Left Coast Cowboys

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a technical winemaking post. So here goes.

Andy has perfected the ultimate homemade topping up system for wine for less than $200 for the whole system, which in the winemaking world is a huge bargain.

A bit of background: when your wine is in barrels and resting, you want to make sure as little air as possible can get to it to oxidize it. But you still want to siphon out some for periodic tasting. Which means that you are lowering the volume, therefore introducing more air. What to do? Obviously, you need a methodology for “topping up” your barrels easily and quickly.

Here’s the homemade system Andy devised:

Andy has a selection of every one of our varietals in a separate tank under very low pressure, topped off with nitrogen, similar to Coca Cola in a soda fountain.

So when Andy pulls out some wine from a particular barrel (as he does here with the appropriately named “wine thief”), he can top up the barrel to prevent the air from oxidizing the wine.

Removing some Grenache to mix with the Mourvedre to see how they might meld as a Rhone-style blend.

Now the barrels can be topped up with fresh wine from the pressurized cannisters, thus avoiding the dreaded air contact.

Topping up the barrels.

Dr. FrankenWine mixes Grenache and Mourvedere. Results: very encouraging!

Verdict on the Mourvedre, Grenache and Cabernet: Much better than expected. High hopes for this very first vintage.

 Ran up to Sonoma to do a quick check on our Cabernet which we transferred to secondary fermentation carboys on Saturday.

Since we had so little, we’ve decided to do some experimentation. Half the Cabernet we put through primary fermentation using the specially formulated UC Davis yeast that most winemakers use. The second, smaller batch we decided to process using only the naturally occurring yeasts on the skins. Now we see why UC Davis makes so much on its yeast strains. They really work.

Our nature boy wine got stuck about ten points above the optimum specific gravity of 1000. So we had to resort to adding some yeast to get that batch restarted. Mission accomplished. Two days later, it’s bubbling away. That’s the fire.

The misfire? The second goal of the trip: to pick the remaining ripe tomatoes, cukes and peppers and get a glamour shot of the produce using a make-shift light tent. This is the latest assignment of my photography class.

Hmmm. Not really good enough, even if my make-shift lightbox is big enough to include a terrier.

Even worse, every photo I took under this contraption included reflections of me, my camera and the whole jury-rigged mess reflected in the wineglass and the bottle.

Yup, there's that big reflector and me right in the reflection.

Finally, I packed up and headed back to San Francisco, leaving all my fresh picked produce sitting out there on the gravel.

Well, the foxes will be grateful. Ever had one of those days where you can’t win for losing?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know we have finally amassed enough winemaking equipment and knowledge that we have a system. It’s not always pretty; it’s seldom elegant. But we can get grapes from the fields, through crushing/destemming in less than an hour and from primary fermentation through pressing and into secondary fermentation in less than two. Ah, yes, we have our system and it’s almost scientific. It worked for the Cinsault, the Grenache and the Mourvedre. Then there was the Cabernet. The teeny, tiny yield of Cabernet. So teeny tiny a yield that dragging out all those hoses and pieces of equipment and instrumentation just didn’t seem to make sense. So we went back to the Stone Age. Or at least the age when old Italian men crushed wine in their basements in their wives’ washtubs and with old oars from rowboats to stir it.

As you can see above, rather than set up our elaborate hose system, we defaulted to the old Bail and Pour Method of getting the macerated grapes out of the primary fermentation vats and into the press.

Didn't Martha Stewart say a full set of Pyrex measuring pitchers would always come in handy?

So maybe we didn’t revert all the way back to the Stone Age, because we did wheel the new press out to squeeze and separate the juice from the wine skins.

And let the wine flow. Minus the skins and seeds.

It's young, but at this stage, you can call it wine.

Now another piece of high-tech equipment. Yes, it’s the plastic funnel:

Kids, don't try this without terrier supervision.

The whole sad little operation, glass carboys and all.

The only consolation: it’s actually tasting pretty good, even at this early stage. So when we are drinking our first Cabernet, will we even remember the humiliation of having so little that we had to process it the Barney Rubble Way?

A bit jejeune, but with a certain je ne sais quoi. And a back note of terrier fur.

And speaking of the two terriers of Two Terrier Vineyards, it seems they will emit uninterrupted, ear-piercing shrieks during the whole process — even if there is no noisy machinery.

Our fearless leaders. Now you know what we mean when we say: "Our wine's special flavor? It's the terroir."

 Ever wondered what the typical day of a winemaker is like? No, not the romantic life of the beret-wearing winemaker you see in movies who spends his days in a picturesque villa sipping his fermenting wine and murmuring things like: “Eet is thee terroir.” I mean the grunts who do all the heavy lifting of the winemaking process. Not the glass lifting, but the bucket, sulfite and bin lifting work. These aren’t winemakers, they are “wine babysitters.” I are one.

Since one of us at Two Terrier Vineyards still has a day job, I’m the one who’s been living in a barn for six weeks babysitting the four varietals we’re trying to shepherd from harvest to crush through primary and secondary fermentation. With Mourvedre, Grenache and Cinsault now resting in oak barrels and only the Cabernet in primary fermentation, there’s more time to leisurely discuss the process. Or the process as it happens in my world.

