Today was Sauvignon Blanc day. A long
chat with the vineyard manager about what was happening with the
vintage and the vineyard and at home then off to pick. Only took an
hour as SB bunches are really good to pick. Sometimes coming off with
just a light tug.
Sav Blanc on the right |
Brix 21.2 (perfect) pH 3.24 (pretty
good and no adjustment made) weighed in at 55KG (good)
Some people just do the same thing
every year because it works, no adventurism or risk taking.
Neatly pruned and tucked in SB |
But not here on HHF we love to sail
close to the wind and seek new frontiers. No not bungy jumping or
parachuting or other adrenaline rushes. Our risk taking is to try the
untried in wine making. At least untried by us.
Perfect little bunches |
Firstly the decision was to press full bunches i.e. stems and all – no de-stemming. Why? A couple of reasons. Firstly the stems act as coarse matting to help the juice run out. Secondly, because there few shattered berries there is less pulpy material. And thirdly it means you don't have to stand out in the afternoon sun with the crusher/de-stemmer putting through grapes. Then of course there is no cleaning up afterwards. Beautiful.
The next adventure is to make three
types of SB. S1 is the purest free run juice. S2 is pressed juice and
has a little skin contact. S3 will be the heavy pressing, lots of
skin contact and just to make it even more interesting some French
oak dust will be added to simulate barrel fermentation.
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