Time to get Serious!

OK, the weather has warmed up and the wines are going through their final fermentations...How's that you ask? Well I find that the Malo Latic {ML} fermentation may not really finish until the wine warms up in hot weather.....

I do have an air conditioner in the wine cellar, but the temperature in the cellar may reach into the 70s when the outside temp is in the 90s...and that's the kick the wines need to finish ML and the reason I wait till late summer to bottle.

You can tell that the wines are going through the final ML by observing the fermentation locks: e.g. the wine will push up into the lock, and there will be some CO2 bubbles along the edges of the wine when poured into a glass.

Also at this time, I need to make my final blending decisions, Mix the blends, add fining agents, and do acid adjustments. Blending now will allow me to rack the wines in July/August and bottle a couple of weeks later.

So, time to get serious. All the trial blending and early tastings must come to a close and I need to make the final decisions. So out to the cellar for final tastings and inventory.

The inventory is critical piece of the blending decision, as it is important to have full containers when finished. e.g. a make a blend of 50% wine A and 50% wine B works great using 5 gallon carboys of each wine that goes back into the 2 -5 gallon carboys, e .g. full containers. Factional percentage blending, e.g. 33% this and 12% that and 55% other, leads to problems filling containers.

My 2009 wine Inventory:

• 10 gallons of the "Tre Palme" blend {mentioned in my last post. }The wine is stable and waiting to be bottled.


• 10 gallons of Pinot Grigio (PG) "press" wine. slightly pink from harder pressing, a different wine from the regular "free run" Pinot Grigio.


• 14.5 gallons Sauvignon Blanc (SB).


• 8 gallons "free run" Pinot Grigio (PG)


• 12 gallons Malvasia.


• 17 gallons Zinfandel (Zin)


• 17 gallons Nebbiolo

I tasted all the wines again, did another couple of trial blends and some taste tests with my WGWNN {Wine Group With No Name} friends and came up with this plan:

Make a "Harvest Festival" blend of 50% SB and 50% Malvasia. I made this blend in 2007 and liked it a lot. The floral orange blossom nose of the Malvasia and its richness tone down the grassiness and high alcohol of the SB. Make 13 gallons {2-6.5 gallon carboys} of the blend.

This will leave a 5 gallon carboy of the Malvasia to bottle on its own, and a 3 gallon and 5 gallon carboys of the SB to bottle on their own.

Bottle the "non-press" PG without blending. It is a nice wine on it's own, not that complex, but nice pear nose, very clean, and with good acid.

I'm finding that I like Rose' wine more these days, and the warm weather has me thinking of sitting in the shade with a nice chilled Rose'..... But I didn't make one you say! A trial blend of 4 parts "press" PG and 1 part Zin produced a nice Rose' wine...Nice color, clean, good acid and some nice stawberry/raspberry flavors from the Zin. {We should talk about how Rose is made sometime...}

I "tested" this Rose' blend on my WGWNN friends and it seemed to be a hit.

Use all the "press" PG {10 gallons} and 2.5 gallons Zin to make 12.5 gallons Rose'. I will probably put this into a 5 gallon carboy and a 6.5 gallon carboy, and bottle the rest {5 bottles}

This leaves about 9.5 gallons Zin. This Zin is a light, low{er} alcohol wine with good fruit and acid. The perfect "picnic" wine according to my WGWNN friends. Bottle this by itself.

And that leaves the Nebbiolo.... Quite a story behind this wine and I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet. I may want to hold over some for possible blending for next year. For now, bottle 1 case for tasting and evaluation. That leave 14 gallons in a stainless steel beer keg.

So after bottling I'll have:

4 cases "Tre Palme" blend {equal parts, SB, PG and Malvasia}

4 cases "Harvest Festival" blend {equal parts SB and Malvasia}

5 cases "Rose" blend {the "press" PG and some Zin.}

2.5 Cases PG

2 cases Malvasia

2 cases SB

4 cases Zin

1 case Nebbiolo and 14 gallon in stainless steel

Whew! Glad I got that figured out..... Now I just need to do it! So it is time for a few days of cellar work!

Pinot Grigio - Yes, I'm making that too

I am making a Pinot Grigio. The grapes came in before I started the wine blog, so I decided not to write about it.... but then a friend asked about the wine....



The Pinot Grigio is from Villa Spatafora. It came in at 21.5 brix which is a little lower that I would have wanted. But tasting the wine now, 21.5 was probably a good brix number for this grape.



The wine has a mineral and flinty character and a nice acid level like the New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs. One of the knocks on Pinot Grigio, is that the grape makes a somewhat thick and low acid wine, so I'm happy to have something different at this point.



Pinot Grigio is a red grape. If you press the juice right after it is crushed, you get white juice. But if you let it sit on the skins in a cold soak for a day or two, you will get pink juice.



My friends at the Wine Group With No Name (WGWNN) are making their Pinot Grigio as a pink wine. I think that's a great idea and will be very interested to taste it.



While I was pressing my Pinot Grigio, my first two carboys were filled with free run juice are white. But the last two carboys that were pressed, were a very light pink.



I've kept the carboys separate and there is a difference in taste between the white and pink wine. As you might expect, the pink wine has fuller flavors. I'm looking forward to see how these two batches turn out...

The photos on the right show the pink and white Carboys of Pinot Grigio,