Just a fast note on where we are at:
Friday -
7:30 AM pick up a 15 foot truck
9:00 AM arrive at Martin Ranch to pick our 1 1/2 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon
Noon: arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:30 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
1:00 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:30 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM load the truck and drive back to Uvas Creek
5:30 PM arrive at Uvas Creek and drop of the bins
7:00 PM arrive home - a twelve hour day
Saturday
Up at 4:00 AM
4:30 AM load up the FLPB (mine are Purple not Yellow) and drive to Portola Valley
5:30 AM begin removing bird netting
6:30 AM start picking and loading Merlot at Elandrich in Portola Valley
8:00 AM finish pick and drive to Uvas Creek
9:30 AM load up our two tons of Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon
11:30AM arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:00 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
12:30 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:00 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet and Merlot
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM press the Eaglepoint Syrah and get it into the settlement bins
6:00 PM head home
7:00 PM arrive home- fifteen hour day
Wish us luck!
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2 comments:
Paul
It was nice meeting you Friday at Martin Ranch. Dan and Therese are great people. Thanks for the Card. I'll follow up with an e-mail. I notice no cold soak on your Cab this year. Any particular reason? I am inoculating today after 48hours of cold soaking. best of luck with your berries! Scott
Scott. I don't do a cold soak with Cabernet anymore.
Here's my theory on it. The process of cooling and then quickly heating the must to get fermentation started casues poor color retention and excessive leaching of green tannin. Basically I think heating the must causes the fermintation to start to hard and over leach properties from the seeds rather than the skins. If you let the must come up on it's own without heating, you get poor color lock early in the process that is hard to correct, basically the color is not stable.
I've actually had batches of Cabenet I've done with 100% stems included that have not had a cold soak, show less green tannin than 100% de-stemmed grapes going through a soak.
So I sulfur, settle and gas with a layer of CO2 to prevent spoilage, but don't cool or heat the must. Then after 24-48 hours, I pitch yeast.
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