Great rot

This week has been busy with sorting, pressing, and racking Riesling. After sorting out the 'bad' stuff - bunches affected by botrytis, or noble rot - we've then been sorting through that to find the 'best.' The best botrytis bunches are the shriveliest and fuzziest because they have the most concentrated juice and will make the best dessert wine. This is the same sorting process that Peter and I went through for our Gewurz, which I'm happy to say is finally fermenting, a week after inoculation! To get it going, we simply added some already-fermenting 2009 Gewurz to our juice. After no action, we transferred it to a clear bottle, gave it a good shake, and let it sit overnight. Next day, we could see bubbles and knew that fermentation had begun. We are so excited! Now we just have to decide when to stop the fermentation based on alcohol and sugar levels. Stay tuned!

As for Wiemer's 2009 TBA Riesling, there is still more sorting to do.

Nice rack

Winemaking is so glamorous. We pick grapes, sort through them to eliminate rot and other bad stuff, put them into a press that extracts the juice, and then run the juice through hoses and into tanks to settle out and blend before fermentation. Pre-fermentation, racking is the process of running off the good juice from the solids that have settled out. Once the juice is solid-free, it goes back into a tank to be fermented into wine. What I've found is that this process involves a lot of cleaning - cleaning presses, cleaning hoses, cleaning tanks, cleaning buckets, cleaning the floor. Every time we go through this process we clean for the next turn. On an average harvest day we may go through this process 2 or 3 times. Joe was the lucky guy on this day who got to climb into the huge stainless steel tank to clean it. I hope I get the job next time.

One in a thousand

Wiemer is featured in this book! We have this poster displayed behind our tasting bar. I should get commission on sales of this book because I am always telling people that Wiemer is in it and then gushing about what a great travel guide it is. I got it as a gift a couple years ago and started marking off places that I've been, and then when I was planning my trip down under I photocopied all the pages on Australia and New Zealand and took them with me to reference as I traveled. So I guess a goal of mine should be to get to every place in the book... come visit and you can cross one off too!

It snowed through the night too!

But there is definitely something to the lake's moderating effect on temperature. As I got closer to Wiemer from where I live in Dundee, 5 miles west of Seneca lake, the snow was gone.

It snowed today

I have no other words.

Magdalena - what a hottie

Today we picked some Sauvignon Blanc (yes, we have 2 rows - who knew??) from Wiemer's Magdalena vineyard, which is the warmest vineyard site by about 5 degrees. Not that we could tell, because it was only about 40 degrees today. Tomorrow it's not supposed to get out of the 30's and there is snow in the forecast for tomorrow night! Thankfully I got out of work a little early today and was able to go shopping for warm clothes so I'll be ready for picking and sorting in freezing temperatures. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a dull pair of shears so I can avoid "picking" another finger - my left pinky is still throbbing from today's mishap. Three of us have mistaken fingers for grapes in the last week, but we consider these minor injuries sacrifices to Bacchus, god of wine!

Winemaker-in-Training

I mentioned in an earlier post that Peter and I are making a mini-cuvee of TBA Gewurz. The process is going great so far - after letting the grapes sit on the botrytis skins overnight, we found this old-school basket press that belonged to Hermann and used it to press off the juice. We wrapped the grapes in cheesecloth first to filter out the juice, and then we pressed it twice. We were happy to get about a liter of juice, almost filling this gorgeous magnum bottle. We then let the juice settle out for a few days, and last night we siphoned off the good juice and left behind the murky sludge. This was not an easy task, and we still have some sludge left so we are letting it settle out again today before we ferment the batch. (Btw, the juice tastes amazing, even the sludge, so if it ends up not being crystal clear we are confident the wine will still taste good!) Over the next few days I'll be keeping my eye on the recycling bucket to look out for a couple of 375 mL bottles, since we're going to need them soon. In the meantime we have some tough decisions to make, like how long to ferment, how much sugar and alcohol we want to have leftover in the finished wine, and what to call it!

