Wines I'm Making: 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Harvest (October 3, 2020)

Just finished harvesting and crushing our Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc grapes. It was a novel situation this year. Ash everywhere. Everything lightly dusted, but the grapes were mostly protected by the leaves of the vines. Many of the commercial wineries in the area heavily thin the leaves around the grape clusters toward harvest time, to give them extra sun and light and to facilitate harvesting, but I generally don't follow that practice and this year leaving the leaves alone served to protect the fruit.

The ash is easily removed. The problem is that "fire taint" is caused not so much by ash from distant (relatively speaking) fires, as in our case this year, but by prolonged exposure to thick smoke, which is absorbed directly through the grape skins and by the leaves, later migrating toward the fruit. I'm hopeful that the grapes we've just harvested won't suffer from taint as we have had only a few days of really bad smoke. We'll see.

Today harvested 152.46 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc grapes, including fruit from two more-recently planted vines at the front door. The crushed juice measured at 24 degrees brix, which is perfect, and at a pH of 3.48. Aside from the ash, the fruit was very healthy. Suffered no losses to critters at all this year and no losses to mildew either. So, I'm hopeful that, despite everything, we'll have good wine from 2020.

The crushed grapes will undergo a two-three day cold soak now (or a cool soak anyway) until I inoculate the must. I plan to use the Rockpile yeast strain this year as my notes say that's what I used in 2015 and our 2015 wine turned out to be very good indeed.

Miscellaneous: Ruth Bader Ginsburg 1933-2020

It was a shock last week when I read breaking news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died--a shock because it was sad news of the passing of a such an important figure, but a shock because we are so close to the election and there was no doubt in my mind that Mr. McConnell would have no qualms about pushing through a replacement nominee, despite the insult of his refusal to even consider President Obama's entirely legitimate nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016--despite the bald hypocrisy. 

The Republicans now are, of course, correct in saying that the President has a right and a duty to appoint a new justice. The point is that President Obama had the same right and duty (why does this need to be explained to anyone?). Objections now to appointing a justice so close to the election are based on a sense that to give Mr. Trump another appointment is a double insult to President Obama and Merrick Garland--and that to block another trump appointment is only to right the original wrong. The Republican party has sunk lower than I would have ever thought it could go. 

Wines I'm Making: Harvest 2020--Sangiovese

I decided to harvest the Sangiovese grapes today. The berries appeared to be mature, judging from the seeds, and some were already turning to raisins. With a heat wave predicted for today and the next couple of days and the next opportunity to harvest likely next weekend, it seemed the time was right. We got a total of 53.2lbs of grapes, which is roughly normal. We've harvested anywhere from about 40lbs to over 70lbs in the past. 

A juice sample before harvest showed a brix of 19.5 degrees, which, corrected for the temperature, is around 20.25 degrees. The crushed grapes tested at 20.25 brix and a specific gravity of 1.080. As I often do with the Sangiovese grapes, from which we make rosé, I bumped up the specific gravity with a small addition of corn sugar (450 grams or so), which raised the specific gravity to 1.090. That should yield a wine of about 12.6% alcohol. The pH of the must was 3.58. I crushed the grapes a little after noon and will press them this evening after they've had about six hours on the skins--which is less than usual. I frequently leave them overnight, so that they've typically had about 18 hours before pressing, but that would mean pressing first thing in the morning and there won't be time to do that before work starts. The color this year is likely to be a bit lighter than usual. We'll see.