2019 Wines - Chapter 8 - Vignoles

Our generous neighbor Bill has 10 acres of vines. This year, he didn't have enough Vignoles to bring in a mechanical picker. I got a last minute call - I was welcome to as much Vignoles as I could find.

I didn't find much. Most of the grapes were rotten unfortunately. But I did scrounge up about 70# of decent grapes. The starting numbers were acceptable with no adjustments - pH 3.1 and SG 1.100.

I whole cluster pressed, cold settled for a day, then rewarmed, added 10g Opti White, 2t pectic, then pitched QA 23 with GoFerm. The fermentation started pretty slowly, but after a couple of days it was rolling. 6g bentonite added on day 3. By day 7 it was down to 1.020 and was racked to carboy.

The last batch of Vignoles I made started pretty high acidity and I was not knowledgeable enough to make the needed corrections. This batch is much more promising. Thanks Bill!