Tobin Blog: Crush for Vintage 2012

Yesterday our grapes arrived in Woodinville at Noon. So it was time to make some wine. Unfortunately mother nature and our grower decided that the same day as the Seahawks hosting the Patriots would be the day he picked. Thus I had to sell my tickets. Fortunately this was an easy game to sell. And boy, what a game. But I digress.

We received 24 boxes, 16 Cabernet Sauvignon and 8 Merlot. We paid for 500 pounds of fruit and as always we got a little bit extra. We weighed 9 of the boxes and the average box was coming in at 23 pounds. So our final tally was around 552 pounds. Unlike last year, we were the very first order to come out of the truck so we didn't pick up anything extra. (That's how we ended up with the Tempranillo.)

Casa de Tobin garage provided the crushing/destemming facility.

For the record, both the Cabernet and the Merlot is from Doc Stewart Vineyard in the Wahluke Slope. Our supplier is a grower called Gilbert Vineyards. At crush our stats we were working with were:
Brix 24
PH 3.38

The crusher is on the right, we rented it for the day. Luckily we were able to do this in the garage since it was raining really hard. Those white tubs that look like garbage cans are the fermenters. They are basically just food grade plastic garbage cans. We have two 20 gallons and a 32 gallon this year. We are co-fermenting the fruit. This means that our Merlot and Cab are already blended so inherently we will have 67% Cab and 33% Merlot in the finished product.

A wise man once said, it takes a lot of good beer to make great wine.

Technically this is Carsten's second crush, but we did not bring him up to Shoreline last year for crush. So Carsten's first crush. Jessica was understandably reluctant to put him down in my garage. Between the wine grapes making a mess everywhere and random ladders just leaning against things, it's probably not the best place for a newly walking inquisitive little person.