We expect to bottle and release sometime in the spring. In the meantime, we are working on a new label design to reflect our rebranding as The Purple Habit. We hope to share that with you soon.
All the best from Darin, Anita, Grace and Benjamin.
