2018 Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon

[stickman]

John, your wine gets to sit and relax in some fine furniture.

 

[CDrew]

How do you plan to fill it? Pump, vacuum or other?

I'll also be curious to see how you work out the top off.

 

[Johnd]

How do you plan to fill it? Pump, vacuum or other?

I'll also be curious to see how you work out the top off.

Plan is to just roll the barrel (empty) into the wine room after I've completed barrel prep and it's ready for wine. I'll just move the wine into the wine room and set the carboys on the counter and take my time racking off of the accumulated sediment using my racking cane with sediment tip and clear tubing. I'll also be sulfiting the wine in the barrel at the same time.

As for the topping off, just planning to use my normal process. The wine is currently in ten (10) six gallon carboys, so planning for that 60 gallons to fill the 60 gallon barrel, plus there's another 5 gallons (3 gallon carboy and two one gallon jugs. I'll rack the leftover wine into a 6 gallon carboy, sulfite it, and vacuum degas it after the barrel is loaded. That leftover wine will be bottled and corked and then used for topping off during the next two years. Not sure if it'll be enough, but have lots of other fresh grape cab wines to use if it isn't sufficient.

 

[Johnd]

It's been 5 or 6 weeks since the completed MLF chromo test and the wine has just been sitting and dropping some really fine sediment, and hadn't been sulfited, so I decided it was time to hit it with some sulfite last night. Wasn't really feeling into the racking and subsequently cleaning all of those carboys, so I pushed the easy button on the sulfite addition, knowing that I'll be racking off of the sediment and into the barrel shortly. Using a thief, pulled a few hundred ml out of a carboy, added 1/4 tsp to the wine, completely dissolved it using the auto stirrer, and dumped it back into the carboy, topping up each carboy as I went.

Didn't do any taste testing yet, but the aroma from each carboy was very nice. I may rinse and soak the barrel with steaming hot water this evening and go ahead and get it loaded up if time permits, as I really need to get it done and move on to emptying / bottling the other barrels in the wine room. By late winter / early spring, I'll finally be down to just the 17's in the 30 gallon barrel and the 18's in the 60 gallon barrel, and have several empty neutral barrels to figure out what to do with.

 

[mainshipfred]

and have several empty neutral barrels to figure out what to do with.[/QUOTE]

Sounds like you have to start thinking about the southern hemisphere harvest. Or you could take that time to refurbish a couple barrels. My vote is both.

 

[Johnd]

and have several empty neutral barrels to figure out what to do with.

Sounds like you have to start thinking about the southern hemisphere harvest. Or you could take that time to refurbish a couple barrels. My vote is both.

Neither of those options fit into my plans to reduce my overproduction. None of these barrels will be put back into winemaking use by me, I'll stick to making one batch a year, either 30 or 60 gallon size. I'll be downsizing by three 6 gallon Vadai's and one 12 gallon Vadai.

 

[mainshipfred]

Neither of those options fit into my plans to reduce my overproduction. None of these barrels will be put back into winemaking use by me, I'll stick to making one batch a year, either 30 or 60 gallon size. I'll be downsizing by three 6 gallon Vadai's and one 12 gallon Vadai.

I know you make a lot of wine, but how many barrels do you have?

 

[Johnd]

@mainshipfred said: "I know you make a lot of wine, but how many barrels do you have?"

Four 6 gallon Vadai barrels, already gave one of them to @Scott Harbison for his Lodi Cab kit, so I have three left, and one 12 gallon Vadai, all will be emptied of their wines in the next few weeks. I will keep the 30 gallon frenchie with the 2017's in it, as well as the 60 with the 2018's, so down to two barrels, 30 and 60.

 

[Donz]

That is one beautiful looking barrel I must say!

John - is your Cab smelling and tasting extremely floral/fruity from the BM4x4 VP41 combo? Mine is big time. It's gonna need some time and oak to settle off the heavy floral fruity aromas.

 

[Johnd]

That is one beautiful looking barrel I must say!

John - is your Cab smelling and tasting extremely floral/fruity from the BM4x4 VP41 combo? Mine is big time. It's gonna need some time and oak to settle off the heavy floral fruity aromas.

Thanks, looking forward to seeing how it works on the wine!!

I haven't tasted the wine yet, just smelled each carboy at the sulfiting a few nights ago, the aromas are very nice on both the BM 4x4 and D254, didn't really detect any differences between them, but was just sticking my nose above the opening in the carboys.

 

[Johnd]

So today was the big day, time to load the 18’s into the 60 gallon Alain Fouquet barrel, and not nearly the monumental task conjured up in my feeble mind over the last few weeks.

First, barrel prep. Whipped out the crawfish pot and propane burner, boiled about 25 gallons of water, funneled 20 gallons into the barrel and hammered the bung in. Rolled it around a bit, stood it on both heads, filled the heads with the other 5 gallons of water, rolled it outside and dumped after a couple hours, man did that oaky water smell wonderful, hated to see it drain off...