Happy Columbus Day

I've been delinquent in my posting. It's mainly because Columbus Day weekend is one of the busiest at the winery. Tons of people come to wine taste and see the beautiful fall foliage, which is starting to look really pretty. My family came to visit me, which was awesome! They brought the puppies and we had a blast. I had them try all the wines we have available for tasting and I now know everyone's favorite. Since I worked all weekend I just had a short time with them, but they got to sample the finest wine in the Finger Lakes and the best of Watkins Glen take-out: pizza and Chinese.

The days are starting to blend together a bit as I go from full days in the tasting room to nights on the production line. Temperatures have dropped, and last night on the sorting table it felt like we were sifting through little grape-shaped ice cubes. Tonight we rigged up a 40ft tarp over the presspad so we could sort into the presses without the grapes getting wet from the rain. We had a great system going and went through the batch pretty quickly. Go team! Then we blind tasted a Riesling from Idaho that was surprisingly good. It's going to be intense like this for the rest of October, but at least I know there's a lot of great wine in my past, present, and future. Hope everyone had a nice holiday!

Punching Pinot

Today one of my tasks was to punch the Pinot every few hours. Red wines need skin contact for a certain amount of time because their grape juice is clear - the color and most of the polyphenols (tannins, flavonoids, antioxidants) are in the skins. So Wiemer's 2009 Pinot Noir is in these white bins, fermenting on the skins. It needs to be 'punched,' or pressed down, every few hours to macerate the skins and maximize the contact with the juice. I love this job because the Pinot smells really good, and I like seeing it all bubble and fizz when you punch it!

I heart my job

(Joe, Oskar, me, Maressa, Peter, Alex)
Even though my whole body aches from picking, pressing, standing and bending, and even though I just cannot get the dirt off my hands, I love my job. Today was a great day. We chased the Riesling for several hours and had lunch on the back of a truck overlooking the Magdalena and Josef vineyards with Seneca lake in the background. Even though picking grapes is labor intensive, it is also quite relaxing because you can chat with each other or get lost in your thoughts. Either way there is fresh air and it is a beautiful setting. After picking we sorted the Riesling and the rest of the Gewurz that the Mexicans had picked. Since we machine harvested the Riesling today we had to look out for staples that may have gotten picked off the rows. We also had to be on the lookout for these ginormous caterpillars that are red/pink with white spots. Literally they are bigger than slugs. I actually spotted the only one today and had to remove it from the bunches - it was so gross, let me tell you.

(Alex, the German intern, looking for staples and other non-grape objects)

For the Gewurz we just had to remove the unclean or unripe fruit. Peter had set aside the botrytis-infected Gewurz bunches to make a mini-cuvee (special blend or selection), and he asked me if I wanted in on it. So once we were done cleaning and the grapes were being pressed, he and I sorted through it. We're going to make a TBA dessert wine (TBA is a German abbreviation for trockenbeerenauslese, which is a type of very sweet wine made from grapes that have been affected by noble rot, or botrytis). We're hoping we have enough to make a half bottle for each of us, but that may be ambitious.

Meanwhile, Wiemer is going for employer of the year with a new employee dining area and these silly pins:

Harvest moon

The harvest moon is officially out! Last night it was so bold and bright that you could see moonshadows. What better timing for me to resume my production duties - particularly picking and sorting. I missed a couple days from being in the tasting room all weekend. Today we picked Chardonnay from HJW, the oldest Wiemer vineyard site. I picked for an hour this morning before working the tasting room for the rest of the day, and then I joined the production team this evening to sort the last batch of bunches. It started raining in the middle so we threw a huge tarp over the sorting line and continued under it. It was fun and the rain only lasted a little bit. The juice pressed for a while and we did some blind wine tasting, and now we're waiting to have a dinner that some culinary students are preparing for us at the winery. I can't wait to eat! Tomorrow we'll start picking the Riesling. We're going to be using a machine harvester so I am looking forward to seeing it in action. My job will be to run after it and cut off the bunches that get missed. So psyched!!!