Racking time

This whole winemaking thing is a lot of work. I decided tonight that I wanted to taste, test and rack my two 2010 Chilean wines again. The pinot noir has been sitting with an oak "spiral" in it for 2 months to add a little oak without the use of a barrel. The Malbec has not had the oak added yet, but needs a few more rackings to remove the hydrogen sulfide odor that I inadvertently allowed to happen by letting the wine sit on the gross lees too long while I was in Australia in the spring.

So first I checked the Malbec pH (3.25) to make sure it was the same as the last time I measured it. Then I did a titration to check the SO2 (it was 50 PPM, a tad high for this low pH, but not terrible). Next I tasted the wine. The H2S smell is still there, although it's not that strong. The wine tastes really excellent though--once you aerate the H2S smell out with a few swirls. I decided to rack through some copper to try to reduce the Hydrogen sulfide. (Copper reacts with the sulfur and precipitates it out). If racking and a little metallic copper contact doesn't help the H2S situation, I will be forced to use the age old copper sulfate treatment to bind up the sulfur and settle it out as precipitate. If I can get a handle on this H2S issue, this is going to be a great wine. So anyway, I racked it and added the oak spiral to the Malbec.

Lesson learned: always rack the freshly-pressed wine off the gross lees the day after pressing! Don't go to Australia and let it finish fermenting on the gross lees unless you like a swampy smell!!!

Next I tested and tasted the pinot noir. Ironically, this wine tasted better at the last racking than the Malbec, but now it's not as good. My Malic acid test showed that neither of these wines completed MLF--which I knew because they just didn't do anything after adding the MLF bacteria. I finally gave up. But unlike the Malbec which has enough alcohol to offset the low pH, the pinot noir doesn't. The pinot has pH of 3.35 (a tad low) but it tastes quite acidic. It's a little late in the game to alter the pH chemically (and frankly, I'm against playing with the pH of wine artificially).

Both wines had considerable tartrate crystals in the bottom of the carboys. Maybe a cold stabilization to precipitate a little more? Have to think about that. Both wines have clarified beautifully and have another 7 months in bulk aging before it's time to bottle, so I have time to let them mellow and see what happens. It's still a little early to worry too much about it.

On another note, I put in my order for the fall California grapes. I considered doing two cuvées again, but I just don't have enough carboys and the place is getting full of them. So I decided to do one batch of Northern California pinot noir. The grapes are due in October, hopefully not interfering with a business trip to Bonaire at the end of Sept. I ordered 100 pounds of pinot noir.

So that's the update from here!

Jacques

Chateau Oiseau Vineyard Update

It has been a long, hot summer! The vines have been doing well, but it has been dry, so watering has been important. When we went away on vacation for a week, it was really dry and one of the new Marquette vines croaked. That was a bummer. But the rest of the new vines planted this spring in the still-unnamed vineyard site, are doing pretty well. Most are up to the wire on the trellis, and a couple are even spreading out into a T shape.

The vines in the side yard (Clos Oiseau) are all spreading out on the trellis wire. Today I removed the grow tubes from them so the trunks will harden off. I am hopeful that next year I will have some grapes from these vines.

The Reliance vines down on the driveway (Cotes du Oiseau) are doing the best of all the vines in the yard. They are growing like weeds and will need some pretty vigorous pruning this winter. I am quite certain that I'll have grapes from those next summer--for munching, not wine.

-Jacques

A morning at Coastal Vineyards!

Yesterday I headed down to South Dartmouth, MA for a meeting with Dave Neilson, the winemaker and owner of Coastal Vineyards. I wanted to meet Dave because he is one of the first people to grow Marquette grapes in large quantity here in Massachusetts. If you are following this blog, you know that Marquette is a rather new variety of cold-hardy hybrid grape developed for red winemaking in cool climates. Unlike previous hybrids, Marquette is supposed to be one of the only cold hardy varieties that doesn't produce wine with the "foxy" taste for which labrusca-based wines are known.

I showed up at Coastal Vineyards around 10 AM and Dave met me in the driveway. We walked down into his vineyard, thriving with a dozen varieties of grapes including Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and even Pinot Noir. He has planted 2 rows of Marquette consisting of about 200 vines. I couldn't believe how well his Marquette has grown in only 2 years. It easily looks like it is a full year older than mine, when in fact it is the same age. Dave said it well when he described his Marquette as "growing like weeds."

Dave is a believer in vertical shoot positioning, and his Marquette seems to be really liking his location and his training system. He even has some Marquette grapes on the vines, which is not bad for vines in their second year! (See picture of me holding a bunch of them!)

After some tips on growing Marquette, we headed up to the winery to taste some of last year's whites and the '08 Merlot. I am not a fan of the syrupy Merlot from California but Coastal Vineyards does a lighter Merlot--more like a pinot noir. This is simply because it doesn't ripen as well in Massachusetts, so it's a lighter wine. They make a blush from the pinot noir. This is the reason he is experimenting with Marquette--it's a variety that ought to ripen exceptionally well in Massachusetts and make a full-bodied red wine. Of course, so far there are not enough grapes to make a batch of wine, but I expect Dave will have enough grapes in the fall of 2011 to make his first cuvée of Marquette. I can't wait to taste it!

