2 Lads Winery Blog

The grapes are all in, now what?

On one of the final nice days of the year in early November, after a few days of cold rain, we brought in the last of the grapes (the 1.4 acre block of Merlot). “Harvest” is officially done. So now what happens at a winery? Well, there is still a lot of processing and production left, but the rest of it happens inside.

Because the red wine grapes ferment on the skins, they still require some attention once they’ve been processed through the crusher-destemmer. We usually put all of our red wine grapes into our Variable Capacity tanks for fermentation:

However, this year we put some of our Cabernet Franc and Merlot into barrels (separately) for fermentation. We performed a little more intensive sorting process with those grapes:

And we performed our "punch downs" (churning the skins back into contact with the juice to extract color, tannins, and flavors. Much like steeping tea) a few times a day in the barrels:

 

Fermentation of our reds is now almost complete and today we are running the last of our red wine through the press to separate the skins and extract all the juice. Here's some Merlot in the press yesterday:

From the press pan, the wine goes down into the cellar and into barrels to start the aging process. They'll hang out down there for anywhere from 10 to 20 months.

Once Cornel gets the red wines into barrel he'll get a chance to relax for a few months (well, he'll still be checking in on things and doing a few minor tweaks and processes, as well as tasting the wines to see how they are coming along.). Our white wines are done fermenting and will stay in our large stainless steel tanks for the winter. We'll bottle most of those up in March for a spring release. Overall, its been a very successful 2011 harvest. The flavors and aromatics we are seeing are spectacular. The whites are very fruity with a bit of lushness. The reds have amazing bold fruit aromatics, nice tannin structure and will benefit from time in barrel. Production is up for us, we'll most likely hit the 5000 case production with this harvest. Stay tuned, I'll let you know how things continue to progress, and look for the first of the 2011 vintage from us next spring.

2 Lads 2011 Harvest update

Harvest is in full swing and things have been busy here at the winery the last few weeks. We’ve brought all of our white wine grapes in. Our Pinot Grigio is in stainless steel tanks and about done with fermentation. The Chardonnay (it's understood that its our Chard-oh-YAY!) is in the large French oak tank and still undergoing fermentation.

We pressed both the Fouch Vineyard Riesling and our estate Riesling this week. They are also down in stainless steel tanks and will be innoculated to start fermentation probably this weekend.

The Pinot Noir is all in as well. It's been run through the crusher-destemmer and is in our smaller variable capacity tanks fermenting. I posted a similar photo on facebook already, but it's always amazing to me how much CO2 is given off during fermentation.

We'll run this through the press, most likely next week, and we'll fill up the Burgundy barrels in our cellar with the fermented juice.

The Cabernet Franc grapes and most of our Merlot grapes are still on the vine. We'll be bringing in some of the Cabernet Franc for our rosé next, and finishing up harvest with the last of the Cab Franc and Merlot.

As the reds come in, and we continue to process the fruit, I'll get more photos and videos posted and keep you up to date on where things are in the winery.

Harvest from the vineyard's perspective.

As we start to get closer to harvest I often get asked, how does Cornel decide when to pick the grapes? Well, there’s a lot more involved in the decision than a magic date on the calendar or popping a couple grapes in your mouth and thinking they taste pretty good, so why not start now?

First off, it depends on the style of wine we are making. We bring in grapes for our sparkling wines before the rest of our wines. Earlier harvest of those grapes means that the sugars haven’t developed as much, and the acids are a bit more prevalent. We usually harvest grapes for our sparkling wines with the sugars at around 19-20˚Brix. The earlier harvest, with not-as-ripe fruit also means that we aren’t getting the phenolic compounds, and while we want some fruit aromatics, we also want some of the sparkling wine aromatics that come from the yeast (so we use a champagne yeast for these wines). Other styles of wine we choose to make might depend on the growing season. A warm year or a longer growing season will see riper fruit with higher ˚Brix which would allow us to make a bolder, heavier, richer wine if we chose to (especially a red wine). These wines are a little more reminiscent of a California style wine. A cooler year or a shorter growing season might have us leaning more towards a European style wine, with brighter acidity and fruit, and crisper mouth feel.

Variety of the grape will also determine when we harvest. The grapes in the vineyard all ripen at different states. Some varieties need longer time on the vine to develop and ripen. We also have different clones of the same variety, and some clones ripen sooner than others. After the grapes for the sparkling wines are brought in (some of the Pinot Grigio and sometimes some of the Chardonnay), then we start harvesting grapes for our still wines (those without bubbles). The first varieties that tend to ripen are our Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. The Pinot Noir follows in batches along with the Riesling, while we might be bringing in the last of the Chardonnay. We bring in Cabernet Franc for our rosé as we’re wrapping up the Pinot Noir, and lastly, we bring in the Cabernet Franc and Merlot. Harvest isn’t a linear event. Varieties overlap, we bring in parts of the vineyard, while we leave others to ripen a little longer on the vine.

Then there are the grapes themselves, with quite a few factors involved there; pH, acid levels, physiological ripeness (tannins and phenolic compounds that add to color, flavor and aroma), seed development, and sugar levels. We’re not opposed to sampling the grapes either, to see how they taste. It’s a combination of all these factors that help determine when we get the crews out into the vineyard and start bringing the grapes in.

Harvest of Pinot Grigio for 2 Lads Sparkling Pinot Grigio

The 2011 harvest has begun! We started this morning with harvesting part of the Southern block of Pinot Grigio for our Sparkling PG.

   

We harvest all of our grapes by hand.

 

All the buckets get dumped into large bins that, once full, get driven into the winery to start processing.

The bins of Pinot Grigio go into the hopper:

  

 Which carries the grapes into the press:

 

Here's Cornel making room for the last few bins of grapes for this press load:

 

Once the press is full, we close the doors and turn it on. We have a bladder press, which is a large cylinder with a canvas-rubber-like balloon that fills with air and presses the juice from the grapes while leaving the seeds and skins inside the press. It will take about 3 hours to press one load. Here is a shot of the juice coming from the press and collecting in the press pan: 

 

We measure the sugars at this point to know what our starting sugar level is (which we follow as fermentation occurs). We want the juice for our sparkling wines to be a little lower in sugar, and have a little more acidity. Here's a shot looking through our refractometer (an instrument that measures sugars). We came in on this press load at about 19.5 degrees Brix (defined as sugar content of an aqueous solution. Its how we measure sugars in grape juice):

 

They guys are just finishing up this first press cycle of Pinot Grigio (We loaded the press at around 10:30 this morning and started it around 11 AM). The stainless steel tank down in the tank room is filling up, and they are about to fill the press again for the next cycle (Its just after 4 PM now). They will be here late into the evening as this cycle runs its course and then they will have some clean up to do. That will be it for a few weeks. We'll take a short respite while the rest of the grapes continue to hang on the vine and ripen further. I'll keep you posted!