Thu 28 Sep 2006
With the help of a seasoned cellar rat (a.k.a. my father in-law), we bottled the 2005 Zinfandel this morning. We started with about 11 gallons of wine spread across 2 carboys. I had 5 cases of bottles on hand and we filled every last one of them! How’s that for planning?
Since the wine had very little free S02, I gently racked the wine into a staging carboy that I preloaded with a slurry of the wine and potassium metabisulfite. Adding potassium metabisulfite to wine before bottling is a very common practice as it acts as a preservative and antioxidant.
With the bottle filler attached to the siphon and the corker primed and ready we started bottling at about 10:30. Once we found the sweet spot of where to fill the bottles (too much wine and the corks would push themselves out), we had a nice little assembly line going. By 12:30 we were surrounded by 5 cases of freshly bottled Zinfandel! Only the cleanup was left.
Of course we tasted the wine with lunch. It’s still quite young and certainly needs some time in the bottle. However, the rich red fruits and classic zin spiciness were unmistakable. I can’t wait to see how this wine matures over time.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:40 am
James: Another fun story. Can you remenber the name of the vineyard from which the grapes came and the date picked, bricks, number of pounds picked, date stemmed and date crushed? I would like to pass this information to Paul along with the bottle of wine you sent with me for him…John (a.k.a. cellar rat)
September 29th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Sure. Here are the important bits:
The grapes came from Merrill Vineyard located in the Mt. Akum area (near the Fairplay AVA in El Dorado county). The vineyard is dry farmed but I’m not sure of the age of the vines, though. I’ll ask this weekend when we’re harvesting for the ‘06 Zin.
We harvested the grapes on October 9th, 2005. Like many parts of California last year, this was a few weeks later than usual due to the mild weather.
Weight: 180 lbs.
BRIX: 28
pH: 3.15 at 17.3 C
TA: .74
We crushed the grapes onsite at the vineyard the day of the harvest. Since the BRIX was so high, I added some distilled water to the must to bring it down. The must was inoculated with yeast the following day and was pressed 7 days later (I get pretty quick primary fermentations due to the warmth of my garage). I started the malolactic fermentation the day before pressing so it continued in the carboys over the next several days.
The wine was racked on 11/6/2005. I added about 7 oz. of American oak chips/cubes (medium toast) at this time. Although the wine was racked again this Spring, these chips stayed in the carboys with the wine until it was bottled this past weekend.
While reviewing my cellar log I was reminded of a funny story that happened last year. You’re familiar with our favorite little 4 year old, right? Well, during one of my early morning cap punch-down sessions during the primary fermentation, she walked out into the garage and saw my arms covered with must, skins, and pulp and ran screaming back into the house. She thought I was hurt and my arms were covered in blood. Now, of course, she knows all about it and likes to watch.