07/28/2012 – Harvest

Harvested 320 lbs of Tempranillo grapes (among many others) at Doug Norman’s vineyard.  He and Debby kindly gave me 70 lbs of must.

The grapes were in pretty rough shape.  Many of the clusters had spoiled sections in them (probably due to having too many buds left on the plants to be able to ripen fully).    They were also swarmed by small flying bugs (beetles?) that seemed to be focused on the Tempranillo but not the rest of the vineyard.  After being tediously sorted by an army of volunteers to remove spoiled fruit, the grapes were crushed and de-stemmed.  7 Campden tablets were dissolved in a few oz of water and stirred into the 70 lbs of must.

The must sat overnight at 65 degrees F

07/29/2012 – Pitched yeast

O.G.: 1.093, 21.9 Brix
pH: 4.05 (ouch)
Acid: 0.55? (approx)

Added an additional 4 Campden tablets due to low acid level

Re-hydrated 1 pack of Lalvin RC-212 yeast for 15 minutes and then pitched

Placed in the fermentation chamber at 72 degrees F

Punching down the cap 3 to 4 times per day.  The fermentation is generating lots of heat.  The fermentation chamber is falling behind (in its compromised state).  So far the fermenter has gotten 5 degrees above set point in 3 days.

08/04/2012 – Pressed wine

Pressed the tub fermented at 72 degrees first.  The first 5 gallons of the 6.5 gal carboy was free runnings from the tub, primarily.  It was quite pulpy and tended to clog the strainer out of the press (while others did not). The rest was filled from the pressing of all of the Tempranillo batches.

08/05/2012 – Racked off of sludge

About 1/4 gal of sludge settled out of the free-runnings. The wine was siphoned off into another carboy and topped up from additional Tempranillo pressings.

All other Tempranillo carboys were off-gassing some.  This one was essentially still.  Perhaps due to the racking?

09/10/2012 – Racked

Added ascorbic acid to improve the effectiveness of the CuSO4

09/15/2012 – Treated with CuSO4

Stirred in 0.6 ppm

09/27/2012 – Treated with CuSO4 and racked

Stirred in 0.2 ppm

Racked to another carboy and back.

Added oak:
1.0 oz – American medium plus toast
1.5 oz – Hungarian medium plus toast
0.5 oz – Hungarian heavy toast

10/03/2012 – Treated with CuSO4

Stirred in 0.3 ppm

10/21/2012 – Treated with K-meta

Stirred in 50 ppm

05/05/2013 – Racked off of the oak and treated with K-meta

Hmmm… Actually think this was racked off the oak earlier.
Stirred in 50 ppm

08/11/2013 – Bottled

pH measured at 3.85
Added 25.2 g tartaric acid to lower pH to 3.73

Free SO2 measured at 32 ppm
Added 1.3 g K-meta  to adjust up to 60 ppm

FG: 6.5% Brix
ABV: 13.6%

34 bottles + 1 Magnum

08/18/2013 – Labeled