Tag Archive for: malbec

Bottling Big Bully 2015

only 1000 more bottles to go!

We bottled the 2015 Big Bully the other day!  1367 bottles of wine in about 9 hours (including a stop for lunch!).  Not exactly a record breaker, but we were happy to finish in one day.  We bottle from the 300 gallon tank which is directly behind my head in this picture.

We used a new set up, based on the enolmatic, but this time with two filler spouts, a new vacuum pump and using a 5 gallon carboy for the overflow tank.  We love our enolmatic, but it is wearing out after several years of good use.  In this picture I am standing next to the manual corker.  Yes, we corked every single bottle by hand!

This wine needs to age, in the bottle for a couple months.  We expect to release it fall 2017.  The grapes are from 3 Texans Vineyard.  The wine is 73% malbec and 27% tempranillo.

To show you how we do it, I made a video:

Halfway through Harvest 2016!

watch out! it is going over!

watch out! it is going over!

Hey there, I wanted to give you a quick report of how things are going around here.  I don’t have long–if you look closely at that picture, you’ll see that malbec there is about to “boil over” and ferment right on out of that barrel!

This week I’ve got 1.5 tons of malbec fermenting from Temple, TX and .75 tons of merlot from our Salado vineyard fermenting.  We have already fermented the chardonnay, sangiovese and tempranillo.

So what’s left?  CABERNET SAUVINGNON!  Next weekend, Saturday, August 20, our friends at 3 Texans Vineyard will harvest their cab.  Follow the link and give them a holler if you would like to harvest grapes with them.  They are near Temple, Texas.

I haven’t even scheduled the harvest of our cab yet.  The weather is calling for a bit cooler temperatures, so hopefully that will help the plants ripen those grapes some more.  I will let you know soon, but probably harvest August 27 or September 3, 2016.

Well, that’s all for now, I’ve got some punching to do!

The Elves at Salado Winery

Bottling Big Bully 2014Everyone knows that the elves work all year round to get the toys ready for Christmas.  Well, we have been working hard here too to get lots of wine bottled.  Back in July 2015, I gave you an update of the vintage 2014 wines.  Now many of them are bottled and ready for you to enjoy!

In October, we bottled over 300 gallons.  That include 2014 Night Flight, 2014 Big Bully and 2014 3 Texan Cabernet Sauvignon, 2014 3 Texan Malbec and 2014 3 Texan Tempranillo. In November, we bottled another 200 gallons of 2014 Big Bully.

And now all that great wine is ready to gift to your favorite wine drinker

3 Texans Vineyard Wine Dinner

Join us for a Vineyard to Table Wine Dinner

Join us for a “Vineyard to Table” Wine Dinner

Saturday, November 14, 2015 6 pm, 3 Texans Vineyard

For several years, we have been working with our friends at 3 Texans Vineyard and we are excited to announce that their wines are ready and they will be launched at a special wine pairing dinner at their vineyard.  They have worked hard and this will certainly be a celebration of the fruits of their labor.  We also happen to think these wines are quite special and we hope you’ll join us for the dinner.

 

Vintage 2014–trying to finish up!

Our latest set up for cold stabilization.  The chardonnay is in the 30 gallon container just CHILLIN' in a nice bath of cold water.  Coolant is circulating in and out those pink hoses.  Inside the barrel, unseen is copper tubing.

Our latest set up for cold stabilization. The chardonnay is in the 30 gallon container just CHILLIN’ in a nice bath of cold water. Coolant is circulating in and out those pink hoses. Inside the barrel, unseen is copper tubing.

Every year I think I will get the previous year’s vintage wrapped up and in the bottle before the next harvest begins, but like every year it “ain’t gonna happen”.

So here is my to-do list:

Chardonnay/Night Flight (50 cases) —Cold stabilization and citric acid trial.

