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.

Carsten and Jessica adventured to West Seattle.

The actual crushing process does not take that long.  But the clean up is brutal.  What does one do with 24 boxes?

This space had to be sanitized so the Mercedes can go back to taking up the spot.

Check back soon, I will have another post about fermenting and our new dedicated fermentation room.

Wine Blending, the 2011 Syrah

Because 2011 was what they call a "challenging" vintage in Washington, it was necessary for us to do some blending with our finished Syrah.  (We are also blending the Tempranillo, but let's focus on the Syrah in this post shall we?)

First off, the Syrah is good.  It is what you would call an old world style.  This is not your monster Australian Shiraz or even a classic Washington or California Syrah.  We are talking 13% alcohol, little oak and subtleties; think à la française.

Our plan entering the night was to add some Grenache and Mourvèdre.  We had already had one blending session where we tasted the Syrah with a Grenache and they melded nicely.  The Grenache filling out a few holes in the Syrah.  But we wanted a well made (but cheap) Mourvèdre to add a little more body and more importantly, color.

Nate found a Spanish Mourvèdre, technically a Monastrell as that is what the grape is known as in Spain, that fit the bill.  So it was time to taste.

It takes a lot of glasses and measurements to get the ratio how we wanted it.

In the end we settled on quite a bit more blending than was our original intent.  The blend is going to be 57% Syrah, 28% Grenache and 15% Mourvèdre.  Not exactly a typical GSM blend, but a GSM nonetheless.  For those curious, that is a Washington Syrah, Australian Grenache and Spanish Mourvèdre.

And more importantly, it's good.  At least Nate and I were extremely happy with the final blend.  We will be bottling next weekend.  It will definitely be ready to drink come the holidays. 

Why not this weekend you ask?  Because Sunday is the day our grapes arrive.  After a quiet summer, the wine making activities are going to ramp up dramatically over the next three weeks.  We are going to crush and destem at Chateau Tobin this year.

Watch this space for updates.

USMNT v Jamaica preview

(editor's note:  I recently answered a call to start blogging for a website about soccer.  I have been thinking of doing this for quite some time but needed an impetus to get going.  This post below was my tryout post for the website.  I figured that I spent a decent amount of time writing it so I might as well post it somewhere.  So here it is.  I created the tag Soccer Blog for this post in case there are more to come.  Most likely if I do get the gig then I will point you in that direction or start another blog for this content going forward and this can go back to being a travel and winemaking adventures of Tobin spot.  Enjoy:)

Later today (8 EST, BeIN Sport TV) the US Men’s National team play a World Cup qualifier in Jamaica at Independence Park, the national stadium commonly referred to as “The Office”.  In related news the Jamaican federation has recently announced that firearms, knives, ice picks, glass bottles, machetes and drugs have been banned from the stadium.  So the US should feel good that machetes will no longer be allowed although being Jamaica they might have a different definition of drugs than we are used to seeing.

Let’s try to predict the lineup because predicting what Jürgen Klinsman is going to do is normally pretty easy, right?  I’m thinking that after spending a year preaching the 4-3-3 and attacking soccer, Jürgen is going to pivot to a ‘it would be really nice to get this result away’ and roll out a conservative 4-2-3-1 to start then go for the win at 60’ or 75’ as the game dictates.

Goalie:

Tim Howard

I should have listed Timmy last as this is the only starter I am 100% sure of predicting.

Defense:

Fabian Johnson, Bocanegra, Cameron, Cherundelo

Bocanegra is a question mark here, Captain America has been playing in the Scottish fourth division while looking for a new club.  Not exactly great World Cup Qualifier prep.  Cameron has been playing in the central mid spot since moving to Stoke but his heroic effort in Azteca stadium earns him another start.  Cherundelo and Johnson should be locks on the outsides as they have made the positions their own.

The 2:

Jermaine Jones and Kyle Beckerman

A guy who at 38 years old played in the PDL under the Jay Göppingen alias will not pass up the chance to start Kyle Beckerman in Jamaica right?  And Jermaine Jones has more minutes in a US kit than anyone this year, no way Jürgen doesn’t start him in this lineup especially with Michael Bradley out.

