GARAGE VINO

After two weeks in the tank, I inoculated with ML, added some ML nutrients, gave it another two days to get the ML started, then used the spigot an inch or so from the bottom of the tank to “rack” the wine into my two barrels. Filled up a 6-gallon glass carboy and barely filled up a second, 5-gallon glass carboy. So it looks like I’ve got 41 gallons total (although I can’t tell for sure whether the Jaffurs French barrel is 15 or 20 gallons — so I’ve either got 36 or 41 gallons).

My winery in full.

Many home winemaking guides advise you to rack your wine off of the lees, those yeast remnants at the bottom of the tank. But Jaffurs goes straight into the barrel from their press — some of the lees get caught up in the pan on the way to the barrels, so there is a natural racking of sorts, but very little. Think they rack once after about 6+ months in the barrel, if that. They prefer to keep some microbial activity and flavor addition going as the ML and barrel-aging takes place. So I didn’t transfer all of the sludge from the bottom, yet I did get just about all of my tank into my barrels and carboys. About the same as how Jaffurs’ press does it.

I got a space heater and did my best to keep the temperature around 65 degrees, but ultimately it felt like a losing battle as nighttime temperatures are getting pretty cold. Decided to just let the wine sleep and have the ML do its thing over time without attempting to manipulate the temperature where I’m storing the wine (back corner of the garage, out of any daylight).

On November 30, I had a friend bring over a turkey baster and after we had a dinner with our wives and the DVD “Knocked Up” was halfway through (not a bad film, gets better as it goes), I paused the disc and did a little barrel tasting. I ignored the glass carboys for now.

Both barrels tasted sharp, biting, almost lemonady in terms of the acid kick. The wine itself was there, tasting very young, the tannins kind of coming at you and feeling like they were redoubled by the acidity, too sharp all told, but it’s good to know those flavors are there for later. I was once again pleased to find that it tasted like pretty decent wine already. Better than plenty of 2-year-old cheap stuff I’ve paid for plenty of times.

The big barrel (neutral French oak, 20 gallons)

From everything I’ve heard, that acidic bite means the ML fermentation has not taken place. Dave Wheaton, Cab maker, martial arts master, and Great Loaner of the Tank, tells me ML sometimes takes place over many months so no need to worry. I’d already caved to the temperature gods (and potential heating bills of keeping a space heater on in the garage all night every night) already, so this was confirmation more than anything else.

The American oak barrel was starting to taste much more sophisticated and professional wine-ish already. Not necessarily oaky yet — just deeper, more complex than the other from the faster-adding flavors.

The small barrel (new American oak)

Meanwhile I’ve been topping up the tanks with commercial wine every 5 days or so. Therefore, so far, this 41 gallons of Paso Robles Zin also includes a blend of miniscule quantities of anything from $4.99 California Merlot to $75 Santa Barbara County Syrah and a few others in between. The bigger barrel seems to lose about 2 cups a week, maybe a little less, the small barrel about 1 cup. Feels kind of odd pouring wine from a bottle into the barrel but that’s part of it — keeping that oxygen off the wine is the key (except in small amounts as provided by the way the wood breathes or the occasional process of racking).

So the wine is in bed for the winter now. I may rotate the 10 gallons out of the smaller barrel in mid-January and push the carboy stuff into that barrel. But I think, otherwise, the wine can just hang out and age for six months as is. I can test in March or April to see whether ML is complete and if not, inoculate again to wrap that up. Probably want to bottle it in the summer — like to have as much time in the barrels as I can without getting that American oak barrel imparting an overabundance of oak flavors.