Need to test to see when cold stabilized

Need taste test for adding citric (.5g/L to 1 g/L)

 

Sangiovese/Rootin’ Tootin’ (100 cases)

Need to taste test for adding citric (.5g to 1 g/L)

Need to measure and add sorbate

Need to taste test for sweetness

Projected bottling date:  Wednesday, August 5

!!!!!!!!!!need to order bottles

 

Cab-Merlot blend/Diamond Back (125 cases)

Need to add oak in nylon bag (75% medium toast French up to 40 lbs & 25% medium toast American)

—-I need help so oak bag does not sink and with re-gassing

 

Malbec-Temp blend/Big Bully (120 cases)

Remove 90 gallons Malbec from Slim

***need clean 60 gallon closed top + clean 30 gallon closed top

Add 55 gal container + all glass carboys of Tempranillo

Need to add oak in nylon bag (75% medium toast American up to 20 lbs & 25% medium toast French)

—I need help so oak bag does not sink and with re-gassing

 

3 Texan Malbec (90 cases)

(in 3 lg white barrels and 1 small 30 gal)

Need to oak (100% American oak)

***need to order more barrel oakers? Should we do just one or more?

 

3 Texan Tempranillo (25 cases)

Need to oak (100% French medium toast oak)

Use already owned barrel oaker?

 

3 Texan Cab Sauv (55 cases)

****need to order Heavy toast French

Use barrel oakers?

Winemaking–June 2015

My Production Control Board

My Production Control Board

It is at this point every year that I say, “ohmigoodness!  time to bottle the wine before harvest gets here!  Harvest is about 8 weeks away and we need to empty the tanks so that we will have space for the 2015 harvest–which might be big due to all that rain we received in May 2015.

So the last couple of days I have been ordering corks, labels, bottles, capsules and oak in order to have the supplies ready for bottling.  Ouch!  This is when it is tough to be an entrepreneur.  These things cost REAL money folks.  And we will be selling this wine late 2015-2016 and maybe even 2017, so it takes a long time to recover that investment in inventory in the wine industry.

Part of the decision making process is crafting a product matrix that makes good sense.  What I mean is that as a business owner, I think about what portfolio of wines I want to offer in order to make wine drinkers happy and maximize profit.  I feel strongly that I need a dry white, a couple different dry reds and some sweet wine.  We have some dessert wines that we produce as well, but I will not be working on those in the next couple of months, so they are not included in this discussion.  So my goal is to produce Night Flight, Diamond Back, Big Bully and Rootin’ Tootin’ for sale at Salado Winery Company at about $20/bottle and then to produce three varietal based reds for 3 Texans Vineyard at 3 different price points.  Based on my experience selling wine over the last 10 years, I decide on how to blend the wines and price them.  Since I often do the selling myself, I have quite strong opinions about what wine drinkers are looking for.

We are a bit behind in trying to get 2014 Night Flight bottled.  It needs to be cold stabilized and that is time consuming.  We are nearly out of it though, so that is the most pressing work to be done.

The 2014 Diamond Back is a blend of 40% cabernet sauvignon and 60% merlot.  The wine has been blended and we have started doing taste tests with various folks.  We will use a combination of American and French oak with this wine, both will be medium toast.  Some folks preferred the American which had strong flavor up front and some preferred the French which was a little more subtle and let the berry fruit notes of the cabernet shine through.  As winemaker, I make the final decision–yeah me!  I’ve got a fair amount of this Diamond Back wine on hand to sell, I still have plenty of the 2013 to sell too therefore I want a dry red blend that will appeal to a wide range of wine drinkers.  So I will use 25% American oak to get just a bit of that flavor up front, during the initial swallow and 75% French oak to give the subtle notes more boost and help carry the fruit flavors through to the end.

The 2014 Rootin’ Tootin‘ needs a little citric acid added to it, probably about .5g/L to give it a little punch.  Since it is warm much of the year here in Central Texas, I like to make wines a wee bit tart, then serve them very cold.  I think a wine like that tastes very refreshing that way and this wine is for folks that like their wine on the sweet side.

The 2014 Big Bully still needs to be made!  I need to play with various combinations of tempranillo and malbec to see which blend is the best, then we need to see how much tempranillo we want to allocate to the blend vs. how much of the single varietal we want to bottle for 3 Texans Vineyard.  I also can backwards plan by predicting how much Big Bully I think I can sell.  It will likely  be oaked with a little more American oak than the Diamond Back because we want to ensure that they have a very different flavor profile.  I am inclined to make a 50-50 blend, but there is much, much more malbec so it is a tough decision to decide how much to blend.  Malbec can be a tricky sell since some wine drinkers really hate it! I am not sure why, but some people will not try even try a Malbec, so I am worried about the large amount that we’ve got on hand.

