A Man, a Bottle of Wine, and Some Stinky Cheese

Well since we crushed here are the developments:

 - I brought samples in the lab and the acids came out nice with ph’s for the rose and red 3.51 and 3.66 respectively, we are likely to have to add some acid as during fermentation tartrates are dropped.

 The sugars however spiked.  The rose was 27.1 and the red was 28.8.  Therefore unless we want a fire water rose and stuck fermentation on the red, we have to water back.  I have added 2.25 gallons to the rose to bring it down to a potential alcohol of 14, and may water back further.  The red, I have added 9 gallons and might have to go as high as 13 to get it back into the 14.1 to 14.4 range.  I am bringing samples into the lab tomorrow.

So, we are definitely pressing on Saturday with the fermentation cranking away.  Paul and Rachel are the only ones in the group that I know have trucks to help pick up the press.  I don’t want to put anyone out Sunday morning, but if there are any volunteers I would be grateful.

 Raise your hand if you think you can help out between 11-4 on Sunday.  I only need a few!

 Stay tuned for more details.

Well we crushed and thanks to all involved it went even better than planned.  To tell you the truth I was sweating it pretty badly leading up to Saturday.  I got notification that the grapes were being picked for Friday early in the week.  So I rallied the troops for a Saturday crush.

Rachel and Mike saved the day with the pickup and trailer helping me get the grapes from Napa Cellars at 9:30 this morning.  We setup, sterilized all of the equipment and got going on the crush at about 10:30.  Ross joined in and we began the saignee of the rose first.  The Syrah was imparting a lot of color, but we continued on.

Then arrived Rick Vega, his wife ( a “Luxury” enologist at Beringer up the street), Erika  and Olivia.  At this point I sat back, picked up the pizzas and let the crew crank away.

As lunch was on, Malcolm, Natalie, and Paul all showed up with some extra beer (wine makers drink beer during the wine making process, however we downed a few bottles of wine as well after the clean up).

So where do we stand?  The free run was hitting about 25 brix (about 14.5% potential alc).  The rose has been inoculated with VL3 and is going in an ice bath.  Rick’s wife promised me that a lot of the color will fall out during fermentation.  So if it doesn’t its all on her .  I will check in tomorrow with rose brix readings, and a report on the red inoculation.

So many of you have heard that I cut my hand open at bocce trying to open a bottle of wine.  I was using one of those stupid two pronged Osos, and the neck of bottle shattered in my left hand.  At first I was amazed that I could be holding a pile of glass in my palm without getting cut.  Then I noticed the gaping hole in the webbing by my thumb and all of the tendons showing in my hand.  There was no pain and almost no blood.  But at the urging of the team, I had my buddy Malcolm take me to St. Helena hospital.

Before sowing my hand up, Dr. Mischkin asked if I was allergic to any pain killers such as cocaine.  To tell you the truth I did not realize cocaine was a pain killer, but I replied that I would not know if I was allergic given that I had never tried it.  Having not taken the bait on his clever ruse, he sowed my hand and sent me on my way.

Now the weird part.  I get an email from my one of my best friends in Boston Kevin Shea, asking if the following twitter message some how pertained to me:

I saw Kevin’s tendon when he sliced his hand on that wine bottle.

Many of you wanted to know where we are getting the grapes from.  I am attaching a google maps image of the area so that everyone can see.  Our Grapes are the north western side of the red area.  The lower elevation to the right, I believe, but don’t quote me, is the block Nickle and Nickle uses for their Syrah.

Well, anyone who even remotely complains about there being nothing to do in Napa needs to have their head examined. Seriously. Just one of those days I was lucky enough to have my D70 in hand during a dog walk.

Well I wasted no time getting liqoured up at the new, might I add kick ass wine bar at Sacramento International Airport. Vino Volo offers several flights of wine to choose from. At 1:30 on a Friday starting vacation I reasoned rose was the way to go. What is great about this wine bar is that they put a card under the glasses so that you can see their description as you drink.