Final crush

Pressing the Zinfandel went well. We now have close to 450 gallons of nice wine that will be ready in a year and a half. We will rack it 2-3 times to remove the sediment and put it into barrels soon. We did some barrel tasting during a break in pressing. Yum! The wine certainly improves in the barrel. Our wines in the barrel from 2010 will be bottled in March 2012.

Looks like we will be crushing the Sangiovese on Monday, Nov 7th, and the Malbec on Nov 8th. I will be adding yeast and doing the chemistries on the following couple of days. These will be the final grapes to crush. What a year! We have never had to wait so long for the grapes to ripen, but so far so good. The flavors are great. It will be interesting to see what the final brix will be on these last 2 grape crushes. We have waited this long because both were at a brix of about 23.4, which is lower than we usually pick. However, we can't wait any longer with the cool weather and possibility of rain. Both of these varietals usually "brix up" overnight (meaning brix increases 1-2 degrees) , so we expect the wine to be fine.