This year I wanted to make a white wine. I have over 26 cases of my 2021 Pinot Noir in hand, and while I’m happy with how it turned out there are times when only a glass of white will do. However, I delayed sourcing my grapes due to the uncertain arrival time of my new crusher/destemmer, which didn’t come in until early September. Harvest is here and white grapes were nowhere to be found, so I figured that I’d missed my opportunity for this year.
On Saturday I heard from a local winegrower – he had heard that I wanted grapes, and would I be interested in his pinot noir? I love white pinot noir. It’s not that common, but living in the heart of pinot country there are several local winemakers who produce it. Moreover this winegrower’s grapes were reportedly around 23 brix – right in the white wine sweet spot – and they were relatively inexpensive.
I called the pick for the following day. The only catch – it would be me and Mrs. Monkey doing the picking, since I only wanted to take ¼ ton. So at 6:15am, off we headed, buckets and pruning shears in hand. Mercifully, it was cool and overcast all day, in contrast to the 100+ degree days of the previous week.
We started picking just before 7am and ended around 10. For those who haven’t done it, it’s hard work, and I have an increased respect for the folks that go out doing this in the dark with only floodlights or headlamps to guide them – sometimes on steep and uneven terrain. But eventually our bin filled up. We were a little short of a quarter ton when I weighed the grapes, but given the time and the fact that we still needed to crush and press we elected to head home.
Here is the ‘crush pad’. The plan was to offload from the truck by bucketing grapes into the crusher, crush into the plastic bin, load into the press and then pump juice from the press bucket into carboys in my basement. We wanted to press as soon as possible after crushing in order to minimize skin contact, so alternated between 5 cycles of crush and press.
Lessons learned:
- We made a plastic ‘skirt’ to guide grapes from the crusher into the bin below. This worked well, but I think in future I’ll bite the bullet and buy a proper stand.
- Lubricate the press ratchet! The first load was a real chore to press, then I sprayed some food-safe lubricant into the mechanism. Night and day difference.
- The pump was OK, but the prefilter got clogged after each press load so I had to disassemble it to clean it off. It’s really hard to reassemble the screen though, and in the interests of time we bucketed the last couple of press loads into carboys with a funnel.
Our overall yield was fairly low, ~23 gallons so only a bit more than 100gal/ton. I got more like 150gal/ton from my red pinot last year. I think some of this is the inherent lower yield of non-fermented grapes (the pomace remains much more wet), plus I didn’t want to press too hard and extract dark colors/harsh flavors from the skins and seeds.
Now the moment of truth. I broke out the hydrometer, pH meter and burette and found…
Brix 21.0, pH 3.07, TA 9.15g/L
Oh.
Those numbers are likely to make a rather sharp tasting still wine. However, they’re pretty good numbers if you’re going to make sparkling wine, so plans have changed. Looks like 2022 will be the year of the Blanc de Noir at Barrel Monkey cellars!
Next day: I racked the juice off the sediment into 2x 15-gallon kegs. I made and pitched starters for the two kegs using 2 different yeast strains: BA11 and QA23. And so my unexpected but hopefully rewarding sparkling wine adventure begins!
On Saturday I heard from a local winegrower – he had heard that I wanted grapes, and would I be interested in his pinot noir? I love white pinot noir. It’s not that common, but living in the heart of pinot country there are several local winemakers who produce it. Moreover this winegrower’s grapes were reportedly around 23 brix – right in the white wine sweet spot – and they were relatively inexpensive.
I called the pick for the following day. The only catch – it would be me and Mrs. Monkey doing the picking, since I only wanted to take ¼ ton. So at 6:15am, off we headed, buckets and pruning shears in hand. Mercifully, it was cool and overcast all day, in contrast to the 100+ degree days of the previous week.
We started picking just before 7am and ended around 10. For those who haven’t done it, it’s hard work, and I have an increased respect for the folks that go out doing this in the dark with only floodlights or headlamps to guide them – sometimes on steep and uneven terrain. But eventually our bin filled up. We were a little short of a quarter ton when I weighed the grapes, but given the time and the fact that we still needed to crush and press we elected to head home.
Here is the ‘crush pad’. The plan was to offload from the truck by bucketing grapes into the crusher, crush into the plastic bin, load into the press and then pump juice from the press bucket into carboys in my basement. We wanted to press as soon as possible after crushing in order to minimize skin contact, so alternated between 5 cycles of crush and press.
Lessons learned:
- We made a plastic ‘skirt’ to guide grapes from the crusher into the bin below. This worked well, but I think in future I’ll bite the bullet and buy a proper stand.
- Lubricate the press ratchet! The first load was a real chore to press, then I sprayed some food-safe lubricant into the mechanism. Night and day difference.
- The pump was OK, but the prefilter got clogged after each press load so I had to disassemble it to clean it off. It’s really hard to reassemble the screen though, and in the interests of time we bucketed the last couple of press loads into carboys with a funnel.
Our overall yield was fairly low, ~23 gallons so only a bit more than 100gal/ton. I got more like 150gal/ton from my red pinot last year. I think some of this is the inherent lower yield of non-fermented grapes (the pomace remains much more wet), plus I didn’t want to press too hard and extract dark colors/harsh flavors from the skins and seeds.
Now the moment of truth. I broke out the hydrometer, pH meter and burette and found…
Brix 21.0, pH 3.07, TA 9.15g/L
Oh.
Those numbers are likely to make a rather sharp tasting still wine. However, they’re pretty good numbers if you’re going to make sparkling wine, so plans have changed. Looks like 2022 will be the year of the Blanc de Noir at Barrel Monkey cellars!
Next day: I racked the juice off the sediment into 2x 15-gallon kegs. I made and pitched starters for the two kegs using 2 different yeast strains: BA11 and QA23. And so my unexpected but hopefully rewarding sparkling wine adventure begins!
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The picture really doesn't do it justice, the bubbles are really nice and persistent.
