Sunday, March 30, 2014

It's All About The Wine

Though my rants and stories tend to center around the vineyard and my cows, making of the wine is the ultimate goal in any season. When harvest occurs back in September, it seems that all the work is done and winter time projects begin to take hold. However, during this time the grape juice is patiently going through its task of slowly fermenting, letting its solids drift to the bottom of the tank, and bringing on the character that will define its taste and aroma profile.

It has been about 6 months since we picked the grapes. Our Seyval Blanc came in with our first real harvest of just over a ton of grapes. We lost quite a few from a late season heat & humidity spell, tainting some of these grapes, and our reds were clobbered by the latent mold spores waiting for the opportune time to attack.  But this is real farming, just as soybeans, corn, cotton, and peanuts are that are grown in the rest of the state.

Picking and crushing, along with destemming and initiating fermentation all occur on the same day. From there comes a series of steps that include pressing, more fermentation requirements, and a possible racking or two.  And then it is time to wait for the process to take hold, expelling CO2 as the yeast does its thing by converting the sugars into alcohol. A month or so later we might rack again, which takes a few hours. This might be repeated several times before we finally decide to bottle. After 4 or 5 months we begin our taste tests, checking for mouth feel, acidity, alcohol level, and clarity. There are things we can do to pull some of these traits towards making the best wine possible. If there are particles still suspended in the wine after these rackings, we may add some Bentonite which helps clarify the wine........we will also send it through a filter just before bottling to provide one last opportunity at making the wine visibly clear and showing the color of the wine as it should be.

Rich and I were assigned bottling duty this year. It needs to be done while it is still relatively cool out, and before the vineyard pulls us in that direction for the next growing season. We found a day this past week, the fourth week in March, where it was just too cold and rainy to get anything really accomplished in the vineyard. So the winery found "willing volunteers" to get the bottling ready and in motion to bottle last fall's harvest. Bottling isn't hard but there are a few steps that need to be handled well, and with some kind of poetic balance between Rich and me so we don't trip over each other. We start by cleaning everything which takes a few hours. Tanks, pumps, hoses, fittings, machinery, and ultimately the bottles all need to be flushed with a sanitizing solution. Only then can we move forward and begin sending wine through the hoses to get to the filling machine. We have gone through these motions before, and each time we get a little more efficient. And each time we make notes on how to do it even better next time.

I have been chosen the "filling guy", using a 4-station filler to top off the bottles with the right amount of wine. From me the bottles are transferred to a side table adjacent to the capper where Rich puts a cap on top of the bottle, inserts it into the machine, which then spins a chuck down on the bottle simultaneously making threads in the cap as it seals and caps the bottle. We just bought a new capper chuck from Italy this year, and this was our first time at using it. It performed perfectly......we have found that the best winery equipment comes from Italy.

It took all day to bottle 762 bottles of our inaugural edition of our Seyval Blanc. It is not like a Pinot Grigio or a Chardonnay. It is not even like a Vidal Blanc, another white French hybrid. It has its own flavor. Some citrus, some grassiness, a hint of vanilla. Can't sell it yet, at least not until we get our state ABC license. For now it will have to mellow out in the bottle; Diane seems to think this will take about a month.

I remember staying on my Uncle's farm in the Catskills during the summers. He had a hundred or so Holsteins that he milked every day. When his family needed milk, he would bring out a pitcher and milk right into it, carrying the fresh white stuff into the house and putting it into the refrigerator for later consumption. We have started a tradition here, not unlike his. At the end of our bottling we had some wine that was the last to come through the hoses, or just a portion of a bottle that we wouldn't be capping. Rich filled a pitcher for our dinner that night, and it was very good even without the mellowing Diane is allowing.

Friday, March 21, 2014

"Home Depot" Orange

We sort of proceeded according to plan today. Rich and I woke up at a respectable time (though not as early as in the heat of the summer). We prepped the tanks with the pre-emergent herbicide, checked to make sure there were't any clogs, which is normal for this gooey stuff, and got on our way.

We were about 5 miles into our 11 mile trek over to our other vineyard when I felt the steering wheel of the truck vibrate. Normally I would just blame it on a rough road, but I took a  look in the mirror and quickly saw that one of the tires on the trailer had blown, and I mean really blown. It was obvious the tire was shredded....no quick plug to fix this tire. But our trailer has a double axial so without too much of a thought we proceeded on towards the vineyard. I did make one stop to inspect the tire, just to make sure I wasn't inheriting another tire problem. I wasn't, so we continued on to the vineyard.

Once there we made the decision to continue on plan and start spraying Block 1. I had never used this tank and wand configuration before for ground spraying, so I didn't know our spray rate. Rich took the gun and we started crawling down and up the rows as he sprayed this bright orange herbicide on the strip just under the wires. The tractor was in low and in first gear....a baby could have run faster. But with all the spraying Rich needed to do, that was about as fast as we could go. A good spraying now will relieve us of days upon days of weed whacking in the summer.

As you would figure, our 50 gallon tank ran dry only halfway into Block One. We had only sprayed 1 1/2 acres of vineyard, and needed to make a new batch to continue. The chemicals were back at the other place (figures @#@!@#) and we had that flat to resolve. Our first thought was to take off the tire, drop it off at the local equipment place, head over to White Oak Farm and grab the chemicals we needed, and then return. As one would guess, we tripped down to Plan B right away when we realized that we didn't have a jack or a wrench that would work on the trailer. Sooooo we went straight to the farm to retrieve those items, and the chemicals, and returned to the vineyard.

