Malvasia Bianca - Day 1-3, Press, rack and start

Day1 continued: After arriving home from the vineyard, we had to press the grapes. I have my own wine press so pressing the grapes is something that I can do at home and more or less at my own schedule.

I have an old standard press, a #35 Wood Basket Press that I purchased many many years ago. Why #35?? Strange naming ... it holds 13 gallons so that's not it... It works great, and I expect it to outlast me! Since the basket holds 13 gallons, I have to press the wine in two loads of the basket.

One thing I will recommend for pressing white wine grapes is that when loading the press include some of the stems that were saved from crushing/de-stemming. I usually layer the stems in between 4-5" of grapes.

The stems provide some resistance for the press to use to get the juice out of the grapes. Otherwise It's like trying so press jello! I have seen some wineries use rice hulls in the press to provide the needed resistance...

I pressed 22 gallons of juice from the Malvasia. The juice measured 23 bix.

For grins, here a picture of my first press.... I made it from plans that I found in a "Mother Earth News" magazine way back in the 70s when I first started making wine. Notice that the press mechanism is an old car jack!

Back in those days, money was tight, and so I made wine as inexpensively as possible. e.g. making my own equipment and using free grapes and fruit where I could find them.

Ever had Fig wine? Politely decline if offered a glass....

A good thing about those days is that the mistakes I made were less costly, and I could practice techniques without spending lots of money.

Day 2: Rack clear juice off the sediment:

After the juice has had a chance to sit for a day, I rack off the clear{er} juice off the sediment. The reason for doing this to get cleaner juice that is free of some of the material that will add additional flavors to the wine. For example, I find that much of the heavy "Grassy" character in Sauvignon Blanc is eliminated by starting with clean juice.

You can lose a fair amount of juice {left behind as sediment} during this racking, say as much as 10% of the pressed juice.

Some wine makers will add a fining agent during the setting period to remove even more of the solid materials. I do not do this for fear of stripping away too much character.

After racking, the carboys were placed into their water baths and then I sprinkled Champagne yeast into each carboy. Lastly a fermentation lock was placed into the carboy.

Day 3: Yeast growing slowly

I'll post a separate blog entry to talk about yeast and my method of inoculation and reasons for this method.

I think this brings me up to date e.g. day 4 of the Malvasia my first blog entry.