Wines I'm Making: Bottling the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc

I spent part of the weekend bottling our 2021 backyard Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc. Tasting the finished wine for the first time, I'm very pleased. This may be the best wine we've ever made. Other particularly good years so far have been 2008, 2012, 2019, and 2020.

I've designed new labels every year since we started making wine in 2004, but have run out of ideas, so I've decided to start rotating the labels every ten years. I've bottled the 2021 wines basically using the label I designed for the 2011 wines. Next year, I'll use the 2012 design for the 2022 wines, and so on....

We had 14 gallons to bottle from 2021. These were in a 3-gallon container, a five-gallon container, and a six-gallon container. Stupidly, I forgot the modest sulfite addition I normally make altogether when doing the largest of the three containers, so I've ended up with 30 bottles that will have to be emptied back into a large container and bottled again.... A pain, but we like to let the wine mature for a good long time, so it will have to be done—a job for next weekend.

Wines I'm Making: 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc pressed

Spent much of yesterday and today (October 31) pressing this year's wine (Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc) from the backyard vines. I made two batches this year, one using French Red yeast, one using Rockpile yeast, just for variety. I pressed about 10 gallons of must each, 20 gallons in total, which yielded seven gallons of new wine from each of the two batches. Fourteen gallons of wine will make about 70 bottles. As the grapes were harvested on October 5 and the yeast went in on October 7, fermentation took 24 days--which is about the longest it's ever gone. That reflects the fact that it has been consistently cool and mostly overcast since harvest. The wine was in a cool garage the whole time. In a typical year fermentation takes from 10 to 16 days. The rosé (from our Sangiovese vines) has been even slower. I probably won't rack and sulfite the Sangiovese for a couple of more days still. Next step for the red wines, malolactic fermentation.*

I learned a new way to test for total acidity this season--a test I've never bothered with in the past because titrating using phenolphthalein solution and trying to judge the color change as it goes from acid to basic (remember your high school chemistry?) is really, really hard because of the color of the wine. This method uses a pH meter (which I already had) and a sodium hydroxide solution to find the TA value--no need to judge a tricky color change in a highly pigmented solution. You just read values off the meter as they change. The French Red batch had a pH of 3.37 and a TA of .75. The Rockpile batch had a pH of 3.45 and a TA of .765. The total acidity value is on the high side for a red wine, but, having never tested our wine for TA before (this is our 18th vintage), I have no idea whether that's normal for us or not. According to the textbooks, it should be adjusted down slightly, but I may leave it. Time to do some further research....

[Edit: *I racked and sulfited the Sangiovese rosé on November 4, as the hydrometer showed a specific gravity of 1.000. That means the rosé fermentation took 28 days, which is longer than it ever has before by a wide margin. I tested the TA and it was quite low—.585, which would be more appropriate for a red wine. I've never had to adjust the acidity of any of the wines I've made before, but this year was different for at least two reasons. First, because of the drought, I did not water the vines at all this year. Dry farming the vines has always been my goal and I was going to attempt it this year anyway. The Sangiovese suffered a little. There were more raisins than usual and the grapes probably should have been picked a little sooner. Second, the brix was notably higher than usual. In the past I've had to chaptalize the must (adding corn sugar to bump up the sweetness of the juice and hence the alcohol level in the finished wine), but this year the grapes did not need a boost. The result was low acidity. I added 20g of tartaric acid dissolved in distilled water to three gallons of racked wine, which, assuming my calculations are correct, should raise the TA to .785, which is just right for a rosé. It takes 3.4g of tartaric acid/gallon to raise TA 0.1%. 

I inoculated the red wines with the malolactic starter on November 2. Malolactic fermentation can take anywhere from about three weeks to about three months. It can be a bit mysterious. The only reliable way to tell whether it's finished is to do a paper chromatography test, which involves the use of very smelly chemicals, so I usually just let it go and hope for the best.]

Wines I'm Making: 2021 Harvest

Harvest time. Yesterday and today, we harvested the backyard vineyard (about 26% Sangiovese, 62% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Cabernet Franc) of 34 vines, which have now been in the ground for going on 21 years (this was our 18th harvest).

We took in 20.6kg (45.4lbs) of Sangiovese and 108.3kg of Cabernet (238.8lbs). That yielded five gallons of Sangiovese must (the juice with all the skins and seeds still in it) and 22 gallons of Cabernet must. The Sangiovese tested at 23.5 degrees brix (a measure of the sweetness of the juice and therefore its potential alcohol). This is perfect for the rosé I usually make from the Sangiovese. The Cabernet must tested at 25.8 degrees brix, fine for making a red wine, although a little on the high side.

I usually harvest closer to 24 brix. This was the first year the grapes were completely dry farmed (that is, they received no supplemental watering at all). Despite the drought, they fare pretty well as I have always watered them very infrequently (no more than three times a year) and always very deeply to encourage deep rooting. There were more raisins than usual, though, which probably accounts for the higher-than-usual sugar reading. All the fruit was clean, with no mildew and we lost very little to critters either.

Assuming the ratio of unfermented must to finished wine is about 60% (typical), we should get about 15 bottles of rosé and about 66 bottles of finished Cabernet around this time next year, which is a pretty normal yield from the vines behind the house. 

Wines I'm Making: Grapes Dusted with Sulfur

In the past week, I've dusted our little vineyard with sulfur as a preventative against mildew later in the season. I waited too long, as usual. The first application is best done when the shoots are about six inches long, but many were already two to three times that length. I think the plants will be fine though, as they're getting much more light and air than in the recent past, as my neighbor has removed a number of small trees behind the vineyard that were creating shade. Also, I've switched to dusting with powdered sulfur rather than suspending the powder in water and spraying the vines, which seems to cover better and to be more effective. It's also much easier to do. 

I'm hoping that wildfires won't be an issue this year, but the winter of 2020-2021 was one of the driest on record. While that is good for suppressing mildew, it doesn't bode well for fires in the area. 

In the entryway to the house, 12 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc from 2020 still sits, neglected, in large glass containers. I had given up on it. It had an off smell and taste caused by the smoke and the ash that dusted the vines at the end of the season. After doing some research, I decided the only way to save it might be to have it distilled into brandy, but the companies I called said the smallest batch they do is 200 gallons. I had given up on it but had been able to bring myself to dump it out. And so it has been sitting and still it sits. But, yesterday, I tasted it it for the first time in a couple of months (it should have been racked and sulfited already many weeks ago), and, strangely, the taint seems to be gone..... Perhaps it will be worth taking to completion after all?

Wines I'm Making: Vines Pruned (February 15, 2021)

Yesterday and the day before, I pruned the 34 vines in our little backyard vineyard. It takes only a couple of hours, but I often put it off more than perhaps I should. Typically the cuts ooze sap because the ground is already warming by the time I get around to the chore, particularly in recent years as our winters have become less severe. Waiting doesn't seem to make any difference, though. There will be nothing to do in the vineyard now until the vines start pushing out new shoots and the shoots need thinning. Here's to hoping for a good harvest this coming season—and a harvest not impacted by wildfires.