Syrah from Carneros

[berrycrush]

I was a little concerned about the 35ppm SO2 you started on the grapes, but I see your fermentation has been rolling along pretty well. Keep posting.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

I was a little concerned about the 35ppm SO2 you started on the grapes, but I see your fermentation has been rolling along pretty well. Keep posting.

Does that seem like too little to you? I was advised to go with 35ppm by a very experienced commercial winemaker so that's what I went with. I do believe that natural yeast metabolized about 1* Brix worth of sugar at the very beginning, but it tastes and smells really really good so I'm actually happy that that happened.

Earlier today I measured with a hydrometer and was at -1.1* Brix so I decided since I had the afternoon off I would press. Initially I was just going to hand press with some cheesecloth but after spending 20 minutes to get ~1/4 gallon done and fighting with clogged cheesecloth I decided to just go rent a press. Spent $30 and rented a #30 press, and 45 minutes later had 10 gallons of pressed off Syrah. With my girlfriend's help, it went really easy and I'm very happy with the results. I didn't press it super hard, there was still some moisture left in the pomace afterwards but I stopped pressing when the wine that was coming out of the press started to get really leesy. I was tasting the wine as it came out of the press to taste for harshness from too firm of pressing but didn't get too harsh by the time I stopped. Hydrometer reading after pressing was 0.9967 Sp. Gra., or about -0.88* Brix, so only about 0.22* Brix were released. Now I'm gearing up to pick Grenache and get that through primary so I can get the Syrah and the Grenache into the barrel.

Here's some pictures from today:

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Went ahead and did the first racking today, as I feel that fermentation is very close to being done. Temperature is down to 70.5* F and with correction, Specific Gravity is 0.9956 or about -1.15* Brix. I was starting to pick up on a bit of a reductive quality in the aromas of the wine so I decided to do a splash racking, hoping to get some more oxygen in there. It's amazing how much better it looks, smells, and tastes after the first racking, it's really turning into a nice wine. Definitely needs some more body to it, and some of the harshness of the malic acid cut down so I'm excited to see how it is after ML. At any rate, I snapped a quick picture of how it's looking in glass now. Definitely still a little cloudy, and I have to say I'm not very good at racking on the small scale. I'm used to racking with a 2" hose in a 5,000 gallon tank which is somehow easier for me haha. The lees wasn't super compact, so I collected 1.5 liters off the top of the lees to see if I can settle that out some more, which may not be worth it but we'll see. Anyways, here's how we're looking now:



I'll be picking another 13 gallons worth of Grenache from the same vineyard on Saturday morning. I hear that Grenache has very pink lees generally, I'm excited to see what that's like.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Picked Grenache early Saturday morning. Had planned on having it de-stemmed early that afternoon but that didn't happen. Threw some KMBS, oak chips, and dry ice in there Saturday afternoon and will be inoculating with RP15 tomorrow afternoon. I'm thinking I will do much more de-stemming by hand initially than I did with the Syrah. I'm hoping to make this a little more fruit forward and a little brighter than the Syrah, which should make a nice blend. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much as I had wanted to get (about 13 gallons worth) so I'm going to have to top my barrel with something else when it comes time for that. At any rate, this Grenache tastes amazing and the fruit I got came from a block that grows tiny berries so I'm hoping this will be some great stuff. I don't have any numbers on it yet but will soon. (the white berries are ones that are frozen from dry ice, not a mold/mildew)

 

[zadvocate]

Those look great. That's great that you can go and pick fruit like that.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Those look great. That's great that you can go and pick fruit like that.

Thank you, I'm pretty excited to make this stuff because it's so good as fruit and I really love Rhone reds. I agree, it's really nice that my dad has his own vineyard and that he's interested in helping me learn about this stuff. He also really does know what he's doing so it's very high quality fruit.

