Rain, Rain Go Away

Over the past week we received over 3 inches of rain. This is unfortunate for us because last weekend the mower broke down. We managed to get the backyard done but the largest part of the yard has not been cut for two weeks. The good news is that the skies cleared for the weekend, bringing sun and some temporary drying out of the yard for mowing today - just in time for another 3 inches in the coming week.

The gutter drain from the front of the house.

The concrete sink/countertops are installed in the poolhouse. Plumbing works. Softener installed. Bring on summer!

Last weekend we bottled about 5 cases of wine. The Grenache rosé looks good. The Frontenac rosé lost some color. Lack of tannins is suspected.  But it smells and tastes terrific. We benched trialed some blends of the Frontenac with Chardonel, and in the end we liked the different character of each wine, so they got bottled separately.

Frontenac rosé, Chardonel, Grenache rosé

Two weeks ago we replanted about 20 vines, mostly Vidal. Replanting wasn't has hard as digging out the old roots. Cooler temps seem to have slowed growth up to some degree, but we now have shoots 5-12" long.

Two weeks ago, after mowing and before all the rain

Shawn and Suzanne came over for some wine. We had an outstanding Arneis, a white grape from Piedmont. This bottle came from California, but it was delicious. We lit a fire and had S'mores. Shawn achieved the perfect toast. As it darkened we spotted the Space Station and, as a bonus, a beautiful blue-green meteor to the south.

We have a short 3 day work week next week, as we were previously scheduled to be off for a couple of days to work at home. I'll be watching the forecast.

The Winter that Never Ends

Winter of 2018-2019 started early, with cold temps and 3 separate snowfalls before Thanksgiving. And it has not let up. Snowpocalypse 2019 left us with 17" and we have subsequently had at least a couple more snow events, with more in the forecast for this week.

So we're stuck inside, cooking and winemaking. 

Every so often at band practice on Thursday nights, we have dinner. Two weeks ago we had a dinner worth publishing. Chukar is a type of partridge. Josh and others shot these, and I thought they made a fine supper with cabbage casserole.

We have an abundance of crappie and made some killer fish tacos.

Today I worked on the wine. Traminette and Chardonel are both going to be at least decent and drinkable after cold stabilization. Both are slow to clear so I've treated both with SuperKleer. They're clearing already and we'll rack these next weekend. 

The results of cold stabilization.

The grenache rosé looks and tastes great. I racked one gallon off its tartaric acid crystals and bottled it. We'll sample this over the next few weeks and if it tastes fine, bottle the rest. I have 8 gallons of grenache rosé.

The Frontenac rosé unfortunately got a little bit oxidized. It doesn't taste bad, but the color is off. In retrospect, I brought this pH up too high; even though it got the standard dose of KMS every 3 months, the SO2 got too low. Lesson learned. I'm trying the milk trick, followed by Polyclar. I will only post pics if it works.

The other wine with color I don't like is guava/SB. I'm calling this "Psidium sauvignon." This wine has always had an unappealing color and the previous batches suffered the same way. I don't think it is oxidized, that's just the color you get from strawberry guava. I'm trying Polyclar to see if I can brighten it up. 

2018 OVZ went into the barrel. This wine got half of the oak cubes as compared to the 2017 OVZ, but after tasting, I think it's perfect. The 2017 OVZ has too much vanilla/cocoa flavor, but I expect it will settle down. The 2018 may actually be drinkable earlier.

The 2018 SB is bottle-able, but I ran out of energy and I had to cook this week's lunch.

This week's lunch is unintentionally paleo - Spaghetti Squash Meatball Casserole. Meatballs, greens, spinach, squash, tomatoes, and ricotta, topped with sauce and mozzarella.   

2018 Wines - Chapter 2 - Row Seven

We picked all of the grapes on the same day, in part because we wanted Jake to be able to help. Having read stories of difficulty making good red wine from Frontenac we elected to make rosé. We didn't have much Foch, and one of the vines billed as Frontenac is clearly not. So we lumped everything together from the seventh row and made rosé.

We adjusted the TA down from 1.08% to around 0.80% with calcium carbonate. The pH came up more than expected from 3.16 to 3.59. The wine may require some acid additions later. We also added KMS, 4g Booster Blanc, 6g Opti White. The starting Brix was 25, SG 1.102. We fermented it in our temperature control system set at 55F and the temp stayed in the 57-58F range throughout. I step fed with Fermaid K and added bentonite once the fermentation got going. That temperature didn't slow the QA23 and it powered through to 1.004 in a week.

After another week it was down to 0.994 and we topped with 1 bottle of cheap dry Missouri rosé from Stone Hill to make it an even 3 gallons.