Getting there

Measuring Brix today yielded 16, 18, 19, and 20. Rondo is near ready to pick. Tomorrow is a busy day and rainy, so we'll wait till Wednesday. 

Pressing the Rondo

The Rondo stopped bubbling so we decided to finally press it and transfer it to demijohns. We moved the must from the steel fermentation tank into the hydropress. We used the yellow buckets (sterilised) to collect the juice. After the juice stopped flowing on its own, Alex activated the hydropress. We collected one full bucket of juice. 

Very dark red. Nice scent. Bland taste. I tested the Brix and it came in at 9 but quite unclear. Specific gravity came in at 1.000. That shouldn't be. We transferred into two demijohns using the stainless steel funnel and a large glass measuring cup (all sterilised). The room temperature went from 20.7 to 21.8 while we worked. 

While cleaning up, we ran out of hot water, so we'll have another round of clean-up tomorrow. 

The weather yesterday was filthy and today lovely. Cool this morning -- almost nippy -- so we collected many of the vulnerable potted plants and transferred them to the polytunnel. The temperature hit 13.2C today compared with 16.5C yesterday and 18C for days before that. Unnatural.  

The vineyard is looking very colourful as all of the red grape vines have turned lovely colours. Curiously, the white vines remain green. 

The clear glass bottles arrived by courier today. The box was ripped and smashed but miraculously the bottles are intact. The green bottles and corks should arrive Friday.  Alex is next undertaking learning how to use the new equipment, especially the bottle washer and the heater. We won't be bottling for a while as we have to rack at least once, but I'm thinking of racking twice because the juice is quite cloudy. We'll see.

Harvest day for Solaris

I measured the Brix this morning and Solaris was consistently at 22. Rondo was testing at 18-20. So we decided to harvest the Solaris today as we have weather weirdness approaching next week. We started at about 10 am and finished at 3 pm. Not too bad for a harvest of 45 kg of grapes by two people! It was lovely and sunny until late in the afternoon when it was raining heavily in the south and east all day. Lucky us. 

This was our first major Solaris harvest. Last year, we had very little. A couple of years ago we had enough for two bottles of white. This year, in contrast, was very encouraging. 

The donkeys kept us company all day

Some of the bunches were gorgeous and the grapes are super tasty. Here are a few observations:

• The grapes on the 5 yo vines at the top of the vineyard were the most beautiful, bountiful, and healthiest. They were on vines that had the least foliage. We need to prune more heavily in the spring when the clusters form and we know where they are. 
• The lower we came down the field, the more grapes were affected by powdery mildew. Alex thinks it's the trees alongside the field of grapes that are reducing the air circulation.
• Grapes in the green bags fared better than grapes in the white bags. I think the green mesh allowed better air circulation and better exposure to the sun. 

The destemmer/crusher we ordered several weeks ago has not arrived and we don't know when it will. So we started rinsing and destemming this afternoon. We got through 14.5 kg of grapes before it got too cold to continue. I think we'll be working on it tomorrow and Saturday and will juice and start fermentation then. 

I used the bathroom scale which talks to weigh the grapes. You can place the container on the scale and don't need to see the readout. 

On Sunday, the weather is to be fine again. If the Brix of the Rondo reaches high enough (over 20), we will harvest the Rondo on Sunday to avoid the storm that may hit us Monday coming from Greenland of all places. We thought Hurricane Margot would reach us mid-week, but instead, this giant blob from Greenland is looking to attack us at the beginning of the week. Margot may still come along later in the week. 

Notes to self:

• Have a way to stow the bags so you don't have to pick them up later.
• Get containers with comfortable handles to stow grapes as you harvest in the field. 
• Work out a system by which to collect the grapes easily and empty them into larger containers in the field. 
• Have a damp towel handy as our hands were getting sticky from the grape juice. 
• Bring water to drink during the day. 
• I used a fish box to stand on for extra height and still could not reach the highest clusters. 
• Ghostie was of great help, holding down the fish box so it wouldn't move out from under me.

 

Grape testing

I tested a bunch of grapes that had turned deep red and got a Brix reading of 14. Since the optimal sugar content for red wine is Brix 22, we have a little time left before we harvest. I will take readings every other day for the next week and daily after that. 

The white grapes seem far behind the red Rondo. The photo coming up is of Chardonnay. Brix should reach 20 if it's to be wine. Not sure what will happen. 

The next two are Solaris. They are on the younger vines. The older vines didn't do much. Weird. But it's possible veraison has begun there. I will test them next time, but there won't be much of a harvest. 

The two coming up are Pinot Noir. Some of the vines seems to be infected with something - looks like powdery mildew to me. Others look fine. There are no Albarino grapes coming. 

The roses in the garden are all looking good, so we don't have a major fungal intrusion. 

This page is really good at helping to identify problems. 

The apple harvest is underway and the donkeys are loving the periodic small apple donations. It's a good year for apples. But we've lost our pear trees to disease. It's also our first harvest of hazelnuts. I am so excited. They were on  the younger of the two trees. Go figure. 

We have loads of Rondo grapes on the 5 vines we planted early on. Better start learning how to make wine.