I tested the must yesterday and this stuff was at 32 Brix. Before pitching the yeast, adding some Go-Ferm, and DAP, I ended up adding a bunch of acidulated water (like 1/5 of the original volume worth). I'm a little worried that I may have added too much but I guess that will remain to be seen. Today the must is down to 21 Brix but there are a number of raisins in there and many of the berries are still whole so I think some more sugar will be released in the next couple days. It has already started to get some nice color and flavor so I'm not super concerned but it just seems like a lot of water to me. Two different online calculators confirm the amount I added so I guess we'll see. I also have to keep in mind that these berries were very small on average so there should be a good amount of skin contact. I also spent a fair amount of time de-stemming as many of the clusters as I felt like I could in the time I had, and will do the same tomorrow and continually throughout fermentation. I don't really want as many of the stems in this must as I had with the Syrah because they are much greener and are likely quite harsh. Also Grenache is lighter than Syrah so I'm not sure it can handle the harshness too well. The winery I used to work at follow somewhat of a burgundian model so we made a ton of Chardonnay and a fair amount of Pinot along with some custom crush clients. The smell of this Grenache as juice is almost identical to the smell of Pinot juice, which is really nice to me. We'll see how that changes.

I also just inoculated the Syrah for ML. I had to eyeball the amount of culture I added because it was graciously given to me in a very small quantity of freeze-dried culture which I can not accurately weigh (enough ML to inoculate 20 gallons is almost nothing to a commercial facility). I also added Acti-ML at the normal dosage, and just put the dry powder along with dry culture into the container. I'm not sure if many people are comfortable with doing this, but this is how we did it at the winery I worked at and I trust the winemaker there greatly. Also, they never seem to have any problems getting anything to go through ML and they make 30,000 cases/year so my ~8 cases should be fine.

 

[smorg]

Thanks for sharing! Makes my mouth water!

Question though, how did you turn 140# of grapes into 10 gallons?

I only got 14 gallons out of my 252 pounds of grapes. I am a bit jealous!

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Thanks for sharing! Makes my mouth water!

Question though, how did you turn 140# of grapes into 10 gallons?

I only got 14 gallons out of my 252 pounds of grapes. I am a bit jealous!

Ha well that's a good sign!

That's a good question and the answer lies in how my measurements are taken. Bathroom scales are quite inaccurate and to add to it I don't have a great way of taking measurements of volume in that scale. I also round up or down a fair amount when I write on here but the truth is that according to the tick marks on the plastic containers I have, there's about 9-9.5 gallons of Syrah. To some extent this leads to inaccurate additions and what not, but this is more for fun anyways.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

This morning I added another 50g of oak chips (medium toasted french) from a gut feeling more than anything. I punched down 5 times today to try and get more sugar released and to try and integrate the water addition more because it was tasting very strongly of tartaric acid last night. Last I checked, sugars were up to 24 Brix and the flavor, aroma, and color has started to really shine through much more than before. I just went out and did the last punchdown for the day and it was foaming along nicely. Ambient temperatures have dropped significantly from when the Syrah was going through primary, so the must is only at about 70* F currently. I did put the fermenter out in the sun with the top on for an hour or two to encourage some heat, that seemed to help but only raised the temps by 2 degrees. I also mixed up the Syrah again and put it in the sun for about an hour to try and encourage the MLF. Haven't really heard or seen any CO2, but then again I'm not using an airlock so I guess maybe I wouldn't be able to notice yet anyways. I'm a little concerned that maybe ML is going to be tricky but it's too soon to tell. I wish I had more testing abilities so that I could really know what was going on but again, this is mostly for fun for me anyways.

Here's a couple pictures from tonight's punchdown.

 

[smorg]

Is... Is it... Is it wrong that I want to lick your hand? Looks yummy!

I usually avoid putting my hands (or other body parts) in my wine, am I paranoid?

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Is... Is it... Is it wrong that I want to lick your hand? Looks yummy!

I usually avoid putting my hands (or other body parts) in my wine, am I paranoid?

Haha I think maybe you're onto a new tasting room model, tasting straight from the winemaker's hand! I'm glad to have the positive feedback

The only thing to keep in mind is that fermenting must is very high in both yeast cell counts and nutrients, so don't go itching your eye or any... sensitive areas... or you may end up with a pretty gnarly yeast infection. It also means that I have little micro-wineries under my fingernails at any given time. It's obviously not the most sanitary thing but basically it's easier for me to clean my hands after a punchdown than a punchdown tool itself and this lends to a more careful punchdown anyways. I want to avoid breaking stems up as much as possible, so this seems like the best way to go about that.

