Chile - Spring 2018 - Malbec - Petit Verdot - Syrah

[jburtner]

Wow that's cool! I must have missed the detail about spontaneous MLF I wish there were some vendors close to here where I could drive and order grapes but it's been frozen buckets which is fine too just a little more pricey with the processing and shipping of course. Sounds like everyone has been getting good grapes from Chile so far except maybe a couple one off's... I have high hopes for this season and am happy to be doing this

Cheers!
-johann

 

[mainshipfred]

I have high hopes as well. My first batch was done January 2017. My last batch this spring is the Carmenere #19. Learned a lot in this short time and I'm sure I will continue to make mistakes but this was the first time I felt really comfortable with what I was doing.

 

[jburtner]

Arrived today.

First measurements for brix and pH.

Petit Verdot
Brix: 23
pH: 3.95

Malbec
Brix: 24
pH: 3.72

Syrah
Brix: 24
pH: 3.85

 

[jburtner]

Added enzymes this morning. I only ordered one 6g pack of ExV so two buckets got that (malbec and syrah) and the rest got scottzyme color pro.

I’ll let these sit for 24h to get the enzymes working before more labs tomorrow morning and pitching the yeasties.

Cheers!
-johann

 

[Ajmassa]

Added enzymes this morning. I only ordered one 6g pack of ExV so two buckets got that (malbec and syrah) and the rest got scottzyme color pro.

I’ll let these sit for 24h to get the enzymes working before more labs tomorrow morning and pitching the yeasties.

Cheers!
-johann
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Correct me if I’m wrong- but Ex-V calls for .075g per gal of must. You shoulda been able to do 30 gal with under 3g.
And btw, the must looks delish. Have fun!

 

[jburtner]

Was it .075 or .75??? Uh oh!!! Those two will be MUSH not MUST if so... I was surprised that I didn't order enough so maybe just missed a decimal..

-johann

EDIT:

Yeah it's 0.075g / gallon of must.
I dosed 10 gallons with six grams which is enough for 80 gallons..
6 divided by 0.075 = 80.
I guess I'll get good extraction on the Malbec and Syrah. Will be interesting to see how those fare and maybe I'll need to keep those two buckets separate now - I was planning to blend them back together with the other bucket of the same varietal near end of AF. I can still do that and just press fairly quick but will monitor and update.

*** REMINDER ***
No matter how I think I feel - Wine does not come before coffee
-j

 

[Ajmassa]

Was it .075 or .75??? Uh oh!!! Those two will be MUSH not MUST if so... I was surprised that I didn't order enough so maybe just missed a decimal..

-johann

EDIT:

Yeah it's 0.075g / gallon of must.
I dosed 10 gallons with six grams which is enough for 80 gallons..
6 divided by 0.075 = 80.
I guess I'll get good extraction on the Malbec and Syrah. Will be interesting to see how those fare and maybe I'll need to keep those two buckets separate now - I was planning to blend them back together with the other bucket of the same varietal near end of AF. I can still do that and just press fairly quick but will monitor and update.

*** REMINDER ***
No matter how I think I feel - Wine does not come before coffee
-j

My old man always used to say “every carpenter makes mistakes. 100% of em. Even the best. What separates a good carpenter from a great carpenter is knowing how and being able to fix your screwups without hurting quality”.
Nothing wrong with some extra tannin. Just cellar them for about 10 years [emoji23]

 

[Ajmassa]

What’s great about winemaking is you can give 10 different people those same buckets of must and get 10 very different sets of wines.
My plan of action would be to combine the Syrahs and Malbecs now. And then calculate a sugar addition to get em to at least a 25 Brix equivalent. Delicately punching your caps as they become slop.
And after AF and MLF not to hesitate to boost acid a little if still similar to your must numbers. Theory being that if super tannic then abv and acid bumped will help the balance later.
I really don’t know how right or wrong it would be, but it’s what I’d do. I’m still learning. I guess as longs as you have solid reasoning behind your decisions then it doesn’t matter. They’re your babies and you can handle them any way you want

 

[ceeaton]

Nothing wrong with some extra tannin. Just cellar them for about 10 years [emoji23]

Well, the EX-V will be limited to the tannins that are in the skins, so it's not like he dumped 10X too much tannin in the batch (don't try it, it's not pleasant). I think he'll be fine. The enzymes will become inactive upon onset of fermentation anyway.