The attacking 3:

Shea, Dempsey, Danny Williams

I could go three for three here or miss entirely.  Keep in mind that Donovan is not available and will miss his first meaningful qualifier since the Korea/Japan cycle.  Dempsey has not played a competitive game in almost three months, so this one is going to be decided by how Dempsey trained since arriving at the US camp.  Unlike another prolific EPL scorer who admitted to somehow putting on 10 lbs from the end of England’s run in the Euro’s to joining Manchester United for this season, I don’t think that Deuce has it in himself to get that lazy (or fat).  According to his twitter feed, Clint has been spending a lot of time in Texas fishing and then has been staying in shape training with Fulham’s youth squad. (Thanks Martin Jol, on a side note now that Fulhamerica is over I would be fine if you get relegated.)  If he doesn’t start then expect to see Dempsey as the 60^th minute impact sub.  Speaking of impact subs, Brek Shea seems to be back in the good graces after helping create the historic goal in the US’s 1-0 win in Azteca last month.  Shea is more of an offensive predication, if this lineup comes through expect Fabian Johnson and Shea to create a large portion of the US’s attack on the left side.  And to balance out an attack minded left I chose Danny Williams on the right.  As he showed against Mexico he is not much of an outside winger going forward.  But the man is a rock defensively. 

The 1:

Jozy Altidore

I have little doubt that Jozy will start.  He’s been on form early in the season for AZ Alkmaar.  The question is when do we see fan favorite and new “He’s going to be the biggest thing ever for the USMNT” player, Terrance Boyd?  In this setup I see Boyd as part of the 75’ attacking wave.  If Jürgen decides to start two strikers, Herculez Gomez would most likely get the nod with Jozy.  Herculez’s work rate is fabulous and he pairs better with Jozy.  They do different things where Boyd and Jozy have not yet spent significant time on the pitch together and the prevailing thought is that they are a like for like option.

Kickoff is at 8 pm EST.  While he will never admit it, Jürgen would most likely take a point in Kingston and count on getting 3 points Tuesday in the return at Crew Stadium.

That’s my prediction; let’s use the comment section to ridicule how bad it was.  Like I said it could be as good as 11/11 or as bad as 1/11.

August Wine Testing

This weekend it was time for the next free SO2 test.  Theoretically we should be doing this every 4-6 weeks but we seem to go a couple months between each test.

Since the wine has migrated from Casa de Tobin to Casa de Iben for summer aging, this picture shows our "lab" which also doubles as the downstairs bathroom.

Free SO2 test and the new PH meter.

We got a new tool to help with the wine making going forward: A PH meter.  This will help quite a bit because the PH really effects quite a few processes in making wine.

Here's the details from this weekend's testing:
The Syrah's:
Bordeaux Yeast Free Run 3.77 ph, 0 ppm free SO2
Chateau Yeast Free Run 3.64 ph, 12 ppm free SO2
Mixed Yeast Pressed 3.70 ph, 16 ppm free SO2
And the Tempranillo:
3.82 ph, 24 ppm free SO2

As you can see the Tempranillo is quite high on the PH meter.  And the entire time it has measured higher on the free SO2 test.  I'm not totally sure why this is, but it's a good thing to write down here so we can come back to it in time when we know more about wine chemistry.

Next up is one last free SO2 test and a dosage.  Then bottling.  This year's harvest is going to come in earlier than last year's it seems.  Our limiting factor is we need to have the carboy's empty by the time this fall's harvest is crushed, fermented and pressed.

Wine Testing

Greetings!  It's officially the first annual "Super Sunny Weekend in Seattle", so I figured the best thing to do in order to maximize the sun enjoyment would be to run a free SO2 test on our wine.

We really need to replace that stove.

The results are in, the Syrah had little to no Free SO2 (You see our testing setup above, there is definitely some margin for error there but it gives us a good idea.). The pH was at 3.5, so referring to this handy chart linked below we attempted to adjust up to 40 PPM in each 5 gallon carboy.



The Tempranillo test worked better, well by better I mean the test was actually working as our reaction agent changed colors showing that the test was in fact doing something and we weren't experiencing massive operator errors.  The Tempranillo came in at 17 PPM, so we added half to the lone Tempranillo carboy that we added to the three Syrah's.

Back to bulk aging, here is our "facility".  The towels are a scientific way of keeping sun and light out of the wine.

Thus, there is your update on the making of the wine.  I had not posted in a while, at this point in the process we really did not have anything to do but wait.