 |
| red wine stained hands |
The latest crush season we have ever experienced is drawing to a close. Finally. I mean, whew, its about time. I have had enough of punchdowns, wrestling with a 3" must pump, and cleaning the press. But today was a good one as we pressed off most of our cabernet and now only have one more full day of pressing to finish everything off. The last couple of weeks we have been on a simple schedule of press reds into tank, let it settle for 24 hours then move it to barrel and innoculate for malolactic fermentation. Repeat. Repeat. You get the idea. We are seeing a whole lot of red wine these days. Fortunately the weather has cooperated and we have had nice temperatures to work in and for the cold mornings we have enough room to set up work inside the building. A luxury that we love!
 |
| Just some of our barrels awaiting the 2011 vintage |
So what happens now that we are about to have all of our wine pressed off and safely in barrels and tanks? This is when I get to look back and reflect on what we have in the winery and start thinking about blending whites, cold stabilizing them and even looking to get our packaging decisions in order. I have to monitor malolactic fermentations and give the winery a thorough cleaning. Fortunately all of these tasks are pretty civil and much more 9-5 than our lives have been over the past 2 months. Details on upcoming happenings and some interesting decisions that need to be made will be discussed in a future post.