First thing, you wake up a little before six AM because that’s when suddenly frantic terriers are pawing you and barking to go out.

It’s pretty dark out now at six, so I’m keeping the barn lit up, as my husband would say, “like Blackpool Illuminations.” I know it’s not very energy appropriate, but since we’re way out in the wilds, I need the light perimeter to keep the resident Mountain Lion at bay. So at six, we’re walking gingerly around the available pools of light where we (hopefully) can see large felines before they leap on us and sever our vertebra.

When it’s finally light enough that we feel we can defend ourselves against large predatory cats, we begin the 1/2 mile walk from barn to crush pad. But first we have to stop at Lake Charles and bark at the water.

As we stroll through the vineyards, we pass many beautiful flowers in the Insectary. This is a dense planting of natives featuring year-round color and bloom to keep the beneficial birds and insects working to maintain pest-free grapes.

Here's an example of one of the plants in the Insectary.

It's crucial at this point to check under EVERY BUSH for lizards.

Finally we round the corner to the Crush Pad. Lucy leads the way.

Here's our pitiful Cabernet harvest in these small grey containers. Behind are the white bins that hold one ton of grapes and where we fermented our other varietals. Our Cab harvest was so small, we'll be lucky to get a few case out of it.

Still, the grapes are really foaming and bubbling as I punch them down. Fermentation is GO!

Then we do all the science stuff like checking temperature and specific gravity.

Everything is noted down in an extremely scientific manner.

Now we go into the wine cave to check on the other varietals that are aging in oak. Quick, check for lizards!

Then the half mile walk back to the barn through the vineyards. That's the Insectary on the right.

We notice that the Toyon and Madrone trees are putting out berries.

That brings out the foxes. Lots of them judging by the amount of poo. Some of us taste this just to be sure it is fox poo.

So you know that old term “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” We basically do this whole routine two more times. Then it’s dark and the critters and scary things are coming out. So we barricade ourselves in the barn.

We're so tired at this point, we collapse and listen to country music. This is Oscar enjoying the Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens.

That’s the drill. No romance. Lots of walking. Some scientific stuff. And lots of fox poo. Sante!

I’m getting myself geared up for NaBloPoMo or National Blog Posting Month, where you commit to posting once a day, every day for a month. And no cheating and writing 5 advanced posts on Sunday!

This is my flight check week.

Who knew our harvest and crush would stretch over SIX WEEKS as each of five varietals managed to come ripe at one week intervals. After harvest, each grape type has to be crushed/destemmed, then put into primary fermentation vats where they require intense, full time babysitting for a week or so — what with three times daily punchdowns, temperature checks and specific gravity readings. The problem was, every time I shepherded a varietal through that labor intensive process and into secondary fermentation, the next varietal would be screaming to be picked. So the process went on and on and on.

Today we picked the last of our Cabernet and will have it all in primary fermentation vats by tonight. Then one more week or so of Grape Daycare and my life will be “schedulable” again.

Funny thing about that Cabernet. It’s eventually going to be our largest crop, but apparently our land seems vastly more suited for our Rhone style varietals: the Grenache, Mourvedre and Cinsault. Although we aren’t technically at the full three year point, where one expects to get useable grapes, those three yielded nearly a ton each of lovely fruit. And that’s in a year when we dropped fifty percent of the fruit just to give the vines a chance to strengthen! But the Cabernet is still sulking like a four year old who doesn’t want to go to daycare. It grudgingly put out tiny fruit on about every third vine. And it stubbornly sat at 25 Brix level until we gave up and just started harvesting.

Our Cabernet harvest is laughable. I’d be surprised if we managed to get 100 pounds of fruit. Which is probably a good thing since we had to pick it ourselves and my wrenched back still has me hobbling around like a 90 year old.

I can tell you, there aren't many of these bins we're filling out of the Cabernet block.

Did I make it clear how teeny tiny our Cabernet yield was? Look at the puny size of these "berries". Well, the vines aren't yet technically mature.

However, we have a plan. A small amount of Cabernet is just perfect for experimentation with blending and trying out different techniques. If we ruin it all and learn what not to do, who cares? I think we’ll be pleased with our Rhone varietals and can afford to play with our Cab. So far the experiments we’re contemplating are fermenting naturally without adding yeasts, trying different temps for fermentation and experimenting with unusual blends.

Call our fermentation shed “Frankenstein’s Lab”. And be careful going around there on moonlit nights!

Found this tiny bird's nest in the Cabernet. Makes me happy to think such a tiny bird would feel safe only a few feet off the ground. Guess those biodynamics principles are working!

It's off to Frankenstein's Lab for these guys. MWWWWWAAAAAAAHAAAHAA!

So this Insectary seems to be working. The goal was to plant masses of bird and bee-friendly plants and aim for year round color and food for these beneficial vine guardians. After our recent hot spell, I thought everything was done, but suddenly new plants have burst into bloom.