# Just secured 2018 white wine grapes - Viognier!



## NorCal (Jun 21, 2018)

I'm so excited. @4score, @Busabill and I have made Chardonnay together for the past two years. It has done well, receiving Silvers at the State Fair. I wanted to do something different and a local winery makes a Viognier that I love. Being a home winemaker and trying to get fresh grapes can be a challenge, but I found a vineyard around an hour from me that agreed to sell a macro-bin (1,000 lbs) of Viognier to 4Score and me (Busa is tending to his new vineyard!). Really looking forward to it and decided that with my 25-30 gallons that I am going to make it in glass and make a few different oak variations. American, French, heavy & light. I figure in the end I can have a few different variations or blend out the ones I don't like.


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## ibglowin (Jun 21, 2018)

Or you could co-ferment with ~20,000 lbs of Syrah! LOL


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## Boatboy24 (Jun 21, 2018)

Going to make an un-oaked version? I love Viognier - probably my favorite white wine. I'm hoping to score some local grapes/juice at some point. Locals are producing some pretty nice stuff.


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## pgentile (Jun 21, 2018)

I like your oak approach. Made Viognier from juice buckets three years ago, loved it.


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## NorCal (Jun 22, 2018)

Boatboy24 said:


> Going to make an un-oaked version? I love Viognier - probably my favorite white wine. I'm hoping to score some local grapes/juice at some point. Locals are producing some pretty nice stuff.


Yes, un-oaked through heavy oak. It will be an opportunity to really understand the influence of oak on a white. With 6 or so carboys, I should be able to make some good assessments.


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## balatonwine (Jun 23, 2018)

NorCal said:


> Viognier



Wow. A real challenge grape. Sensitive to terroir, viticulture practice, and wine maker skills. Will be interesting to watch your journey.


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## NorCal (Jun 23, 2018)

balatonwine said:


> Wow. A real challenge grape. Sensitive to terroir, viticulture practice, and wine maker skills. Will be interesting to watch your journey.


I have not visited the vineyard yet, but did research the wines made with their grapes. They only produce Syrah and Viognoir. The Syrahs have produced 90+ point wines, but they only produce 3 tons of Viognoir. I’ll check them out in July. I feel reasonably good with the Chardonnays I’ve made from less than great grapes. Hopefully this will be only better.


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## stickman (Jun 23, 2018)

I have heard about small amounts of Viognier blended with Chardonnay to provide a little aromatic lift; you may have to explore that and let us know.


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## CK55 (Jun 28, 2018)

I wish I could get some damn grapes this year as my vines won't be ready for about 2 years. Except for my old vines. Which will be a small 10 gallon or so batch. 

Looking forward to hearing how your wine turns out after the process is all over with.

I might try contacting a few local wineries, I know a couple of the owners so might get lucky, might try Talley, Rota. Which are a couple of local wineries.


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## NorCal (Aug 21, 2018)

Got a call for the vineyard owner and he is thinking the Viognoir will be at 24/25 this week! Kinda short notice, but I’m ready to get this season rocking and rolling.


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## CK55 (Aug 21, 2018)

NorCal said:


> Got a call for the vineyard owner and he is thinking the Viognoir will be at 24/25 this week! Kinda short notice, but I’m ready to get this season rocking and rolling.


Sounds like it will be making a nice wine


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## NorCal (Aug 21, 2018)

When @4score and I dropped off the bin and looked at the grapes a few weeks ago, I gave him a bottle of this year’s Chardonnay. His text to me; _Thanks for the Chardonnay it was well made and frankly, was one of the best wines from an amateur producer I’ve had.
_
It’s always nice to receive valued feedback.


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## Boatboy24 (Aug 21, 2018)

NorCal said:


> Got a call for the vineyard owner and he is thinking the Viognoir will be at 24/25 this week! Kinda short notice, but I’m ready to get this season rocking and rolling.


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## balatonwine (Aug 21, 2018)

NorCal said:


> Got a call for the vineyard owner and he is thinking the Viognoir will be at 24/25 this week! Kinda short notice



Seems like an average warning time to me.

I track my brix to pH ratio in a graph. Even with that I sometimes only have a "warning time" window of a few day when harvest is ideal, and after I check other subjective factors.


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## mainshipfred (Aug 21, 2018)

Boatboy24 said:


> Going to make an un-oaked version? I love Viognier - probably my favorite white wine. I'm hoping to score some local grapes/juice at some point. Locals are producing some pretty nice stuff.



