Now I know!

I guess this blog is late since I said it would be up by last Friday. I had an unexpected painting session. No, I was not modeling for a painting but painting the inside of the winery. It looks good but it is slow going. All the painting put me behind with the wine club stuff and my blog research.

We had 3 large groups on Saturday so 5 of us had to work. Rob was off at Gold Beach doing a festival and Tim was entertaining for the Folk Festival in Eugene. That left Trish, Linde, Sharon, David and me for the tasting room. We had a fraternity group (mom's weekend), Junior League, and a sorority celebrating 100 years on the U of O campus. It was steady from 12:30 until 4 PM. I have no idea how much wine we sold but it was fun. Oh yeah, it was really hot on Saturday! I headed up to to the winery at 4:30 and worked until 10 PM. There was plenty to keep me busy but I decided to draw the line at 10 PM.

I got all the wine club packages out today on time. The UPS man (Lance) came about 20 minutes after I finished. I answered my emails and started on my next project...Memorial Day weekend. I did squeeze some time in to ask David more about the bentonite process and what a wine goes through before it is bottled.

Let's see how good my notes were:
1. Send in samples for bentonite trials, these tell you how much bentonite to add.
2. Mix and add bentonite at room temperature to wine. This settles out the proteins.
3. Once settled, cold stabilize. Chill wine down to zero degrees C or 32 F.
4. Add cream of tartar to cold wine. This creates a super saturated solution of potassium bitartrate which then drops out and forms tartrate crystals in the tank. Since the cream of tartar is very fine it will take 3-7 days for it to settle.
6. Pass number one through 2 filters, coarse to finer. The wine is tasted and we decide if it needs more sweetness. If more sweetness is desired then either sugar or sweet juice is added. We don't want yeast and sugar to get together...it can cause unexpected (not necessarily unpalatable) results.
7. Pass two through 2 filters, finer yet to the final filter which eliminates any remaining yeast cells.
After this process the wine is ready to bottle.

A bunch of our wines are in this process. Since we are a small winery be don't have refrigerated tanks. We have a cold room where the wine must sit for several days to get down to the desired temperature. Sometimes there is a back up at the cold room. There isn't much room in there.

Now you know what some of these wines go through before they are put in a bottle. After bottling, it is best to let them sit in the bottle for a few months. The flavors reintegrate and begin to taste like they did before the process. Some are not affected as much as others.

There you go. Now you know as much as I do. Hope you enjoyed the information. Hope to see a lot of you this weekend.

Tracy