There's legend of a winery somewhere in France that would invite people to swim (naked) in their must before inoculating to help mix things together. I just make sure to wash my hands well before and after, and I think it's fine. There's a somewhat locally famous cheesemaker who makes some very nice goat cheese with a distinct flavor that they figured out came from the microbes that naturally lived in her armpits which inevitably made it's way into the cheese. I can't remember the cheese company and I'm not sure I've tried the cheese but the general consensus was that it was very good cheese. I'm not sure if I'm lucky enough to have desirable micro-flora in my armpits but my Syrah turned out really good and I only did hand punch-downs with that so I think it'll be ok. Using a stainless steel or otherwise sanitary punchdown tool is more controlled without a doubt, however.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

I've been noticing this really strong and interesting aroma of green Jolly Ranchers coming from the Grenache. I'm wondering if it will remain in the wine or if this is only going to be there for primary fermentation. I'm not sure I mind either way, but I have a feeling that it will go away. Anyways, down to about 6 Brix now. This one isn't going as quickly as the Syrah but is still moving along pretty quickly. I keep breaking open more and more berries but it doesn't seem to be affecting the sugar levels dramatically. At any rate, the color and flavor is really starting to become impressive. It's still tasting very sweet and young but it's starting to have more and more finish to it. It's very fruity and sweet on the front and then dies off in the middle then comes back with a bit of a finish. I think it will definitely develop more but the blend with the Syrah should be very nice.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Well, today was good and bad. I pressed off the Grenache, which so far is doing very well and actually improved with pressing. I ended up pressing the pomace twice because the press I rented was kinda wimpy and left the pomace still fairly moist. There were also many whole berries left behind and seeing as how I added so much water to the must early on, I wanted to get out as much flavor as I could with pressing. Overall, I'm quite impressed with the Grenache. As a standalone wine I think it's a little lacking in tannin and falls short in the mid-palette but the Syrah is full of mid-palette and has plenty of tannin to pass around so they should blend well together. I expected them to be a good match based off of the success of the typical Rhone blend. I think there's a reason this is a common blend. I ended up with just over 12 gallons of Grenache, so clearly the bathroom scale is inaccurate and my intuition was more accurate. At any rate, pressing off gave me another 0.5 brix to ferment, and that seems to be going nicely with lots of CO2 still being released. Unfortunately, I won't be able to inoculate for ML until a week from now but I think that'll be ok.

I also wasn't able to check on my Syrah for a week and unfortunately it now has a noticeable aroma of rotten eggs... I'm pretty bummed about it because it was doing so well but I'll splash rack it tomorrow morning and see if that works to get rid of the stink. I'm thinking that I'm probably just gonna go ahead and hit it with some copper sulfate anyways for fear or mercaptan or worse down the line. I'll see how it smells after racking off the lees, as it's possible that the H2S is mostly coming from the lees. I'm not sure how this happened as I had thought it was pretty much done with fermentation. I didn't add any nutrients after 1/3 of the way through because it went so quickly (and that was only a 75% dose of Fermaid-K) but maybe I should have. I'll know more in the morning but I'm certainly not happy about it. I also plan on racking the Grenache off tomorrow (off of it's gross lees) but probably won't do a splash racking with that because Grenache apparently doesn't like much oxygen exposure. I was going to put them together in my barrel tomorrow but I don't think that's going to happen until next weekend at this stage because I only plan on treating the Syrah with copper, and I don't want to strip any of the (amazing) flavor out of the Grenache with the copper. Anyways I'm pretty frustrated with the H2S (even though I sorta expected it with Syrah) but I'm also really impressed with the Grenache. Before pressing it was a little too tart and tasted a little too wimpy. Now it tastes a fair bit less tart and has a little more body to it. Of course, this could be a consequence of more sugar being released to solution but I'd like to think that the whole berries that still existed contributed some interesting flavors. At any rate, I'm just hoping my sulfide problem with the Syrah doesn't pose me any considerable problems, but I guess we'll see.

