2011 Crush

So Nate and I took the plunge and bought grapes that eventually we hope will be wine. As noted on the previous post, this blog will chronicle our foray into making grapes into wine. The first post will deal mostly with the crush and how almost 300 pounds of wine grapes came into our possession. Enjoy:

We procured a wee bit more grapes than we expected, this being due in part to the fact that the grapes were 50% of our anticipated price. Harvest 2011 cost us $1/lb or $30 per box:

We received 7 30# boxes of Syrah and in addition picked up 2 boxes of Tempranillo. The Tempranillo was a spur of the moment acquisition. The 30# boxes were coming in around 32-33#s of fruit each. The fruit came from Doc Stewart Vineyard, appellation Wahluke Slope, near Mattawa via Gilbert Vineyards. Initially we were going to pick it up at the vineyard, but they had a truck coming over the pass to a distribution point in Woodinville on Sunday October 23rd. For the princely sum of $8 we could pick up our grapes in Woodinville instead of Mattawa. Done deal. The fruit was picked in the early morning of October 23rd.

Crush 2011, happened at 1 pm on October 23rd. We rented the crusher/destemmer from Cellar Homebrew in shoreline and used the equipment on site. This is a very messy process so being able to do it on site with everything set up and easily cleaned was great. The rental fee was $20.

Basically you put the grapes in the hopper on top, being very careful to pick out any MOG (MOG = Material Other then Grape), and then spin that handle on the right. The machine crushes the grapes and removes at least 90% of the stems. Being a small batch operation we picked through the crush as it was coming down the chute to the food grade plastic fermenting bin (basically a new garbage can) so virtually every little stem was removed along with any MOG that persisted through the initial sort.

The two large fermenters in front are the Syrah, the small fermenter in the back is the Tempranillo. We estimated 12.25 gallons of Syrah in each bin and 7 gallons of Tempranillo must. Thus each 30-32# box of fruit yields 3.5 gallons of must.

The Tempranillo came in at 23 Brix, while the Syrah came in at 21.5 Brix. This is not very ripe, a product of a cold summer and fall apparently. So we treated the grapes on site. Basically added sugar to the must. We added a 1 cup to the Tempranillo and 2 cups to each of the Syrah batches. We also treated the must with some more powder (SO2) that kills any natural yeast or bacteria. I've quickly learned that making wine involves adding a lot of different powders in various volumes.

We then transported the wine back to the interim storage point, my garage, to let the SO2 do it's work for 24 hours. Cover the fermenting vats with a towel so they can still breath and keep cold in the garage. More tomorrow as we add yeast and most likely, more powders.