Wines I'm Making: Racked 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon (September 11, 2011)

Today I racked 11 gallons of wine--mostly the eight gallons of our 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon. Everything went smoothly. I sulfited the wine lightly, using six Campden tablets in the eight gallons, which should mean a sulfur level of about 49ppm. I also racked three gallons of "second-run" Cabernet--wine made from the lees of the real wine. I got a chance to taste both wines for the first time in about six months. I'm very pleased. Everything looks, smells, and tastes good. Even the faux wine is acceptable (this method of re-fermenting the lees seems to work better with red wine than it does with rosé).

I'll be bottling this wine in the next few weeks, ahead of harvesting the 2011 grapes. I tested a random Cabernet grape today and was surprised to find it at 18 brix already. I'm aiming for 24.5. If the weather remains good, that means we should be harvesting in about the third week of October. With the electric fence on and the nets secured, I'm hoping we'll get there with no further losses to animals.

Wines I'm Making: Racked 2010 Wines Yesterday

I finally got around to racking the 2010 wines yesterday. I transferred eight gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc to new containers and sulfited them lightly (to 48ppm). I also racked three gallons of experimental "second run" Cabernet--wine made by adding sugar and water back into the pressings of the real wine and letting it ferment again. The real wine smells good and tastes good as well. It seems to have retained the strong Cabernet spiciness I noticed in it the first time I racked it. The second-run wine will probably prove to have been a waste of time and sugar, but we'll see. Finally, I racked all the second-run rosé I made--again, an experiment, but one that looks like it may have been worthwhile.

Wines I'm Making: 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc

Following a day of bird watching out at Bodega Bay, I racked, sulfited, and topped up all the 2010 wines and added oak staves to the Cabernet. This year I didn't bother with the rather tedious process of testing using paper chromatography to see if the malolactic fermentation had finished in the Cabernet wines. I'm taking it on faith. All bubbling had stopped and the wines have had enough time, I believe, to complete a malolactic fermentation (I inoculated them on October 25, so they had 24 days).

Everything looks good.  I've moved the wines to a quiet, cool, dark place. Now, begins the waiting that is most of the winemaker's work. The rosé will probably be ready for bottling around Christmas time. The Cabernet will have to be racked two or three more times before bottling, at around this time next year. In sampling the wine as I racked it today, it seemed to have a particularly marked Cabernet spiciness. We'll see if that persists in the finished wine.

2010 marks our seventh vintage. The vines were planted in 2001, first bore fruit in 2003, and we first made wine in 2004 (the bottle on the far right above). There ought to be six bottles in the picture--2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and the just-bottled 2009 (far left)--but we lost nearly all the grapes to raccoons in 2005. I made only six bottles of rather wretched stuff that year and I didn't bother to label it. In every other year, I've designed a new label. The 2008 and 2009 wines have been the best so far, with the 2007 showing the first real promise from the little vineyard. I have high hopes for the 2010, although it's likely to be less ripe than last year's wine because of the strange weather this season. I haven't tasted the 2004 in several years. It's time for a vertical tasting. What a luxury to be able to do a five-year vertical tasting of wines I've made myself.

Wines I'm Making: Racked wines yesterday

Racked the last of the 2009 wines yesterday--the Cabernet Sauvignon, the second-run Cab, and the Sangiovese rosé. Lightly sulfited each. Added oak staves to the two Cabernet wines. All are now resting out in the garage. The flavor of the Cabernet was again impressive, even at this stage.