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.

 

Portugal's River of Wine

 

Red wine flooded the streets of Portugal as 600,000 gallons of red wine streamed down a road in Portugal's São Lourenço do Bairro on September 10 after a local distillery’s tanks burst. The Portugal town was flooded by nearly 3 million bottles worth of red wine. Local media estimated the flood to be about 2.2 million liters — enough wine to fill approximately 2,933,333 wine bottles.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1701242036563718588

One tank collapsed because of a “structural failure" at the distillery, Destilaria Levira, in the Portuguese municipality of Anadia, about 140 miles north of Lisbon. The sheer force of the released wine knocked over another tank, causing the wine from both tanks to flow out of the distillery and into the streets.

The tanks that collapsed were part of an effort to address a broader problem: too much wine in Europe. The tanks were being used to store surplus wine, according to the distillery.

Portugal and other major European wine producers such as France and Italy are suffering from an oversupply of wine, largely because of a decline in both consumption and exports. The European Commission estimated a drop of 34 percent in wine consumption in Portugal this year largely due to inflation. At the same time, the production of wine in Europe has increased while wine exports from the European Union have declined. In the first quarter of this year, exports were about 8.5 percent lower than they were in 2022.

Settling in

Alex installed the shelving in the winery today. So I unpacked the boxes of supplies that had been tucked away in the loft of our garage after every winemaking session concluded. It's starting to fill up.  

I also purchased white boots to be used only in the winery when it's a wet room, and I have new flip-flops to use otherwise so we don't track dirt into the room. 

Little by little, every time I work in there, I learn what else we need to bring up from the house or acquire anew.  Today I realized we needed dish towels. Yesterday I had brought over a waste basket, a pencil holder and stoppers for the sink. There's always something missing. We have a desk and chair, a file cabinet, containers for collecting grapes, a sorting table, industrial sink and washdown system, three fermentation vats and a hydropress. We are awaiting the de-stemmer/crusher and bottling machines. When the rest of the equipment arrives, it will be quite full.

We are going to have to harvest this week as next week we may have a visit from Tropical Storm Margot, currently strengthening to hurricane force. We'll have to haul the boat out of the water beforehand. 

But first, we will attend the funeral of good friend Kieran Thompson of Newport House who passed away last week aged 93 years. What a gentle and intelligent man who had a legendary wine cellar. He taught Alex to appreciate fine wines when Alex worked there as a gillie. I think Alex always had a special place in Kieran's heart, and he embraced me as well. When he was still driving, he'd come over to our house for dinner occasionally. Alex always tried to find a wine to serve that Kieran didn't know. We finally found that after we returned from the Caribbean with a case of Viognier, finally a wine Kieran had not experienced -- and he liked it! RIP Kieran. You will be missed. 

UK may become major producer of Chardonnay

Model predictions for the vintage score of Chardonnay
still wine across the UK in 2040-2059

One-fifth of the UK may have suitable weather by mid-century to grow Chardonnay grapes for still wines, according to a recent research study. Here is the study published in Oeno.  

Chardonnay is already successfully and extensively grown to produce sparkling wine, and in some years some still wine. These latest forecast temperature increases indicate the increasing opportunity for more Chardonnay production in some areas. 

The impact of climate change by 2050 may mean that UK-grown Chardonnay grapes will be ripe enough to produce high-quality still wines. Following their model of the effect of variation in weather on Chablis wine quality, in France, researchers at the University of Reading turned their attention to conditions in the UK and how they are projected to change.

The research model considered three aspects of weather that affect the quality of Chardonnay still wine: mean temperature between April and September, mean minimum temperature in September (“cool night index”), and total rainfall between June and September. The model identified 20 to 25% of UK land that may be suitable by 2050. This compares to the current suitability of only 2% of UK land.

Areas most likely to have the best conditions for producing high-quality still Chardonnay wine reliably by 2050 include South East England, East of England, and Central England. 

This is an intermediate greenhouse gas emissions scenario in which climate policies can limit global temperature rise to between 2 °C and 3 °C by 2100. Under this scenario, emissions continue to rise until around 2040, and then decline. 

But I don't believe that we will be able to slow climate change down, and I believe warming will accelerate. I am very glad we planted a row of Chardonnay. When the s__t hits the fan, it will be more tolerable as we'll be drinking wine. 

Brix getting there!

 

It's definitely starting to look like Autumn in the vineyard, with grapes ripening and leaves turning colour. I checked the sugar content of the grapes again today and I came away with consistent 18-20 Brix readings of multiple samples for both Rondo and Solaris. All very prolific and the Solaris more tasty than the Rondo for my palate. 

I am projecting harvest for early next week for the Rondo. At 20 Brix, it will be adequate to produce a robust red wine. We are to have rain over the weekend after several days of brilliant sunshine and two days of hot temperatures (25C). I hope they don't get too diluted. At least we shouldn't get raisins this year. 

I think we'll hold off until the white grapes reach 22 on the Brix scale to ensure good composition and 12-14 ABV.  Can't wait. 

Omega Block

Europe is having one of the most textbook Omega blocks in memory. A heat dome flanked by two strong storms. A true atmospheric stalemate/ traffic jam, dumping Epic rains in Greece. These split-flow jet streams & extreme blocks are becoming more common esp in Europe 1/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1699278684283159017 

Europe is going to experience a much greater spike in heatwaves (as compared to most other regions) due to climate change and clearly we already see that happening.  Luxembourg this week…

Here's an article about extremes to expect. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01126-1 

Our forecast for this week shows 25C for tomorrow and Friday and no rain until maybe a bit on Sunday. Does that mean raisins again?  Gotta watch the grapes daily now. 

Last month was the hottest August on record globally, the third straight month in a row to set such a record following the hottest ever June and July, according to the European Union's Copernicus climate change panel. That makes the northern hemisphere's summer the hottest since records began in 1940.

Learning to use the Hydropress

The eating grapes at Ross House, which Alex pruned radically in the winter, produced massive amounts of beautiful grape clusters this year. They were going bad, so I asked Alex to pick them and bring them home. We decided to try out the Hydropress and juice them. 

It took all afternoon to process two batches of grapes, about 50 kg worth. It was definitely an improvement over hand mashing or using the apple press. It's so easy and there's no electricity involved. There is a bladder that inflates with water pressure at between 2.5 and 2.9 psi. You insert a mesh bag, place your grapes inside, evenly spaced around the bladder, close it up, leave the top pressure valve just barely open, and start the water to fill the bladder. When it fills up, a bit of liquid eases out of the pressure valve. You then shut the valve tight and continue the water pressure, until all the juice is expressed, keeping it below 3 psi. 

We noticed a couple of things. When whole grapes exploded, they squirted out through the holes rather than just dripping down the sides. When we destem and crush first, that shouldn't happen. (We ordered the rest of the equipment today.) We also noticed that many of the grapes were not juiced because the stems may have prevented them from being crushed. Also, the 35l Hydropress does not tilt, so cleaning it is a bit dodgy. We maybe should have gone for a bigger size. It's also rather difficult to clean the grape flesh off the mesh bag. 

So we got about 20l of juice from the 50 kg of grapes -- 17 750ml bottles plus 2 litre bottles and a 2-litre bottle. We made a bit of a mess but clean up is fairly easy. We do, however, need clean room boots which are already on order, aprons and a couple of tables to work on. As we try things out, we'll learn what's working and what needs modification.