Final tasting note for 2007: On December 22, I did another barrel-sipping, and found that while both barrels were MUCH further along in both flavor complexity and mellowing acidity, I am already not liking the “fake flavor” taste of the wine in the new American oak barrel, whereas the stuff in the neutral French oak is starting to taste very good — like properly aging wine, more than anything else. So when I return from the weeklong vacation I’m taking, I plan to rack the wine out of the new American barrel and possibly leave the current carboy inventory exactly where it is. Then I would have approximately a 40% contribution from the barrel I like, 30% from 2 months in the barrel only kicking in okay flavors, and 30% in glass the whole while (though both the initial carboys have the lower-in-the-tank wine, with more “stuff” to contribute flavors over time). I could bottle these as separate lots, or blend all together, or some combo of all of the above.

In the next couple of entries I’d like to provide a few book and store and winery recommendations — as promised from the outset, I’d like to provide some links and in-depth info on people and profiles and businesses and schools along the way, not just telling my story but functioning as a kind of resource for aspiring winemakers such as myself. Once I get a few of these reviews and recommendations off my chest, I’ll soon return to the tale (and work) of the business aspects of turning this passion of mine into a professional pursuit, rather than simply a hobby.

I’ll be applying for a wholesaler’s wineselling permit, for instance, so I can custom-crush next fall if that’s the way I decide to go. Don’t want to wait until mere weeks before harvest to get that rolling. But there are other options and ideas too — the idea of working as a winemaker or assistant winemaker’s right-hand man by day while making my own small-lot wines on the side, for instance. And maybe the most exciting option — there’s a property and winery in Paso Robles I’m very interested in buying. May even be able to come to a deal on it, which deal would allow for a window in which I’d raise the funding for the acquisition.

Will I acquire a winery the way Howard Dean began his 2004 presidential campaign (pre-screaming flameout, I mean), by raising the money online? Or simply prod one of my wealthy friends, for whom I was the only dumb guy in the bunch (of our group of high school buddies) not to work for in the first place, to pony up the dough for a share of the profits I’m forecasting and a stake in the rapidly accelerating Paso Robles wine industry? Or, if I’m custom crushing, there are a million variations…such as alternating proprietorships/bonds, partnerships with retail tasting rooms as a means to sell your “wholesale” product at “retail,” and so on. More on all this soon, and even more as I progress.

Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted as That Thing Called Life gives me the answers and the trail is blazed!

For my fortieth birthday (only about a year ago, FYI), my father, well aware of my 35-vine Merlot vineyard behind my home in Connecticut, got me a wine barrel. Made of Appalachian oak, AKA “new American oak,” it was small, a 10-gallon deal, and my dad was being optimistic in procuring it. I say this because my vineyard was one “leaf” new at the time, the third “leaf,” or growing season, being the first to bear fruit in most cases. As a result of this optimism, that barrel occupied a primo spot in my garage for a year or so – and then, in my own obsession with starting a winery, I moved out here –

And so, now that I’d made this Zinfandel, and I needed barrel storage for it, my only barrel was 2,600 miles away. Still in the garage. Plus, at 10 gallons or so, I’d have to use it on a rotation, switching wine into the barrel, then another round of ten gallons in to follow the first, and so on. Exposing it to oxygen I didn’t want to expose it to, forced to utilize a siphon I didn’t really want to use…and so on.

But that barrel was a start, and based on the prices I encountered for new ones, the $70 it now takes to ship something like that across the country was much cheaper than buying a new one, even of the same small size. So my mother-in-law kindly stopped by, probably bothering our tenants who thought they were done with me for the year, grabbed the barrel, and shipped it out.

Meanwhile Craig Jaffurs offered a 20-gallon, 3-year-old French oak barrel he wasn’t using anymore. To begin with he gave me the bargain-basement price of $50, but as I brought him the check, true to his usual nature he tore it up and let me have the barrel for nuthin’. So now I had 30 gallons of barrel space, in a nice mix of French and American oak. I was taking what I could get – but the result, in keeping with the theme here, was a potentially sophisticated blend of oak flavors that an experienced winemaker might have chosen given a world of possibilities.

