Seufert Winery

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Pinot Blanc:

I stopped by the winery yesterday to check on my wine. The Pinot Blanc that I'm making as a dry table wine is done fermenting. I left a small amount of residual sugar in one of the 3 carboys (1 degree Brix). The other 2 are completely dry (-2 degrees Brix).

The wine has potential to be good, but it's a bit rough right now. It's much like an awkward adolescent. It will certainly improve as the yeast settles out and then again once it is filtered.

I moved the wine outside so it can cold stabilize naturally on the cold nights. I moved one batch out a few days ago, and it has already clarified considerably.

Meanwhile, the ice wine version from the same grapes keeps chugging along. It's fermenting, but slowly. It has a luscious mouthfeel - I'm looking forward to seeing it complete. Yummm.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

I ran across a great wine related website/blog:

He has links to winery blogs, as well as evaluations of winery websites. Interesting stuff, and worth a visit. The current post lists the top 10 winery websites.

http://mikeduffy.typepad.com/wwsr/

Friday, December 09, 2005


Pictures...

I just posted lots of crush pictures on my main website.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Making ice wine:

The pictures capture it best. I used a small bladder press. You fill the wood basket with the grapes and then apply air pressure to the internal bladder. The expanding baldder presses the grapes against the wood shell, extracting the juice. The juice falls to the bottom tray where it drains into a bucket.

The increasing pressure effectively re-froze my grapes, making it impossible to extract additional juice. Halfway through I removed the wooden shell to allow the grapes to thaw more before completing the process. One shot captures the free-standing frozen mass of grapes.

Wine grape press - loaded and ready for action

Close up of frozen grapes before pressing

Frozen grapes with the press shell removed


 
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