Friday, October 2, 2009

Busy Day, Great Day


So I was right... it was an eventful day today. We started with adding the yeast to Touriga and the Syrah and then we moved to processing the Merlot. To process the red grapes the boys started by de-stemming and hand sorting the grapes. We have a great machine that does quite a bit of work, it de-stems and punctures the berries. From there the grapes move down an assembly line where they are hand sorted.








From the assembly line in the picture, the Merlot grapes fall into a large bins. After the bin was full Stephen added it to one of the stainless steel tanks in the barrel room. If this follows the same pattern as the Touriga did, then I can predict that the must will sit in the tanks for a few days and then the yeast will be added. I'll let you know if my predictions are true in the next few days.
After the tasting room closed today Anne and I decided we should help the boys out with the hand sorting and let me tell you it was quite a task! We blasted some music and got straight to work... The conveyor belt moved quickly and it was our task to get rid of all of the stems and leaves, but the one thing the boys did not mention was all the other things you might find among the grapes... I mindlessly grabbed on to what I thought was a stem and was surprised to feel a little spider grabbing my finger!

During a little break I was able to chat with Stephen while he topped off the 2009 Viognier barrels. He let me sample from one of the barrels where he was trying a new experimental strain of yeast, and it was fantastic! I'll be curious to see what he ends up doing with the wine...

We continued into the night sorting grapes and I did not leave work until 10:45pm... Like I said, busy day! But a productive day! I guess to conclude this post I would like to say I should not call the boys "boys" any more, they are men... no, supermen... They are working very hard this harvest and I know we are going to have some great wines as a result!

topping off - filling a partially filled barrel of wine with a bit more wine to make sure there is no room for oxygen in the barrel. 

No comments:

Post a Comment