One problem still remained. Actually, two. Mostly the problem was that I had no way of pressing off my fermented wine, and it was now Halloween, at least 2 days after the wine had tested totally dry. I knew I had some room on the press time because of the whole berries in there still fermenting another degree or so…well, actually I know that now, but on October 31st I was in a bit of a panic over waiting too long and losing my CO2 layer over my precious new wine.

Enter The First Dave.

Dave Yates, chief marketer and assistant winemaker at Jaffurs, has been one of the greatest guys to have by my side for this learning-curve stage of my attack on the wine industry. I’ve turned to him for advice on the timing of things like ML inoculation, the addition of those supplements like DAP, and he’s brought me along to vintner dinners and vineyard-sampling trips, so that I’ve become well acclimated to the local industry players and spots. Plus, as mentioned already, I think the Sangiovese Dave makes himself, and sells at Jaffurs and various fine-wine shops, called Cane Felice, is tremendous stuff. But now I was to get a “whole nutha level” of help from Mr. Yates.

Feeling as though I was overreaching the length of my welcome mat, I gave Dave a call to ask whether he knew of any screw presses out there, or anything of the sort, I could rent to press my Zin. Instead of dismissing my lack of preparation the way he probably should have – some budding winemaker this, he figures out he needs a press the day he wants to use it – he embarked on a quest to get young Mr. Staeger a press. He tried the nice folks at the Whitcraft Winery here in town…and they actually had one, but its pieces were scattered all over the winery and it was a busy time, of course, being the tail end of harvest season. He made a second call, and then a third – and pokes his head out during one of my stem-plucking sessions to tell me he’s got a guy named Dave Wheaton, who is a 3-time home winemaker of Cabernet Sauvignon here in town, who’s willing to loan me his press…for zilch.

So The First Dave rescues me, making my life so much easier during a moment of panic…by introducing me to The Second Dave.

Dave Wheaton, as it turns out, is a multi-level black belt, and owns and runs what most people consider the top martial arts and kickboxing school in the Santa Barbara area, called Martial Arts Family Fitness. Suffice to say my kids and wife are already enmeshed in karate and kickboxing classes at Dave’s school, only a couple months after we’ve met.

I didn’t even get to meet him when Dave Yates and I went to pick up the press. I had it in my hands the morning of the 31st…and was debating whether to press immediately, or figure out how to get a little more tank or barrel capacity before doing it. Plus the thing is a bit difficult to figure out if you haven’t used it before –

So I gave Dave Wheaton a call and asked his advice. Would you be panicking if the wine’s been dry for two or three days? How do you assemble this thing? Any suggestions on where to get my hands on a tank, or something bigger than 5-gallon carboys to transfer the wine into for ML?

First, he tells me he might be getting a little nervous at this stage too, and that while his wine is Cab, and made differently in various ways, still, he likes to press off just before it gets dry. Second, he tells me he’d love to do the pressing with me. How cool is that? Loan me the thing AND help me do the tough stuff?

I tell him I’m a little worried too on the timing, and that I’ll just put it into the glass and barrels I have – and that once the trick-or-treating is done for the night, I would be planning on doing my pressing. I figured he wouldn’t bother helping out at that late an hour, but I didn’t feel so great about waiting until the following day. Dave tells me to give him a call if I’m doing it that night, and I do.

“Give me a few minutes to stop by and get something at home then I’ll be right over,” he says.

Now I’m thinking that Dave, who I know by now to own a CO2 canister like they’ve got at Jaffurs, is going to come over and help me press off half my wine into the barrels and give me a CO2 blast for the second half, which I can then press after I buy a tank or some such. But as he pulls in at nine o’clock on Halloween night, hidden in the hatchback of his car is a 200-litre stainless steel tank.

“You can have it till Thanksgiving,” he says, “when I need to rack my Cab.”

It’s the kind of favor you can only pay forward – help somebody out who needs your help someday down the line. I almost feel as though I know what I’m doing now thanks to Messrs. Wheaton and Yates’ help through this first-time process. About ten years of experience plugged into my first three months of trial and error.

