Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Winter time to write & time to start ML

Really, I just need to write this on a regular basis, but it's always difficult to get started. Here's my new goal - write a little bit every day regardless of what's happening. Edit and publish the next morning.

For those of you not in Oregon, we just went through the longest, coldest winter snap on record. It's warmer now, but here's a quick indication of how cold it was here (those of you in cold climates, pardon our whining about the cold):


We finally started to heat up the winery this week in order to push the '09 Pinot Noirs through the malolactic fermentation. Most years, we would be well on the way to finished with ML by now, but we delayed the start a bit this year in order to get the winery a bit more cleaned up before the giant shuffle.



At the end of harvest, all the wines are in one barrel room, tightly packed together in the chilly (hopefully) ambient temp. That's all the current vintage Pinot Noir and whites and previous vintage Pinot Noir. Before we start to warm up the barrel room, we have to move all the previous vintage Pinot Noir out to the frigid wintery unheated side of the winery (the fermentation side during harvest). In deference to good winemaking practices, this means that we have to get the ferment side cleaned up, get the floors scrubbed and get the drains cleaned first.



More later on how we use temp control in the winemaking. ...Hopefully some more on native ferments, unfiltered wines, and "natural winemaking"