Winemaking on winegirlblogs: Filtering the Whites
And now for some actual winemaking on this blog. It’s been a while. Our time has been occupied and our blog has been clogged with moving the winery, construction on the new facility and settling into our new location. We’re getting prepared to bottle our 2008 reds and 2009 whites soon. That means some filtering is in order for the ’09 Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer (that’s French for Gewürztraminer). WineGirl and her helper, Delice, rolled out the small but mighty plate filter for some action. It had been in the closet for a while, but performed its duties very well....
Read MoreMoving wine around
This week, we took the time to rack some aging wines. Racking entails transfering the wine from the barrel, washing out the sediment (lees), returning the wine to the barrel and topping off the barrel with extra wine. We transfer the wine by pressurizing the barrel with inert gas and pushing the wine through the hose to the waiting vessel. This method is very gentle on the wine and limits unnecessary exposure to the air. It’s nice not to have to use the pump for this process. As much as I like our little pump, it requires priming which can be a chore, especially for this job. The...
Read MoreWashing Bottles
We’re getting ready to bottle our new Merlot and the pieces are coming together. The corks and foils are on the way. The labels are at the printer and look great. We picked up some bottles the other day from down south. The warehouse in Kent looked ready for the great deluge. There were sandbags piled neatly around the perimeter and we had to climb in the front door of the place. I figured it was preparation for the dam failure, but they seemed to say it was normal flood season prep. We got the bottles home safely. Thanks go to Joel for the generous use of his vehicle. I was on my own...
Read MoreNew Corker
After years of struggling with our bottle corking machine, we finally decided to upgrade to a high quality manual corker. For several years, we’ve used a widely available Portuguese model that gave satisfactory results but it was somewhat inconsistent and left an unsightly dimple on the top of the cork. After researching the little information that’s available on manual corkers, we ordered the Swiss made Amez-Droz Rapid 12 from Davison Winery Supply in Oregon. Unfortunately, the package arrived nearly naked. I have trouble imagining that the people at Davison could have done a...
Read MorePreparing ’07 Merlot
We’re getting close to bottling our 2007 My Derby Wife Merlot. That’s right, WineGirl Wines’ newest offering is inspired by the great sport of roller derby and specifically by Seattle’s Rat City Rollergirls. Here’s some photos of us moving some tanked ’07 Merlot to prepare for blending with another excellent Merlot that’s still in barrel. Our aging tank is our holding tank is our blending tank, so daily operations require some careful planning or quick thinking. We like the color dark, dark. We won’t filter this wine to retain all that...
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