 

[stickman]

I have made quite a bit of red wine from Sonoma including the Carneros region. The young wine (if grapes are not over ripe) can be tannic with a high capacity to take oxygen, and with lees present, the wine quickly gets reductive generating H2S. The first two weeks after press are critical and excess lees should be removed quickly. I generally do two rackings before ML to remove as much of the gross lees as possible, one at 24hrs after press and another at 72hrs after press. The ML culture and oak are added after the second racking; in this type of wine, I think the oak addition timing is critical, the oak contains oxygen which is released to the wine slowly, similar to micro oxygenation, which helps to minimize H2S production.
Rack off the lees asap, if you have inert gas, you can sparge the H2S out without oxidizing the H2S or the wine, transfer to barrel or add oak asap.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

I have made quite a bit of red wine from Sonoma including the Carneros region. The young wine (if grapes are not over ripe) can be tannic with a high capacity to take oxygen, and with lees present, the wine quickly gets reductive generating H2S. The first two weeks after press are critical and excess lees should be removed quickly. I generally do two rackings before ML to remove as much of the gross lees as possible, one at 24hrs after press and another at 72hrs after press. The ML culture and oak are added after the second racking; in this type of wine, I think the oak addition timing is critical, the oak contains oxygen which is released to the wine slowly, similar to micro oxygenation, which helps to minimize H2S production.
Rack off the lees asap, if you have inert gas, you can sparge the H2S out without oxidizing the H2S or the wine, transfer to barrel or add oak asap.

This really does make sense and I hadn't really considered this. I guess I figured I would wait to rack it off the second time until I was going to add the Syrah and the Grenache to the barrel. I knew deep down that I really should have gotten it off that lees sooner and gotten some more oxygen exposure. Oh well, the H2S isn't the worst I've smelled. When I was a cellar rat there was a Merlot that I did a copper addition to that was really really bad but after adding the copper it came back just fine. I like the idea of oak addition, I may give that a shot this coming week. I still have some chips left and I think if I leave just the Syrah on chips for a week or two that may actually be a good thing in the long run. Thank you for your insight, I really appreciate it!

I racked the Syrah off today, gave it a healthy dose of oxygen, and gave it a whiff. Surprisingly enough, it didn't seem to change at all, and the lees also didn't really reek of H2S as I had thought it would. I'm going to do a copper trial and addition on Monday (and probably oak chips too now). I think it's better that I hit it with copper now rather than trying to blow it off when it could turn to mercaptan later, especially since it isn't a terrible smell of H2S and it doesn't seem to be getting any worse. I added some Grenache to the Syrah to fill the containers better (also to have a place to put a couple gallons of the Grenache). I also racked the Grenache off it's gross lees (which was a crazy pink color) and due to running out of containers wound up just putting it into my barrel (meaning the barrel is about half full of Grenache right now). I sorta feel like this is a bad idea but also considering what happened with the Syrah I think this may be not such a bad idea. It will only be in the barrel half full for about a week before I add the Syrah to the barrel. I'll go ahead and rack it again sometime this coming week as well, then inoculate with ML. I think I'm actually going to rehydrate the bacteria this time to compare how that works compared to just putting the dry bacteria in the Syrah. I think the Syrah is going because when I was racking it it was foaming up a fair bit but normally I can't tell at all. I'll have to test it soon. The Grenache and Syrah will end up going through ML together anyways, so I'm sure it'll work out in the end.

