| .... or, so it is said. That goes for good software too, right?
The 2004 "REBOL Red" Merlot-Cabernet is now in the barrel. The grapes were hand-grown by us; hand-picked by us; and the
wine was hand made by us (crushed, fermented, pressed, barrelled, etc.) It will be stored
in our cellar for about 18 months before it is ready for bottling... which, I'm sure
you guessed, we also do ourselves.
For this batch, the grapes were picked last month (Sept 2004)
and have just finished primary and secondary fermentation.
The grapes were 30 Brix (30% sugar content) when picked this year.
That's crazy high. It was a very strange year. So we adjusted them down
to about 27-28 Brix for fermentation (which is still high and we hope
the yeast can handle it).
The little plastic
device is a vapor lock to keep out oxygen, a harmful element in winemaking.
The next step will be to "rack the wine", siphoning it away from the dead
yeast at the bottom of the barrel to prevent "off flavors" in the wine as it
ages.
So you know... just like putting out a new release of REBOL, this stage
of the winemaking process is the scary one. It will take about six months before we
really know how good the wine will be.
|