Viognier is the signature white grape of Virginia, but I'm telling you getting local grapes this year is going to be tough.


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## Boatboy24 (Aug 22, 2018)

mainshipfred said:


> Viognier is the signature white grape of Virginia, but I'm telling you getting local grapes this year is going to be tough.



I hear ya. I will probably go w/ a CA juice bucket.


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## NorCal (Aug 23, 2018)

Normally I receive 2-3 weeks of brix readings, instead of a few days. The vineyard owner called and said the cool weather this last week really slowed things down and it’s going to be another week.


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## NorCal (Aug 29, 2018)

We received the green light and are set to pick up 1,000 pounds of Viognier tomorrow morning. Time to prep the garage and mix up some Starsan.
Plan is to destem, crush, press and split the juice between me and @4score. That is when the wine will go two different directions.


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## heatherd (Aug 29, 2018)

NorCal said:


> I'm so excited. @4score, @Busabill and I have made Chardonnay together for the past two years. It has done well, receiving Silvers at the State Fair. I wanted to do something different and a local winery makes a Viognier that I love. Being a home winemaker and trying to get fresh grapes can be a challenge, but I found a vineyard around an hour from me that agreed to sell a macro-bin (1,000 lbs) of Viognier to 4Score and me (Busa is tending to his new vineyard!). Really looking forward to it and decided that with my 25-30 gallons that I am going to make it in glass and make a few different oak variations. American, French, heavy & light. I figure in the end I can have a few different variations or blend out the ones I don't like.
> 
> View attachment 49437


Nice! Interested to know how the oaked Viognier is. I have made mine without. It might be interesting to see how specific tannins impact the wine. Scott Labs has some new ones that are enticing, including a FT Blanc CITRUS one:
https://scottlab.com/fermentation-cellar/product-type=tannins/?viewMode=grid&count=21


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## NorCal (Aug 30, 2018)

Prepped and heading over for pick up


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## NorCal (Aug 30, 2018)

Grapes a bit delayed, had to wait for another bin to be filled...arg


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## NorCal (Aug 30, 2018)

@4score had to work so his Super Taster son and I were on duty for the bin and the daughter came and helped for an hour or two. 23.7 brix, 3.5 pH


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## NorCal (Aug 30, 2018)

Hard to imagine this ups colored juice becoming a nice wine, but I think it will.


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## NorCal (Aug 30, 2018)

Reflecting on the day, overall it went well, but two things stand out that I wish were better. 

#1 better fruit. I give the fruit a B-. Maybe a bit critical, but I expected better. We paid $900 for our 1,000 lbs. 

#2 crusher set-up. I took apart the crusher when I bought it and moved the rollers as far apart as I could. This has worked well for reds, but did not do us any favors for this small berry Viognier. I press using a vacuum 55 gallon Wineasy. I would characterize it as a very gental press. When I saw that are yield was short of target, I was looking into why. While the press was doing its job, there wasn’t enough force to break open the 20% or so of grapes that made it through the crusher as a whole berry. We ended up rerunning the pressings through again and picked up another 11 gallons of juice.


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## NorCal (Aug 31, 2018)

One more thing. I met this guy last year who grows all his own vegetables, fruits, nuts and meat. I’m talking cows, goats, pigs, chickens. His animals love the grape pumice, so it went to a good cause; win, win situation.


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## Johnd (Aug 31, 2018)

NorCal said:


> Hard to imagine this ups colored juice becoming a nice wine, but I think it will.



It is hard to imagine, but it always seems to transform, my first from white grapes really freaked me out. I look at your bucket of juice and and it looks beautiful!!


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## mainshipfred (Aug 31, 2018)

I'm thinking hard about trying my first white from grapes this fall. Haven't decided what though. Really this will be my first white ever except for an Island Mist. I'm starting to get an appreciation for whites.


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## NorCal (Sep 3, 2018)

Grapes on Thurs with family plans for the Labor Day weekend. Racked and inoculated grapes on Friday @23.7 brix. Came back Monday evening to a ferment temp of 70 degrees and brix of 11.4. Added second dose of Ferm K. This is way faster than the previous years Chards, where I was loading gallon jugs of ice to cool ferm.

It is what it is and I had a great weekend with the family. It will be interesting to see how this wine tastes vs. @4score, which could not be made any different.


