« Construction Daily | Main | Construction Daily »
August 26, 2006
Viognier Harvest And Pressing
So today was the big day. The first official Notaviva Vineyards harvest! Preparation actually began last night, as I unpacked the press and all the plastic fermenting pails. I laid out all my chemicals and tools in the kitchen, so that when we arrived witht he grapes everything was ready to go. I finally go to bed about 12:30 AM - ugh.
I got up at 4:30, made a pot of coffee and headed over to the vineyard. I had ordered a flat of harvest lugs so I needed to get them unpacked. Shannon, Ken, and Jim met me at the vineyard at 6 AM, and we loaded a couple dozen lugs in the back of Ken's truck and drove them into the vineyard. It was still pretty dark out, but we were able to start laying out lugs in the rows and got to the picking.
Turns out my harvest forecasts were pretty far off - I had estimated we'd bring in about 800 pounds of Viognier, and we only filled up 14 lugs with 382 pounds. What the hell - we didn't think we'd be picking any this year! The picking went fairly quickly, and we were ready to head back to the rental by 7:30. The rationale for picking so early is to get the grapes at the coolest temperature possible, to inhibit microbioligical activity for as long as possible once they are cut. Picking while cool also helps to preserve the fruit flavors, which disappear quickly as the grapes (and eventually the must) heat up.
We got to the rental and quickly got some fruit on the sorting table so we could pick out any berries shriveled from black rot. At first I had hoped to be able to do the direct-to-press method, where the whole clusters are loaded into the press. Once we had filled the press, I started ratcheting down the head and all sorts of problems started to arise. As the press started to compact the clusters, I realized that we didn't have enough wood blocks for spacers, and the ratchet head bottomed out. So we added more. And it bottomed out again. So we added more - still no juice. So we added more, and finally started to get some juice coming out of the press pan, but now the floor was all slippery and it was getting harder and harder to get leverage on the ratchet.
Now mind you, Jim and Ken are quite strong lads, and they were holding the press with everything they had while I was cranking and we were still sliding around the kitchen. So I decided to screw the press to the floor. Yup, that's right - I ran six drywall screws through the holes in the press legs right into the kitchen floor. Then we made a little more progress but still weren't getting the juice as I expected. So we switched, and Jim began to crank the ratchet while Ken and I held the press. He gave it a few cranks and broke the screws.
Now I'm getting really pissed off, which should make for some good TV because did I mention we're doing this with the HGTV camera in our faces? Nothing like making a total asshole of yourself on national television. So I've had it, and decide that I'm going to lag bolt the goddam press to the floor. So Ken and I head to the hardware store to get some bolts, and return home to secure the press. Ahhh - much better! Now we're getting somewhere. We finish off the first basket, evetually getting four gallons out. Disappointment set in though, as I took apart the basket to remove the pomace we saw how many berries in the middle of the cake were still unbroken. I'd say we left at least a gallon of juice in there.
So on the next basketful, Ken started crushing the fruit by hand (since I hadn't purchased a crusher/destemmer as I figured I didn't need one for the direct-to-press method...) This didn't speed up the process any but seemed to be getting a lot more juice out. We got two more basketfuls done in this manner, and eventually finished up with 18 gallons of juice in 3 six-gallon fermenting pails.
I added potassium metabisulfite to 60 ppm in each pail (an anti-oxidant and anti-microbial). I checked my hydrometer readings and found a few discrepancies. The hydrometer read a specific gravity of 1.108, which correlates to 14.5% potential alcohol and 26 degrees brix. But last night when I measured the brix in the vineyard it was 24 degrees brix, which correlates to 13.5% potential alcohol and 1.100 specific gravity. So somewhere I think one of my measuring devices was affected either by temperature or by suspended solids in the juice. Hopefully the field brix readings are the more accurate, because a wine over 14% alcohol is going to be too hot - we'll see.
I built a "wine-cooler" to settle the juice overnight. Basically put an air conditioner in my bathroom and set it on eskimo. The strategy is to settle the juice overnight, then tomorrow I'll rack it off the solids, pitch the yeast (EC-1118) and add bentonite (1 TBS) and diammonium phosphate (1 TBS - DAP is a yeast nutrient) and let the fermentation begin!
Posted by Stephen at August 26, 2006 9:37 PM
