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I don’t understand the reason for the low ripeness of your grapes. You have approximately the same number of GDD as by me. Are you getting full sun during the day? A cluster of grapes needs only 15 healthy leaves on the cane to achieve ripeness. It is an incredibly small number and is why the...

I love this idea. Stealing

I have not seen Mauravin yeasts before. I see you selected a malic acid eating yeast. Happy fermenting!

I think, for Cabernet (maybe for all wines) extending the alcohol contact time with the must will start to pull out more bitter seed tannins. If you are happy with the flavor when SG gets a little below 0, I say press.

I do not saignée. Although I have considered doing it, I never have and the resultant wine seems to have enough body and no one has mentioned it lacking flavor or color. I think that many times (but not all) the high Brix comes from dehydration due to a hot spell, rather than because of overripe...

Here is how I adjust my batches: First, I measure Brix and TA of the juice in the must. The second step is to calculate the expected juice volume in the must. This is a bit of a guess but I assume 65% to 70% of the must volume is juice. The third step is to calculate the amount of water to add...

:) If you follow any of my earlier harvests, Brix always comes in higher than I want, either due to heatwaves or due to my brix measurement technique. “Lower Brix grapes” is relative to my sugar bombs in the past. I will think that I have reached 24-25 Brix in the field but after crush I have...

All the jug wine, Trader Joe’s two buck Chuck, Oak Leaf, Gallo come from Central Valley.

I think that is why using rice hulls is popular when pressing white grapes (it is very common to use hulls with the slipskin hybrids) You could try fluffing up the cake with a stick and repressing. It is just a guess, but since you are pressing whole berries, you could go to maybe 3 bar and...

Final Brix. I pressed 9/22/24 in a marathon session by myself this year, with a 90L Spiedel bladder press, greatly speeding up the process. The Spiedel press is on my short list of winemaking purchases. And just my luck, this is the week that the painters scheduled the Tahoe house staining...

I think your numbers look great. And the Viognier cluster looks nice and blushed. Happy winemaking!

Desperate California wine growers are slashing prices on grapes. No one is buying 2024 could be a great year for grape purchases (or even a vineyard).

You have an interesting problem. I also net over a sprawling canopy, but I stop spraying after I net. My nets are rarely on longer than a month. I cannot imagine that nets slow down air flow enough to create a powdery mildew issue. I guess also a lot of this depends on what you are spraying...

I want to forward a link to those in the area who may be interested in sources of locally grown grapes around the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. https://groups.io/g/mbawm/

It looks like a very well designed, comprehensive kit. I have used ScottTan FT Rouge, Estate and Riche. I mostly recall the grippy tannins in the Estate. Worth a revisit

Oh crap. Once the color turns and the brix hits a point, it is like all the birds tell each other and the grapes can be gone in a couple of days. I assume it was starlings.

I am drinking the leftovers of the 2022 Bordeaux blend from the marathon bottling session last night. It has improved a lot, fresh Kmeta tastes and smells baaad. The wine had a night to breathe (or maybe a better term would be "off-gas") I have not calculated the blend percentages yet. I pick...

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This is my playbook this year also. I did one day cold soak. And I am fermenting hotter. One must reached the mid 80's F range. Best of luck to all!

Maybe, but duplicating the Bordeaux physiological ripeness will not happen by harvesting grapes earlier, the hang time also matters. I think some of the problem I experience is simply how hot it can get at times and less marine effect we get at night, compared to Napa or Sonoma. Definitely my...