Pressing of the 2012 Barbera

So when all was said and done we ended with 16 gallons of Barbera. 11.5 Gallons of Gallons fermented with the VRB yeast and 4.5 gallons of the Ambient yeast fermentation. Everything is still tasting good and now time to let it rest, until I decide to innoculate for MLF on it.

Last few days

Over the last few days the Barbera in the Brute has completed it's fermentation, yesterday it was at -1 and so is probably fully dry now. My plan is to press today into carboys. The taste was good, but also had a bit of a citric taste now familiar to me from Barbera. I am thinking that it will benefit from MLF but we'll see how it does over the next few months in carboys.

At 10 brix and still strong

Did the punch-down this morning and measured the sugar level. We're now at 10. This is where things usually start to slow down a bit. I'm curious to see what impact the Fermaid-K has on the process if anything. The taste is still great, although my chief taster (and wife) is starting to sense the typical acidic (almost citric) flavors starting to come out, I couldn't yest taste that.

The ambient fermentation has taken off nicely and the cap is vigorous. I'll do a sugar check on it later today but I have no reason to think the yeast isn't doing it's job. 

Morning punch down

Yesterday I did two punch-downs and a brix reading. At the first punch down we were still in the lag phase and the brix hadn't begun to go down yet.

Today however, we've lost about 5 brix and the cap is very strong. I slightly miss-judged how much head-room to leave and I lost a few berries when the cap rose above the top. The smell is wonderful and the taste is nice. I also checked on the ambient ferment and it too has formed a cap. I'll punch down in a few hours for the first time with it.

The other thing I decided to do was add about 3/4 of an oak spiral broken in two to the ferment. Although I've been leaning towards no-oak in my wines the acidic nature and lack of wood tannins in Barbera could benefit from some of this during fermentation. I'll take it out at pressing and since I won't be doing an extended maceration the wood contact will be minimal. Later today when the brix goes down another few points I'll add some Fermaid to the must just to make sure there's enough nutrients to get completely dry.

I won't do anything like that for the ambient bucket. It will be completely natural.

Inoculation of the 2012 Barbera

At 7pm on Sunday I innoculated the 18 gallons or so of Barbera with 16g of Lalemand VRB yeast suspended in 200ml of water and with 20g of GoFerm. As of this morning at 7:30 the fermentation had started and I could year the familiar snap crackle and pop's of the sugar being turned into alcohol. The cap is also starting to harden. I'll wait a few more hours before my first punch down.

2012 Harvest

Exhausted isn't a strong enough word to describe the way I felt after a few days of harvest this year. First was the Grenache harvest for Los Pilares for whom I'm a partner. We pulled in 1400 lbs of fruit there. Then a few days later I was back out in Ramona by myself to get some Barbera for my vino di garage.

The fruit was really good. The farmer who grows it, is very meticulous and takes very good care of the vines, the only thing that could have been a little better would have been a slight lowering of the yield through a green drop or some other more aggressive pruning. There's a lot more labor involved in that. What I found was some really nice fruit but far too many small clusters with different ripeness than the larger sized clusters. So I had to just leave the little guys on the vines.

At 4:45 in the morning when I was getting ready to drive to the vineyard it occurred to me that many people believe that wine making is glamorous. I say that because whenever someone finds out that I do it they usually say something like "wow, how glamorous" What they don't understand is the there's a lot of hard back-breaking work that really goes into making wine. I'm in awe of farmers who dedicate themselves to growing good quality fruit. It is truly a labor of love.

So after about 3 hours of picking fruit I had enough fruit to start my garage adventures for the year.

After bringing everything home and running them through the de-stemmer, I was able to fill a 20 gallon Brute container and anther 7gallon bucket. My plan is to do ambient fermentation on the smaller bucket while innoculating the Brute in the usual way. 

After letting everything sit I took my measurements:

Brix: 25

pH: 2.84

TA: .62

I decided that I wouldn't do any additions and stay with a pretty light touch this year. Barbera can become pretty harsh and acidic tasting. So this year I won't do a cold soak or extended maceration I'm just going to do the basics with it and see how it comes out.

Concrete Eggs: I want a Flextank version

I'm a proud member of the Bridlewood Winery wine club. They make some pretty nice Syrah. Today I got a shipment and was flipping through the tasting notes and came across a picture of a new fermentation tank they're using there.

Apparently the shape of the fermentation tank is good for keeping the lees in contact with the wine and the concrete breathes better than stainless steel. This got me thinking that my friends at Flextank should build an egg shaped fermenter.

The benefit being that I wouldn't need a forklift and/or crane to install the thing into my garage.