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## NorCal (Sep 7, 2018)

It seemed to go quite quickly, but the Viognier is dry in 7 days with a fermentation temperature of 68-70 degrees. I'll rack tonight, do some tasting and see what the wine is wanting to be. I need to decide to mlf and to oak, and if I do oak, how much of which oak. I'll try to get @4score to post here to share the direction he took with his 1/2 of the Viognier juice.


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## 4score (Sep 7, 2018)

I'm more of a red wine guy than a white, but these offers of participating in a Chardonnay project the last two years were hard to resist. They turned out well, so when NorCal approached again with a Viognier option, it was intriguing. It became more than intriguing when I learned he found a great source in Amador County. We refer to Amador as our "little Napa". My son went with NorCal and returned with a full bin's worth (roughly 1000 pounds). We crushed together and split the juice. Extraction rate was not very high. On top of that, the juice was quite cloudy and didn't settle much inside the time (24 hours) I needed to rack. Being impatient, I hardly racked much off. I know....I know.....patience. Probably should have waited another day. NorCal tried to separate his clean juice by taking the bottom "cloud" of his settling container and cold-chilling it. I think he saved a little, but less than he thought. I just figured I'd catch it after primary fermentation. So, our initial racking after settling was our first difference in approach. Of the 26-27 gallons I have, I bet I'll end up with 20 gallons of finished wine in the end.

The next departure in our approaches to this wine came with a fermentation step I inserted before the traditional yeast. I'm experimenting this year with a non-Saccharomyces yeast from Chr Hansen called Prelude. They say another dynamic shift in the fermentation process is occurring. In this new step, a non-sacc yeast fermentation is performed to target flavor, aroma and tactile development. You do this until brix levels are reduced 1-4 brix (1-3 days) and then apply your traditional yeast which quickly will overwhelm the first yeast. We chose "Prelude" for our Cab Franc project and we're trying it out on the Viognier as well. This non-_Saccharomyces _yeast strain has been carefully selected to mimic successful wild ferments, increase aromatic complexity, enhance fresh fruit-forward wines, and develop a round mouthfeel.

We used Prelude for about 2.5 days and a 2 brix reduction then went with normal D47 yeast. We've gone all the way to about 5.5 last night and I can tell you the smell is amazing! I'm not familiar with Viognier, but the entire fermentation room smells like fresh pear. When we complete this wine, it will be interesting to compare NorCal's traditional fermentation to ours. Of course, we need to make the same choices on oak and MLF if we're going to compare accurately. 

I'm also doing two bins of Cab Franc and intend to use Prelude on only one of the bins and keep all other variables the same. Isn't this fun?


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## NorCal (Jan 3, 2019)

Sunday is the day that this transformed juice will meet up again. We will have 3 to taste.

1. 100% Viognier in glass, no oak, beta mlf
2. 100% Viognier in glass, non saccharomyces yeast, CH16 mlf, oak spiral
3. 85% Vio / 15% Chardonnay in glass, beta mlf, oak spiral

My two are 1, 3 above (C &A below). It is nice to see the ups brown juice clear to a nice light yellow color.


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## 4score (Jan 3, 2019)

I have several carboys of non-oaked, non-saccharomyces as well. Only one carboy has the oak spiral. So, that's another comparison - non-sacc with and without oak.


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## Chuck E (May 2, 2019)

NorCal said:


> Sunday is the day that this transformed juice will meet up again. We will have 3 to taste.
> 
> 1. 100% Viognier in glass, no oak, beta mlf
> 2. 100% Viognier in glass, non saccharomyces yeast, CH16 mlf, oak spiral
> ...



I was doing some research on yeast choices for my 2019 Chilean Viognier and I came upon this thread. Did you ever report the tasting notes of the various different techniques used? 

Cheers, 
Chuck E.


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## NorCal (May 3, 2019)

Chuck E said:


> I was doing some research on yeast choices for my 2019 Chilean Viognier and I came upon this thread. Did you ever report the tasting notes of the various different techniques used?
> 
> Cheers,
> Chuck E.


#1 didn’t make it, so we only had the two to taste. Honestly, they were different, but I don’t remember them being all that different. However, they did take two different roads when I dropped a lot of the acid out of mine; I just didn’t like how tart the wine was. This has overshadowed any differences in the yeast. Both wines were entered in the CA State Fair (over 2,000) wines entered annually. We’ll see what the judges have to say.


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