I usually just buy the .8 g packets x number of batches I'm doing, that way I can just dump the whole packet in and not have to try and measure something less than a gram, accurately.

 

[jburtner]

I’m going to go ahead for now without acid or other adjustments until later. Not too worried about it at this point but i’ll forgo any tannin additions that I was considering.

I moved five gallons of each into a 20g brute then split remaining 5g into two buckets. Pitched three different yeasts for each varietal.

Petit Verdot
- BM 4x4
- D254
- L2056

Malbec
- D254
- D80
- L2056

Syrah
- CSM
- BM 4x4
- Syrah Wine Yeast

Will blend together next weekend into the brute and inoculate MLB’s tomorrow.

 

[stickman]

You really want your mouth to explode with flavor! Should be interesting to see the results.

 

[Ajmassa]

Hopefully that’s the expensive painters tape. You’ve got a lot goin on there. Kinda confusing too. Tell me if I got it correct.
Did you have 2 buckets of each to start? Blended 1 bucket of each for one 15gal ferment. Remaining would be another 15g total- then split that in 2. 3 blended wines. But pitched yeast individually 1st. A 5gal and (x2) 2.5gal for each before blending?
For a finished wine 1/3 of each varietal blended from 9 separate ferments?
It’s like a question on the SAT’s!

 

[jburtner]

Ha ha! No blended grapes. 3 varietals of two buckets each. 10gallons must.

I just made each bucket 1/2 full so the cap has room and i can ferment in the bucket. Three brutes each now w/five gallons. Nothing blended. I pitched a different yeast in each. So for each of the three varietals I have a brute w/5gallons, and two buckets w/2.5gallons must. Fermenting with different yeasts.

Next weekend or so as AF nears an end I’ll recombine the 1/2 buckets into the brute so it’ll be 10g of each varietal which will have been fermented with three different yeast.

Eventually after bulk ageing I might blend some and I’ve also got a merlot and a cab in bulk now that i can also use to blend.

 

[skyfire322]

Sounds like this will be an interesting blend! I'll definitely be keeping my eye on this thread Pardon my stupidity, but where did you end up ordering the juice pails from?

 

[jburtner]

@skyfire - I ordered frozen must buckets from Musto Wine company. They get fresh grapes for harvest and you can either pick them up (in Hartford Connecticut ) or they crush/destem and bucketize them and mail them to you frozen.

MLB’s went in today. VP41, MBR31, Wyeast 4007, and Enoferm Beta.

Starting to fizzle

Cheers,
-johann

 

[jburtner]

Just a quick update -

Ferment on all of these is going well. The PV has been most active visually and from a co2 production standooint. Down to 1.010 range. Syrah and Malbec less active but down to 1.030 range. I’ll be pressing this weekend and xferring to glass. Expecting more sediment fallout in the syrah and malbec which were slightly overdosed with the ExV enzyme. They all smell and taste good. Looking forward to mixing the different yeast pails of each varietal and moving to the next phase. I might step feed the malbec and syrah with some sugar to boost the abv slightly but i want to be careful and not over sweenten.

Cheers!
-johann

 

[CK55]

NIce, i wish i could make that much wine lol.

 

[jburtner]

Spent last night pressing all these grapes. The syrah skins were the most mushy after the ExV overdose. Malbec not so much and I didn’t use the ExV on the Petit Verdot.

Anyway, I haven’t checked SG but AF is mostly done and the three wines are now in glass. Each was fermented and mlf’d with three different yeast and bacterias now recombined in glass. I tried to keep my tester glass full but it had a big hole in the top the somehow kept letting the new wine out of the glass. I feel like these will be good wines.

Won’t sulfite until I know mlf is complete and there are a couple inches of gross lees already compacting. Might slurry in some bentonite to help compact.

Cheers!
-johann

 

[stickman]

Looks good so far. I wouldn't add bentonite at this stage unless you're in a big hurry. The color is not yet stable and bentonite would likely strip some of it out.

 

[Johnd]

I second the comment from @stickman , you worked too hard to get that color, EX-V overdose and all!! Pressing that stuff is a little unwieldy, but letting it sit in the basket and doing some stirring helps it along. Just let it settle naturally for a few days and take what the grapes give you!!