Rich worked on removing the bad tire, while I went over and started mixing the chemicals in the tank with water. Plan C came on very quickly when I found out my tenant (there is a house on the vineyard that I rent out) had decided to leave the house with the main breaker for the well pump turned off. We had no water, so I couldn't mix a tank of the orange stuff.

Oh, I hate going to Plan C because it basically means the afternoon was a bust. Rich and I went over to have a new tire put on the rim just as Duke was upset in the NCAA tourney. Rich returned to the farm as I went back to the vineyard, remounted the tire, re-strapped the tractor up on the trailer, and returned to the farm.

Tomorrow is another day to try it all over again.

It Really Stinks, But Someone Has To Do It

We've finished our general trellis repair and now it's time to get to  the spraying. We have about 9 acres of grapes now, in two locations, so the spraying is going to take quite some time. And it's not just one type of spraying, but three.

Rich is seen in the photo, spraying lime sulfur with a hand held wand on each of the grapevines. It is a boring process, but he is listening to Led Zeppelin or some other oldie on his iPod as he waves the wand over the trunk, cordons, and spurs. What we are trying to do here is attack latent fungus from the previous season, and to do this all the exposed wood is being saturated with a lime sulfur solution while still in the dormant stage. The lime sulfur smells like rotten eggs, and no matter how careful you are, or how covered you try to be, the smell permeates everything and stays in you nostrils for days.

My job is to ride the tractor, pulling the spray tank behind me. Rich yells at me a lot, as I go too fast or go too slow tugging on the hose he is holding in his hand. His real goal is to get back and watch the NCAA basketball tourney in the afternoon and it's my purpose stay ahead of him at his pace. Not that easy when you figure each vine is different and requires more or less attention by Rich to do the spraying properly. It is not just setting the gear speeds and steering the machine; my neck will ache for a week from constantly turning to see exactly where he is.

Tomorrow we start spraying the pre-emergent under the vines. We use a chemical called Surflan, which leaves a bright orange stripe under the wire......almost makes it look like the soil was tilled. This stuff prevents new weeds from germinating in the next few weeks as Spring comes upon us. We have the equivalent of 2 1/2 solid acres to spray with a wand....it'll take forever.


Monday, March 10, 2014

Time To Get Serious

I've pushed off going out into the vineyard for a couple of months now. It has been just too cold, or the cows have taken up all my time, or Rich isn't here yet to help out. It's been any number of excuses.

But today was a warm day, and the next two days will be even warmer....upper 60's and maybe even a 70 degree day if we're lucky. So I started collecting the tools I need and some of the repair parts required to venture back into the vineyard. This all needs to be done before bud break. Rich reminded me that the "traditional" bud break date of April 1st hasn't been valid for the last few years.....more like April 15th. So that gives us a month to get everything done. And with the late snowfall we have received, he is likely to be correct on his prediction.

We are starting slowly here. There is some very much required work to be done with repairing the trellis system for our Norton grapes. We have a T-trellis system (the trellis looks like the letter T), which is  more or less a requirement for really aggressive grapes. When we first put it in we did a combination of wooden posts and metal posts just as an experiment. Well, the metal posts just can't stand the lateral forces of a hurricane, and we had an entire row tip over on us when Irene came around. We are finally now getting to replace these metal posts with the time proven wooden posts.

The metal "T's" on top of the wooden posts twisted with the wind forces, and these are all being replaced with 4" x 4"'s with steel bracing. It takes quite awhile to make each one of these in the shop, and then we have to go into the vineyard and remove the metal T and then reassemble using the new improved version. We were only able to repair one row today with these new top T's.

We next went down the row with the bent metal posts, having to manually dig holes for each of our replacement wooden posts. The positioning wouldn't allow us to bring in the tractor and use the hydraulic post driver to do this work....too many wires and vines in the way to jockey the tractor in position.  The ground was still a little damp,  so digging down 2 1/2 feet wasn't too bad. We replaced 7 posts (certainly this was one of the shorter rows) and will next need to assemble the new 4" x 4"'s on top to form the T's.

There is still pruning to do on the Nortons....we had been waiting to complete the repairs first. And then we noticed the irrigation system was a mess. It was broken in a number of areas....was this because of the icing and the possible freezing of the lines, shattering the PVC, or was this due to mischief ? I'll make that determination later when I starting evaluating the extent of the damage.

Wednesday is Richmond's Wineries Unlimited Tradeshow, where they promote all the new "toys" for the winery industry. This year they have invited brewery equipment makers to display their processing equipment; this is of special interest to Rich because he is starting to tinker with producing his own beer. He is thinking of setting up a micro brewery next to our winery. We'll see where that leads after we try some of the beer he is making in a 5 gallon carboy that is gurgling in our kitchen.....taste tests in about a week.

And early next week we have our Seyval Blanc to bottle from the grapes we harvested last fall. We have enough to make 50 cases or so. During the winter we purchased a new Italian screw topper for 750 mL bottles and I am excited to see how that works when we bottle this white wine.