Thanks Dave for the great advice, and taking time out of your day for me! And for those of you who want to try a really fantastic white that is estate grown right here in Massachusetts, I really recommend checking out the Coastal Vineyards Seaside White which is a blend of estate-grown Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer. Delicious! And for red, of course that Merlot!

-Jacques

The Vineyard is flourishing with the coming of summer!

The 2010 Chateau Oiseau Chilean Malbec and Pinot Noir cuvées have been racked following completion of fermentation and have been inoculated with MLF bacteria to start the malolactic fermentation. Not much to show--and kind of boring, actually.

But in the vineyard, things are coming along well! The one year old vines in Clos Oiseau and Cotes du Oiseau are up to the trellis wire now (first couple pictures)! And the 3 week (!) old vines in grow tubes in the front yard (as yet unnamed vineyard) are rapidly climbing the grow tubes. Two have actually reached the top already. GROW TUBES RULE!!!

The wild labrusca vines in the back yard are taking over not only the simple trellis I built, but the entire woods behind it. Unfortunately, while they flowered this spring, there is not a sign of a grape. I have seen this variety of wild grape all over town now that I have an eye for it, and I have yet to see a single grape. This stuff might think it's grapes, but it's pretty useless if it doesn't actually make any. I might have to pull it out and plant something more useful in the spring. I'm toying with the idea of planting a few Cabernet Franc vines, which are said to perform fairly well in this part of Massachusetts.

-Jacques

The 2010 Malbec is pressed!

Well, this evening the Malbec was down to 2.5 Brix so it was time to press, after a 10 day fermentation at 80 degrees. My daughter helped me out and, as usual, we had to press by hand. We start by disinfecting our hands with oxyclean and disinfecting the carboys, jugs, etc. We can't use sulfite to disinfect at this point as it would be toxic to the malolactic bacteria to be introduced later. So we use oxyclean, which works well using oxygen to kill microbes. Next, we go scoop at a time, dumping must into a mesh bag in a large funnel over a 6 gallon carboy. After a little over an hour pressing, we had 9 gallons (!) of wine from (7) 18 pound crates of Malbec grapes. We put airlocks in all the jugs and put them in the first floor bathroom shower to finish fermenting. Why the shower? Well, we never use our tiny first floor shower, and it's about 75 degrees all the time in there (we have central AC so we keep the house pretty much at 75 in the summer). The cellar is too cold to finish fermentation without heat, and the electric blanket is not consistent enough when wrapped around 2 carboys, 4 one gallon jugs, 3 half-gallon jugs, etc. So the Malbec has joined the Pinot Noir that was pressed two days ago in the shower, and it will sit for a few weeks to completely finish fermentation. They are all nicely bubbling though their airlocks now.

-Jacques

The Vineyard is coming along....

Well, my new Marquette vines finally arrived...late. Very late. They should have been in a month ago. But at least I was able to get them in the ground immediately after the UPS truck departed. The kids helped. We had 10 vines to get in the ground. We soaked the roots of the dormant vines, and planted them all in a prepared space (with no name yet). I already have two trellises set up with another to be built. The next day I put the grow tubes on them and staked them. Hopefully with luck they will reach the wire of the trellis by the end of the summer. In the meantime, the other two "vineyards" are doing well.

Clos Oiseau, in the side yard has 6 Marquette vines that are all now above the grow tubes and reaching for the wire. Cotes du Oiseau on the hillside next to the driveway has 4 healthy Reliance vines growing up out of the grow tubes. It looks like only one of the cuttings survived, but I do have one healthy cutting to transplant to my mother-in-law next spring!

As for the wine in the cellar, the Malbec measured 7.5 Brix this morning. I might be pressing it tomorrow. We'll see.

Captions

1. The new Marquette vines in the as-yet-unnamed vineyard.

2. The healthy Reliance vines of Cotes du Oiseau. They are one year old.

3 & 4: The Marquette vines in the Clos Oiseau vineyard. They are one year old.

Pinot Noir is pressed...

Last night the Pinot Noir was down to 3.5 brix, so I scheduled this morning to press the grapes. Not owning a press, I did it the same way I did the last batch--by hand with a press bag and a funnel. (See previous blog post for sample pics. I couldn't shoot pics by myself this morning.) I ended up with 8.5 gallons of wine. There were quite a few whole berries in there. Once you press them, you get a fair amount of sugar back into the wine, so the fermentation picks up again in the carboy. So right now I have a 6 gallon carboy, (2) one gallon jugs and (1) 1/2 gallon jug, all with airlocks in the necks. They are still fermenting. I will let them sit and ferment to total dryness over the next 3 weeks. The Malbec was down to 10 brix last night (remember, it was chaptalized) so I expect it will be ready to press in 2 days.

In other developments, the 10 additional Marquette vines showed up yesterday, so the kids helped me plant them yesterday. Today I put them all in grow tubes. Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the developing vineyard!

-Jacques