Viognier

This past Friday, September 4, 2009 John and I had the pleasure of visiting The Homeplace Vineyard in Chatham, Virginia to pick up some Viognier grapes (http://thehomeplacevineyard.com/). They have a beautiful vineyard planted on an old tobacco field. The Viognier grapes were in great condition.

John and I went down with six 20 gallon food grade containers and left with six full containers and several plastic bags full of whole clusters. We crushed most of the 1/2 ton and sped back up Route 29 with 1000 pounds of must and grapes.

A few hours later, we pulled up to John's house and settled in for a few more hours of pressing. We got about 36 gallons of free run juice and an equivalent of pressed juice. We did not let the juice sit over night to settle and pitched the yeast that night.

Fermentation was wild and completed in about four days! We thought that the fermentations were starting to slow prematurely, but, alas, they were actually done. Checking the sugar level we found out that the wine was just about dry with a gravity very close to 1.

Caught with our pants down -- again -- we hustled to get half of the juice into open carboys. We will bottle our red wine tonight to free up the remainder of our carboys and rack the last two fermenters and limit their exposure to oxygen.

Once settled down into carboys, we are going to transfer the several carboys to a cool location for aging and fining: right now the color -- as you can see below -- is a dirty yellow/green.

Dormancy No Longer!

Welcome back! The grapes are waking up and so are our blogging tendencies! Sorry for the long absence, but duty calls and other things in life take precedence even if we wish they didn’t.

We are very excited about this year. In the vineyard, we are focused on keeping the vines healthy and shaping their growth to prepare for fruit in the next two years. There are a few vines that might be capable of producing some fruit this year. We have one behemoth that grew so much that it reached the vines on either side of it, which are six feet away.

In the winery, we have our cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and vidal blanc bulk aging in 6 gallon carboys. Our fingers are crossed that we did as much right as we could during the hands on portion and that time will be kind. If we can make something that tastes pretty decent, we will both be very happy with the outcome.

We’ve said this before with nothing to show for it, but our website is moving forward. We hope to have it up and running as soon as possible and we hope to fill it with as much content as possible: including video.

Thanks for continuing to check on us!

News

Cabernet Franc is going through its secondary fermentation in a plastic carboy with airlock. Vidal Blanc is doing the same and trying to clear itself of its strange green color. The two Cabernet Sauvignon batches are still fermenting in tubs with cheese cloth on the top. We have been punching down the cap a few times a day. Both caps are starting to form more slowly, which is a sign that fermentation is slowing. Soon we will press both and rack them into carboys.

In corporate news, Fraser Hall Wine Company is taking steps to diversify its portfolio of beverages in response to market conditions and as part of our risk management strategy. In other words, we makin' more booze!

Our corporate board approved a proposal to start a mead project. Mead is a honey based spirit that is thought to be the oldest alcoholic beverage. It undergoes fermentation, just like wine and beer, and is clear or a golden color. The aging process is similar to a red wine. It can be drank a year after fermentation and should taste fine, but will get much better with age.

We located an apiary (beekeeper) in Centreville, VA, who is going to provide the honey.

Finally, our website is under construction and should be up and rolling in a few weeks. We outsourced the work to a VA Tech grad.

Cab Franc

100 lbs of Cab Franc were crushed and de-stemmed on Monday night while everyone else was celebrating the voyage of Columbus, the puffy shirted Spaniard.

We tested the must and it was extremely low in acid. We added a bunch of acid. The juice tasted much better afterwards. It was very sugary tasting at first with little pucker factor. Afterwards it started to taste like grape juice. Hopefully this will improve the final product.

John added yeast on Tuesday and the Cab Franc must is patiently bubbling away in the 20 gallon bucket.

We are picking up 200 lbs of Cab Sauvingon on Saturday, which will complete our grape purchases for this year.

Meanwhile, our vidal blanc is persistently fermenting away. We know it's fermenting away b/c the airlock is constantly bubbling and John's basement smells like a cross between a sweaty feet and hard boiled eggs.

More pictures to come.