Time to load. Rolled it into the wine room and moved the carboys in, and decided to just siphon, choosing gentle treatment over vacuum racking or pumping over with the Buon Vino. Good decision, the sediment was relatively firm and I just slid the autosiphon in til the anti-sediment tip rested on the bottom, didn’t get even a whisp of sediment. It was relaxing to watch it transfer and enjoy the aroma of the wine and smell of oaky air being displaced from the barrel. She took all 59 gallons like a champ, leaving me with an extra gallon, which I racked into a 6 along with the 3 and two 1’s left from last racking. Pretty tidy, and now I can justify keeping one of my neutral 6’s.

Cleaned all 10 carboys and stored them, along with the 3 and 1’s combined with the leftovers, not too bad for a Sunday afternoon, sadly, there wasn’t even a smidge left to sample...... The barrel looks great, and the rolling stand is tops, came in handy today, and certainly in the future. Cheers!!!

 

[Donz]

So today was the big day, time to load the 18’s into the 60 gallon Alain Fouquet barrel, and not nearly the monumental task conjured up in my feeble mind over the last few weeks.

First, barrel prep. Whipped out the crawfish pot and propane burner, boiled about 25 gallons of water, funneled 20 gallons into the barrel and hammered the bung in. Rolled it around a bit, stood it on both heads, filled the heads with the other 5 gallons of water, rolled it outside and dumped after a couple hours, man did that oaky water smell wonderful, hated to see it drain off...

Time to load. Rolled it into the wine room and moved the carboys in, and decided to just siphon, choosing gentle treatment over vacuum racking or pumping over with the Buon Vino. Good decision, the sediment was relatively firm and I just slid the autosiphon in til the anti-sediment tip rested on the bottom, didn’t get even a whisp of sediment. It was relaxing to watch it transfer and enjoy the aroma of the wine and smell of oaky air being displaced from the barrel. She took all 59 gallons like a champ, leaving me with an extra gallon, which I racked into a 6 along with the 3 and two 1’s left from last racking. Pretty tidy, and now I can justify keeping one of my neutral 6’s.

Cleaned all 10 carboys and stored them, along with the 3 and 1’s combined with the leftovers, not too bad for a Sunday afternoon, sadly, there wasn’t even a smidge left to sample...... The barrel looks great, and the rolling stand is tops, came in handy today, and certainly in the future. Cheers!!!
View attachment 52550 View attachment 52551

Sounds like a great day! Looks awesome bud. Too bad no tasting.

You know it’s a serious barrel with 8 staves!

 

[CDrew]

Glad it went so well. The color looks great.

And, I would love to hear a tasting report! 2 years in the Barrel should make it pretty special.

 

[sour_grapes]

Cleaned all 10 carboys and stored them, along with the 3 and 1’s combined with the leftovers, not too bad for a Sunday afternoon, sadly, there wasn’t even a smidge left to sample......

So you totally needed to have bought 31 lugs... Hopefully you will remember next year!

Sounds great.

 

[Johnd]

So you totally needed to have bought 31 lugs... Hopefully you will remember next year!

Sounds great.

Ha! That would surely have done it!! Thinking of just bottling the 6 gallons of leftovers, and using the bottles to do the topping up over the next 24 +/- months, and sneak some barrel samples along the way.....

 

[sour_grapes]

Ha! That would surely have done it!! Thinking of just bottling the 6 gallons of leftovers, and using the bottles to do the topping up over the next 24 +/- months, and sneak some barrel samples along the way.....

I love it when a plan comes together!

 

[Ajmassa]

@Johnd where did your acid levels end up?
I’m a little concerned with my Paso Robles cab. It came in with high ph and only slightly tweaked it down to 3.7 to keep TA under 8–Going against my initial plan of adjusting to 3.6. I still need an updated Ta level- but PH sitting over 3.8 now.
Not to keen on barreling a 3.8 wine. Did your Ph also creep back up after MLf?

 

[Donz]

John I noticed that you are using the regular barrel bung in the pic. You are not using an airlock at these beginning stages?

 

[Johnd]

@Johnd where did your acid levels end up?
I’m a little concerned with my Paso Robles cab. It came in with high ph and only slightly tweaked it down to 3.7 to keep TA under 8–Going against my initial plan of adjusting to 3.6. I still need an updated Ta level- but PH sitting over 3.8 now.
Not to keen on barreling a 3.8 wine. Did your Ph also creep back up after MLf?

Didn't even check yesterday, figured let it sit in the barrel for a few months at 55 F to do any precipitating that it might choose to do at that temp. Some time in the next six months I'll check the pH and taste it, and maybe do some early bench trials to see if it needs any reductions. I'm not particularly afraid of higher pH wines when it comes to the big red grapes from CA, I know they can be managed with good sulfite protocol. The wines is sitting on a pretty good dose right now, after a 50 ppm dose last week and a little booster yesterday. I'll satisfy your curiosity (and mine now) by checking it sometime in the next couple days and posting it.

 

[Johnd]

John I noticed that you are using the regular barrel bung in the pic. You are not using an airlock at these beginning stages?

No, I'm not. On both of my larger barrels (30 and 60), I just use the solid bung that they come with and hammer them firmly in place.