The 2014 3 Texan Cabernet Sauvignon continues to be my darling.  We have tried this with American medium toast, French medium toast, & Hungarian medium toast, but our favorite so far is the French heavy toast.  We tried this with the chef from Classic Catering yesterday and he was extremely excited about it.  He felt that the heavy toast was a much more unique flavor in this wine, almost like cinnamon.  I complained to him that the heavy toast oak costs an awful lot more, but he proposed a great idea.  He said I should try pre-selling it, so that is what we are going to do.  We will have a sample available on Thursday night, July 2nd during the art opening reception and we will take pre-orders at a discounted price. Hopefully I can sell enough through pre-sales to purchase some heavy toast French oak and make this a terrific bottle of wine with a full retail price of $39.95.

In our preliminary taste tests, we liked medium toast American oak with the 3 Texan 2014 Tempranillo and medium toast French oak with the 3 Texan 2014 Malbec.  This needs to be tested in another round of testing with the folks at 3 Texans Vineyard!

Then all of the bottling needs to be scheduled.  I’ve ordered corks and capsules for all of this wine, but I did not order all of the bottles or all of the labels.  I could not order all of the labels yet because we haven’t decided the allocation for Big Bully.  Plus the labels are actually the most expensive part and just like my MBA professor said, CASH IS KING.  I also didn’t order all of the glassware either.  The pallets of bottles take up too MUCH space and we need lots of messy available work space for harvest.  Luckily Salado Winery employees are taking their vacations early in the summer, so all this bottling will be done when they are back.  So there you have it.  Bottling operations at a winery involve cashflow, space planning, materials, time available and after that, we still have to deal with Murphy’s Law. 🙂

Hope to see you soon!

Almost Halfway through Harvest Season

malbec enters the destemmer

malbec enters the destemmer

Chardonnay is nearly done fermenting, closely followed by Tempranillo, Merlot and Malbec.  On Saturday, August 16 in the afternoon, we’ll be processing grapes from Bravo Texan’s vineyard.  Throughout the weekend, I expect we’ll be pressing the tempranillo, merlot and malbec.  Should be a busy time for us!

Did you get your chance to pick grapes yet?  Looks like harvest will continue Saturday, August 23 and Saturday, August 30.  Keep your eye on this website for the details.

In the meantime, stop by and smell the yeast fermentation!

Test for Ripeness #3

I strain the juice, blend it and then look through the refractometer or put it in a hydrometer

I mash the grapes, strain the juice, make sure it is blended and then look through the refractometer to measure brix or I put it in a hydrometer

There are many factors I take into consideration when determining when to harvest.  I like to evaluate the grapevines, the grape clusters, the seeds and then evaluate the color, smell and taste of the grape juice.  Then I have to take into account the weather before and during proposed harvest, labor available and set the date for harvest.  Weekends are generally a better time to harvest because more volunteers can help.  Next I need to make sure the winery side of everything is ready to process and ferment the grapes.  In other words, when I am not running around the vineyard yelling at birds, I am inventorying the wine making materials, ordering yeast and looking at the maintenance of the pump, crusher and de-stemmer.  It has been said a million times, “great wines are made in the vineyard”.  If I don’t get this first part correct, then I may as well just go home! Nothing is more frustrating than working with substandard wines.

Last night I took a good look at the grapes in Three Texans vineyard.  I collected grapes samples and processed them this afternoon.  Looks like Tempranillo is still winning the ripeness race.  In testing, I found them to have 22 degrees Brix and pH 3.65.  Good color, a little light on taste, but definitely in the mellow plum direction. Starting to feel that bit of zing that tannins can add to the wine. Some grapes were still a bit harder, and some were soft and ripe. Same with the seeds, some beige and a few green.  In the vineyard I saw some rachis and peduncle browning, but these grapes could definitely hang for another week or two.  So harvesting on Saturday, August 9th would be a great idea, but looking at the long-range forecast, they are calling for an 80% chance of rain on Friday, August 8!  So I think that these grapes should be harvested on Wednesday or Thursday August 6-7.