So Dave (Wheaton) and I spend the next two hours pressing off the wine, out the spout, through a strainer (to remove as many seeds as possible), and into a bucket (all sterilized by me earlier, of course). We carry the bucketsful of Zin to the tank, which we’ve placed in my “winery corner” of my garage, and gently pour my first vintage, bucket by bucket, into the tank. Standing out there in the Mediterranean climate of late October in Santa Barbara, closing in on midnight, under the lights of my patio, passing the screw-handle around to each other when the pressing got tough, we remarked that we felt like a couple of old Italian winemakers working in the hills of Tuscany. It was great – a good time doing the work and a better time getting to know a good guy. Which is probably the best part of the winemaking process – meeting and spending your down time building friendships with people who share the trait of having been bitten by the wine bug – for good.

I spend some time cleaning and sterilizing Dave’s stuff after he leaves, so that around one a.m., I’m left with a full garbage can of dry pomace, a clean bunch of pieces of the press ready to head back to their rightful owner, and, sitting on its three legs in the corner of my garage, a stainless steel tank loaded with close to 150 liters of brand new wine kept away from the air above with its variable-capacity, pressure-sealed lid.

Thus ends the chapter starring The Two Daves…a happy ending, it turns out, since my wine, from the taste and appearance of things, appears to have survived primary fermentation and the press.

Next - Chapter 5: Into the Barrels We Go

Two nights later, I removed the ice bags from the bins (they were mostly melted and had not entirely leaked out) and surrounding “refrigerated” area. For some reason, during my “cold soak” period, anyone I asked tended to say, “I wouldn’t go much longer than 2 days.” This caused me to panic a bit and I decided, accordingly, to inoculate with my yeast by the evening of the second day of cold soaking. Later I read up on this and find that cold soaking is routinely done for upwards of a week – and, moreover, it isn’t until the must warms up to 60+ degrees that you can effectively start the fermentation anyway. Point being I think I could have soaked longer, and given my bins more time to warm up while the flavors continued to get extracted, especially since I had sulfited during the crush.

Anyway, 48 hours into the cold soak, I test for Brix again, separate samples this time, and come up with slightly lower readings than I began with. Bin Z1, the bigger one, was 23 degrees Brix; Z2 was 23.5+ degrees Brix. Note from later: I realize I may not have stirred up the must in taking the sample, so I probably got a watered-down sample due to some leakage of water from the ice bags. Remember, it had been 25 Brix before the cold soak.

I took a trip over to Expert Advice Central (AKA Jaffurs Wine Cellars) and re-tested samples from each barrel with a refractometer, did a ph test, and took Craig up on his offer of obtaining a yeast he recommended from his fridge. As further evidence that I’d taken a sample from the watered-down portion of my bins, the test results with the Jaffurs equipment came in as follows:

Z1: 22 degrees brix, 4.3 ph
Z2: 22 degrees brix, 3.8 ph

Hydrometers apparently usually measure 1 degree higher than refractometers, and some say hydrometers are more accurate…anyway, since I hadn’t yet realized I’d taken watered-down samples, I decided I’d try for a little acid and sugar manipulation to get this puppy where I wanted it to be (closer to 25 Brix and 3.2-3.4 ph) as I kicked off primary fermentation.

