Wines I'm Making: 2011 Sangiovese Rosé Labeled

I finally finished designing a label for the 2011 Sangiovese. I got it printed yesterday, and found a few minutes today to paste the labels on the bottles. We made only 15 bottles this past year, so it wasn't a big project, but it feels good to have it done and out of the way.

Wines I'm Making: Bottled the 2011 Sangiovese Rosé (December 23, 2011)

Between bouts of late Christmas shopping and food shopping yesterday I found the time to bottle the 2011 Sangiovese rosé from our backyard grapes. I'm quite pleased. It's come out a nice medium-deep orange-pink and, based on some quick sampling while siphoning, it has good flavors and length. It will be a big improvement from last year's thin wine, made from grapes that just never ripened fully--even if it's not as good as the excellent (as good as any rosé I've ever tasted, if I say so myself) rosé I made in 2009. Just in time to open the first bottle tonight, on Christmas Eve, with friends and family. Now I need to design a label....

Wines I'm Making: Sangiovese Rosé Finished Fermenting (November 20, 2011)

Tiny bubbles continue to rise from the fermenting Sangiovese rosé, but a quick hydrometer test showed the specific gravity at 0.992, which indicates the fermentation is over (after a very long 26 days). I racked the wine off the lees today and sulfited it very lightly, using two Campden tablets in the three-gallon carboy, which should put it at about 43ppm. Now all that's left to do is wait a little longer for the wine to completely clear. I'll keep it in the garage now, where it's cool. In the past, a fine layer of tartaric acid crystals has always formed over whatever yeast was left at the bottom of the container, which makes the final racking a breeze (with all the remaining loose matter encapsulated under the crystals). It'll be ready to check again in a couple of weeks. So far, so good. Time to start thinking about a new label design.

Wines I'm Making: Sangiovese Rosé Still Fermenting--Day 19 (November 13, 2011)

We picked our Sangiovese grapes on October 24, 2011 and I pressed them the following day. The juice has been fermenting--very slowly--since the 25th. Today is day 19 and tiny bubbles are still rising in the carboy. The main activity is finished, though. CO2 is no longer keeping the spent yeast and other solids suspended, so the wine has mostly cleared and the true color is becoming apparent. I transferred the new wine to a smaller (3 gal.) container on the 11th to minimize air contact. In the next day or two it'll be time to rack it off the remaining lees and lightly sulfite it. Normally there's time for two rackings to completely clear the wine before Thanksgiving, but this year we picked so late that we'll probably have to wait until around Christmas for new rosé.

Wines I'm Making: 2011 Wines

Our Sangiovese rosé is now in its fifth day of fermentation. The container is fizzing lightly and a great deal of the deep color present initially has already disappeared to leave behind a pretty pink. The color of the finished wine won't be apparent for another week or two, but so far it looks good. The fermentation is proceeding slowly (by design). I expect it to last another seven or eight days at least.

The Cabernet Sauvignon/Franc is also undergoing fermentation, soon to enter its third day. I added the yeast on the morning of Friday, the 28th. I'm punching down the cap of skins that rises on the surface four times a day, as I usually do. The liquid is a deep, inky purple. As I did a four-day soak before adding yeast, the skins have been giving up color for nearly a week. Fermentation will probably last another eight days or so. The 2011 wines are moving along nicely.

 

Wines I'm Making: 2011 Sangiovese Pressed and Inoculated

Yesterday at around noon I pressed the Sangiovese grapes  we picked and crushed the day before. The grapes were crushed at around 5:00PM, which means the juice was on the skins for about 19 hours. That yielded rather more color than the same amount of time has in the past, probably because the berries this year were much further along toward full ripeness than they ever have been. I hope the wine doesn't come out too deeply colored--but it's early. Some of the pigment in the liquid will fall out during fermentation.

I inoculated the must shortly after pressing, using the Epernay II yeast. This morning the yeast was not very active, probably because it was cold in the garage overnight, but moving the container into the darkroom and then later in the day into the living room, the usual foam is beginning to develop on the surface of the liquid and the airlock has begun to bubble. The trick will be to keep the fermentation going without letting it become too vigorous. A fermentation of about 10-12 days should be about right. Last year it took 14 days. In the first couple of years I made rosé, I didn't understand that a fast fermentation can allow a lot of good flavor and aroma components to escape, and I let things move too quickly. At the extreme short end, one fermentation went to completion in about four days--which is too fast. So far, everything is going smoothly this year. The Cabernet is pressed and in its second day soaking. I like to give the Cabernet a pre-soak of about four days before inoculating, as that seems to result in better color and more flavor extraction.

At left is a photo of our 2010 Sangiovese Rosé--I finally got around to designing a label and getting it on the wine, although there are now only 11 eleven bottles of it left. It was a very light, pale wine (the deep red-orange carpet behind the bottles in the photograph make it look much deeper in color than it actually is). It's pleasant but doesn't have the depth of the 2009, which is the best I've made so far. I have one bottle of the 2009 left. It needs to be consumed, but I hate to see the last of it disappear....

Wines I'm Making: Harvest 2011

I decided today was the day to pick our grapes. The somewhat warmer weather of the past few days seemed to be doing little to raise sugar levels and I was beginning to see signs of mildew in a few clusters, so there seemed little reason to wait further. It was a small harvest--having lost a great deal to animals this year. We picked 20kg of Sangiovese, or 44lbs and 43kg of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, or 94.6lbs. This is the latest we've ever picked. I waited in the hopes of getting the sugars up, but it just wasn't warm enough. The unfortunate timing of the rain we had in October complicated things. Some berries swelled with water and split, allowing mold to begin to form. All in all, the grapes look pretty healthy, but mold can take hold very quickly if left unchecked, so better to get the fruit in.

After crushing and de-stemming the grapes, we ended up with 4.75 gallons of Sangiovese must, which I sulfited lightly with three Campden tablets to add about 41ppm of sulfite. The must tested at 20.7 Brix by refractometer and a specific gravity of 1.084 by hydrometer. The pH tested at 3.35. pH squared times Brix equals 232--not at all bad for making a rosé. I took the measurements at 63 degrees F, so I didn't bother to adjust the hydrometer reading for temperature (according to my books, hydrometers are usually calibrated at 59 degrees F, or 15 degrees C).

We got about 10.5 gallons of Cabernet must, which I sulfited lightly with seven Campden tablets (about 43ppm). The must tested at 22.6 Brix by refractometer--somewhat lower than I was hoping for, but respectable, and at a specific gravity of 1.094 by hydrometer. The pH was 3.42. pH squared times Brix yielded 263, which is right about where it ought to be.

I will press the Sangiovese already late tomorrow morning, after about 18 hours on the skins, which has seemed about right in the past. I will then inoculate the pressed juice with yeast and set it aside in a chilly place (either in the garage or outside) for a cool, slow fermentation. The Cabernet will get a soak for a day or two or three before inoculation. And so our 2011 wines start their journey.