Next I examined the Malbec.  These grapevines look a bit riper in the vineyard.  The grapes have almost no green left in them.  They were easy to pull off, soft, juicy and easy to mush.  I thought maybe they had jumped ahead of the Tempranillo in ripeness, but when I looked at the sugar, I got 20.8 degrees Brix and pH 3.51.  It still had a bit a of apple cider like tartness and had a few green seeds, so it needs a couple more weeks.  I am predicting August 16 for these grapes.

Then the Cabernet Sauvignon from Three Texans.  Cab seems to be the worst variety for uneven ripeness and had many green grapes still sprinkled about.  I did see a bit of peduncle and rachis browning.  For flavors I was tasting a very cherry or raspberry note which indicates that it needs more time.  (see https://winegrapes.tamu.edu/grow/ripening.pdf for reference) I was surprised to see 20.4 degrees Brix, but the pH was only 3.26, so I would like to see these grapes hang 3 more weeks to ripeness.  A good ripe Cabernet Sauvignon will make a better wine and fetch a higher price.  If it is harvested too early, it might as well become Rootin’ Tootin’.

This morning I took a good look at my vineyard.  First I sampled the Chardonnay.  The grapes are starting to become translucent with a light golden hue.  Starting to see brown peduncles and rachis.  When I smashed the grapes, I had great brown seeds.  So I was surprised to only measure 20.4 ° brix and pH 3.55.  Given the state of the vines, the taste of the juice (starting to get mango) the darkness of the seeds, I will probably plan to harvest these grapes just before next week’s rain.  In other words, I will harvest them on August 6-7.

The Merlot in my vineyard is starting to look ripe as well, but I have some problems with uneven ripening on the ends.  I saw some peduncle browning and so I was disappointed to see how many green seeds I still had and to have only 18.7 °brix and pH 3.38.  The taste was also a bit unripe. So this will probably wait until August 13-17, assuming that rain is going to fall on August 8th and that there isn’t much rain after that.

I couldn’t detect much difference between the aromas of the wine grapes, but there is quite a bit of difference in color and flavor of the juice.

a few more green seeds than we want to see

Tempranillo, a few more green seeds than we want to see

chardonnay on the right--nice ripe seeds

chardonnay on the right–nice brown ripe seeds

Tempranillo, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, second row is Chardonnay then Merlot   Big differences in color, small variation in aromas

Tempranillo, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon second row is Chardonnay then Merlot
Big differences in color, small variation in aromas

 

 

 

 

When is Harvest 2014

merlot & chard from our Salado vineyard

merlot and chard from our Salado vineyard

I am getting anxious for harvest!  The yeast is on order and I am ready to start soon, but when!?!

Tested Chardonnay yesterday and got pH 3.45, Brix 19.5, tastes like a pink lady apple!

So here goes the tentative plan…

I’m expecting activities to kick off on Saturday, August 2nd.

Right now I’m expecting Belle Crest to harvest tempranillo on Saturday, August 2.  I would like to test their grapes again on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, July 26 or 27th to verify that they have been ripening as projected.  Right now the 10 day forecast has a significant chance of rain for Friday, August 1st.  This could be a bad thing because the grapes tend to soak up the water quickly.  Last year it rained 48 hours prior to picking our merlot and I was very disappointed as the resulting wine was too watery.  So this may throw a monkey wrench in the plan, or the 10 day forecast could be wrong (but I sure would welcome the cooler temps).  Journey Vineyards will bring their grapes as well for processing, so I must remember to keep them informed.

I am likely to also pick the chardonnay in our vineyard the same time, August 2nd.  I am torn because the flavors are getting to where I want, but the Brix isn’t quite there.  So they could easily hang a little longer than that.  If we get rain, I will definitely push that harvest to during the week.

On Saturday, August 9th we’re expecting Belle Crest to harvest malbec.  We may harvest our merlot as well.  The malbec will be the biggest amount coming at one time, so we may push the merlot off so that we don’t have too much to process.  I want to process the chardonnay and have it out of the way prior to the malbec arriving.

The cabernet sauvignon and sangiovese still have a while to go in my vineyard, so maybe the 16th or 23rd.

Stay tuned!