Diggin' Tanks

Diggin tanks, diggin tanks. Most red wine is fermented with its skins for good extraction of colors and flavors. This leaves the task of getting all the flat, empty grape skins out of the tanks. If you have ever mucked out a horse stall or a corral after a good rain then you will have a partial understanding of the task. 

I love digging tanks. Call me crazy but I find that it is a great physical challenge. Its also nice to have a little alone time. At bigger wineries you would probably have a digging buddy in the tank with you but here we don’t have other people and only some of our tanks are that enormous. There is always a point near the middle of the dig where you look at how much you have done, how sweaty and sore you are then at how much you still have left to do. For just a second you think that there is no way you will ever be finished! This is the point when I hear my Mamma's voice in my head telling me to cowgirl up. I then have no choice but to smile and dig in hard! It soon after this that I start to see the end.

The grape must (grape skins) is heavy and of course wet, it is also somewhere between knee and shoulder deep. You have to go FAST! Someone is waiting on you to get it done, like now. The must is hot, its reaks of hot alcohol so much that sometimes it can take your breath away. You are inside a dark tank with a box fan blowing down on you from the top door. The fan is to remove as much Carbon Dioxide as possible and maybe to cool you down a little. The fan cannot always remove all of it, sometimes it can get trapped in pockets of smushed grapes. Your reward for being able to see the floor of the tank is that you start slipping and sliding around and sometimes when you shift your weight the tank resonates with a startling BONG!  

Digging tanks makes me really feel like I’m in the heart of it. Like, “How badass am I? I make wine! I work like a man! And I look good doing it!” It is such a great feeling to know that you just shoveled 15 TONS of wet, sticky, staining grape skins out of a tiny door of a huge tank. I can't wait to drink a glass of wine that came out of one of the tanks I have dug out!

P.S. I would like to thank my Momma for making me shovel so much shit over the years! Bet she never thought she'd get a thanks for that one.

Monitoring Fermentation

In order to manage fermentation we have to monitor the Brix and the temperature on a daily basis. Brix is the measurement we use for sugar and we all know what temperature is. 

As fermentation progresses the yeast use up the sugar, decreasing the Brix and producing three byproducts; Carbon Dioxide, alcohol and heat. If a fermentation gets too hot it can 'blow off' the the fruity-ness, cause off flavors or aromas and even cause a stuck ferment. The temperature can be regulated by the use of glycol jackets on tanks or cooler location for barrels. Both of which are kept cooler in the beginning of fermentation to promote a slow leisurely pace for the gluttonous yeast. This will give a better chance of the yeast eating all the sugar then dying. Otherwise they gorge themselves then die before the sugar is all gone. Also whites are kept cooler throughout simply because they have more delicate fruit to lose if overheated. 

I measure the Brix with a hydrometer and of course I use a thermometer for temps. At bigger wineries I have had the opportunity to use one of these DMA do-hickies, pictured below, you push down the plunger at the top, it sucks a very small amount of juice up and gives a read out of both Brix & temp (it does a lot of other really cool stuff but I wont get into that now). These are very expensive, even just to have them calibrated is a lot of money so I do not have one at my disposal right now.   

But remember noses and taste-buds are the most important tool we have to determine any issues that a fermentation may be having. I always stick my nose in my sample and give it a taste as well. 

Kickin' it off! Juice to wine.

Inoculation. The introduction of cells or organisms to a carbohydrate, nutrient rich substrate. The organisms in the case of wine-making can be either yeast or bacteria depending on the fermentation you are trying to initiate. Primary fermentation is yeast and secondary or Malo-lactic, is bacteria. The substrate is yummy grape juice. Most inoculations use freeze dried yeasts or bacteria that have to be reconstituted.The yeast has to be mixed well into 40C water and left for 20 minutes. Before the yeast can be ‘pitched’ into the juice the yeast should be within 10 degrees of the juice, which means that you often have to add juice and wait, add juice and wait, add juice and wait. This process gets the yeast very excited! Sometimes the yeast will more than double in size. 

Inoculation of grape juice is the main reason that I hate going to the grocery store after work during harvest. I have yet to figure out how to inoculate a tank without getting covered in juice and yeast. As you can imagine by the end of a 12 hour day I do not smell fresh and clean. A stop to pick up a gallon of milk instigates looks that say ‘Girl, you need to see a doctor about that smell!’ This is the only down side. It doesn't smell bad when you are mixing it or adding it, I think it smells fantastic, but once its on your clothes (in your hair!) it doesn't stay fantastic.

I love doing yeast additions! You can see, hear and even feel the yeast wake up. I even have a song I sing to the yeasties!  

Punch downs & Pump overs

Both activities are performed to allow more extraction of colors and tannins from the skins of red grapes. If red grapes are pressed off the skins the juice, depending on variety, will be a light rose to clear. When red varieties are processed they are crushed and destemmed then sent to the holding vessel (tank or bin) that it will ferment in.

 No matter the size of the vessel or volume of the juice/skins, a 'cap' will form. This means that the skins raise to the top and the juice settles at the bottom, decreasing the surface area of skins that the juice can be in contact with. If the volume is small enough one can punch down the cap into the juice but if it is a large volume the cap is too thick to break through with that method. At Claar we use mainly pump overs, where we pump the juice from the bottom and spray it over the cap until well mixed. We use what look like sprinklers for our smaller tanks and with the larger ones we manually hold a hose and spray it around. We employ this method every 12 hours, so it is how we start and how we end our days.