Has anyone aged on yeast hulls before? I've been reading up on it a fair bit and I'm thinking about trying it, at least during ML, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something. My thought is that if I add the yeast hulls this coming week and leave the wine on them until ML is done or at least until my next racking, it would help with ML and may also give the wine more body and complexity. Obviously I don't want to add more nutrients than I need but it seems like yeast hulls are a little more inert than most other nutrient sources. I have read that they can oxidize and release rancid flavors, which would obviously be something I'd like to avoid. Thought I'd see if anyone on here has any experience with the hulls for this purpose, and any ideas on whether or not they're worth using. I can't seem to find a whole lot of info on uses of yeast hulls other than restarting a stuck ferment.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Got myself some 1% copper sulfate today. Started off by making a 50mL solution of 0.01% copper sulfate and used that to make 4 different concentrations of copper in the Syrah: 0.2ppm, 0.3ppm, 0.4ppm, and 0.5ppm, as well as a control. Most things I read recommended larger doses to compare but I knew that my H2S problem wasn't too out of control and was also in it's fairly early stages so I decided to go the route I did. I mixed them up and let them sit for a few minutes before giving each one a smell and comparing it to the control. I spent about an hour doing so, referring back to the original container of wine which obviously had the strongest smell of H2S, and really trying to hone in. It's a very subtle thing for sure and takes lots of second guessing and referring back to the control and other concentrations to decide on a number. In the end, I decided on 0.4ppm. It had the "fruitiest" smell, didn't have any perceptible H2S and seemed logical to boot. I measured out the 1% copper solution using a 10mL syringe and a 1mL syringe to get the most accurate reading I could do on the cheap. That ended up being 3.3mL per container, each of them having about 5.5 gallons of wine in them. My process was admittedly pretty far from accurate. I'm used to chemistry labs where I have access to all sorts of super accurate measuring devices so it felt pretty far from accurate to me the whole time. That being said, it was at least precise enough that I was able to notice a distinct difference between each trial, pretty amazing considering I was looking at a difference of 0.01ppm. Anyways, my other option was what was written on the bottle "add 0.5ppm to the wine and yeast hulls to capture the excess copper. Then, re-smell and add more if necessary." Or I could have guessed, but I decided that even a fairly inaccurate trial would be better than nothing. The trial would have been more accurate if I had used distilled water to make the diluted solution, had better measuring devices, and was using good wine glasses to smell the trials after letting them sit overnight in a stoppered container beforehand. I would have preferred to have done it this way with a few other people who were well honed in on smelling H2S, but this was the best I could do today. At any rate, copper is now in and I mixed it up well. I'll rack it off it's lees in a few days when I rack the Grenache again. Then, the Grenache and Syrah will finally be together in the barrel. Some places were recommending fining with bentonite after the copper addition, which I'll likely end up doing before I bottle the wine. Do any of you have experience with copper additions? I'm tempted to add some yeast hulls soon just to make sure I pull out as much copper as I can, and also to help MLF (which has kicked into gear a bit more recently) but not sure if I should for fear of adding excess nutrients for other bacteria to take over. Any advice?

 

[Luse_Cellar]

This is where it starts to get a little nerdy but I'm betting a few people here are interested in this. I just spent a little time on excel making a quick ferm curve for the Syrah and the Grenache. This is showing Days of Fermentation vs Brix and Temperature (in Celsius). I made a trendline for the hell of it as well.


Here you can see how quickly and steadily this ferment went. As you can see it only took 9 days and aside from that odd blip between days 2 and 3 it really goes very steadily. I'm not sure what caused that blip but I would imagine it may have been more sugar being released from the must, or perhaps a lag phase in the yeast. It seems to end right around when I added the first (and only) dose of Fermaid-K, which I did at 17 Brix. It could be due to all 3 possibilities. Day 7 was press day, which is why the sugar level increases abruptly.


The much slower fermentation of the Grenache could in large part be due to the colder temperatures, or this could be a consequence of the slower fermentation. The increase of sugar level at day 2 is due to more berries being broken open after the water addition, not from a sugar or concentrate addition. I don't have an explanation for the blip at day 6, maybe some more sugar was released. I did do some de-stemming that day and also hand squeezed some whole berries before I took the reading so that's probably what caused it. It's really interesting to me how the tail end of the sugar depletion follows the temperature almost exactly in terms of it's slope. Day 11 was press day in this case.

 

[stickman]

Looks good, in the Syrah data, you might want to change the second day 2 and second day 7 to 2.5 and 7.5, assuming the second data points were later in the day; this might correct the graph.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

Looks good, in the Syrah data, you might want to change the second day 2 and second day 7 to 2.5 and 7.5, assuming the second data points were later in the day; this might correct the graph.

This isn't a bad idea. I think if I wanted to get more detailed with it I would just go by hours after inoculation but like I said, I'm not taking this wine too seriously.

 

[Luse_Cellar]

So after blending and tasting, it's still quite tart and fruity but once you get past the tartness it has wonderful body and finish. The aroma is quite pronounced as well, the green jolly rancher aroma really shines through, along with raspberry and strawberry. The color is a rather interesting dark purple with pink around the outside. I think it really needs ML to cut down on the tartness and round it out further, and I'm hoping the oxidation and concentration of the barrel will help as well. Because the barrel I am using is neutral, I will probably also pick up some oak cubes and put them in the barrel to further round out the tartness. ML wasn't seeming to have been going for the first 5 or so days, but finally over the last few days I can hear it going when I stick my ear in the bunghole. I haven't tasted it in a couple days but the aroma seems to be a bit less tart. I'm excited to see where it'll be when MLF is complete.