Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Autumn Brings More than Falling Leaves




This morning I came into Keswick and worked my way around the tasting room, doing my daily chores. I went outside to water the flowers and I was rather startled when I saw a large branch of one of our trees had fallen on to our front lawn! It was rather windy this morning and it seems like one of our tree decided to shed more than its leaves! I cannot believe that a branch that must have been 10 feet long landed in such a perfect way that it stood up on its own!


We also did a lot with our Petite Verdot. We added the yeast today and we went about this a little differently then the Touriga... with the Touriga we heated the tank and wine and then added the yeast to begin fermentation. For the Petite Verdot we had to temper the yeast, just as you would with tempering an egg. The temperature for the yeast was much higher then the Petite Verdot, so it is important to slowly lower the temperature of the yeast to that of the Touriga. If we were to dump the yeast directly into the wine, it would shock the yeast and would not ferment correctly.



At the end of the night, we focused on the Touriga. As I said yesterday, it has completely finished fermenting. So the next step is to draw off the free flowing juice from the stainless steal tank. After that the boys shoveled out the rest of the grapes and they were moved into the press. Think of the press as a large cylindrical colander with a balloon inside. Once the press is turned on the balloon inflates and pushes the grapes to the sides and the juice falls through the holes on the outside and into the tub below. The press gently squeezed the rest of the juice from the grapes... The picture does not do the color of the Touriga justice!





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