Craig gave me RC-212 yeast, under the Lalvin brand. It is supposedly effective at getting deep colors and flavors from Pinot Noir grapes. As one online winemaking shop that sells it describes the product: RC 212 is a low-foaming moderate-speed fermenter with an optimum fermentation temperature ranging from 59 deg F to 86 deg F. Alcohol tolerance up to 14%. Produces Pinot noirs with good structure, ripe berry, bright fruit and spicy characteristics. Craig uses it in much of his Syrah program, not as his only yeast but one of the majors. Regardless, rather than research ad infinitum from a blank slate, I thought it prudent to take the advice of a great winemaker so I went with his recommendation. The way to get an inoculation going best is to get the yeast started in warm water, giving it at least 20 minutes after stirring it up in the water, and then, creating a “hole” in the must in your bin, you pour the yeast solution into the “hole” to give it a chance to start up within a smaller environment than the overall, larger, colder fermentation bin as a whole. The notion is to give it 12-24 hours in this “hole” then begin stirring and spreading gradually. Just gives the yeast a head start and helps avoid stuck fermentations.

My yeast of choice

So around 9 pm on October 23rd, I got my yeast going in the bins. Note from later: better to give the cold-soaking bins a day to warm up (and an additional day of extraction) before starting the yeast out; pointless starting your fermentation in a cold bin.

Garagevino Ten-Minute Viticulture School Tip: Current winemaking wisdom calls for the addition of two other ingredients as you begin primary fermentation. The first is yeast food, which comes in various brands with instructions on how much to add on the containers. (Mine was called Superfood Plus and included some DAP and vitamins as well, see below on the DAP; ½ teaspoon per 10 gallons of juice or grapes per the label.) This stuff provides nutrients for the yeast to feed on, which may be absent or deficient in the grapes depending on how stressed the vines were in growing their fruit. The second ingredient to add is diammonium phosphate (DAP). The reason for this addition is that the fermentation process kicks out certain molecules and gases (for example, the CO2 that forms a later on top of the must, protecting it from oxygen). Some of the molecules emitted by the process want to bond with other molecules, and sulfur is a tasty choice for some of that bonding. Sulfur is usually applied in the vineyard to fight mildew, and as a result you’ll get some in the must. The problem being, if sulfur is what the fermenting yeast bonds with, you can get a rotten-egg smell, and possibly flavor, in your wine. DAP gives the molecules something else to bond to, in fact those buggers prefer DAP to the sulfur – preemptively eliminating those particular foul odors and flavors.

Now to the foolishness of my moderate manipulations, which, next time, I just wouldn’t do at all. I was conservative, thank God, at every stage of manipulation, but even the decisions to manipulate were probably based on faulty sample-taking. Point being let the wine do its thing, why mess with nature unless there’s some major deficiency? In the end I’m happy I stayed conservative so my manipulations wouldn’t have any potential adverse impact if they were the wrong ones.

Acid: With Craig’s help, I calculated how much tartaric acid to add to bring down my ph readings. 228g per 60 gallons drops the ph by .1 if you’re at 3.6 ph to start with; if you’re higher, the same amount of tartaric acid will drop your ph level by almost .2. Again, I wanted to get down to 3.4 or so. By the formula, I could ultimately add 300-600 grams total, at least. Even before realizing I took watered-down samples, I was skeptical on how the two bins would have different ph levels, so I decided I would add a little more to Z1, only because it was larger.

Sugar: I wanted to make sure to be over 13% alcohol in my finished wine, meaning 23-24 Brix as my lower-end cutoff. The formula I found for sugar addition is to add 3 ounces per gallon if you start at 22 Brix to raise your Brix by 2 degrees. This means, in my case, 180 ounces, or 10-11 lbs. (because I’ve got 60-ish gallons). Another source confirmed this approximation. I decided to be conservative again, and will add 4 lbs., or about 1/3 of what the formula says…plus I need to average my two readings, 23 with the hydrometer and 22 with the refractometer. The way you add the sugar, which process is called chaptalization and is not allowed in commercial winemaking in California (but is allowed in France) goes as follows. You take some strained must, warm it up, add sugar, dissolve completely, let it cool, then add your solution back into the overall must.

I decided to put 50% of the sugar in as the primary fermentation began, and 1/3 of my acid. Thus, on the evening of the 24th, after the yeast had got its head start for 24 hours, I added ¼ of my sugar solution to each bin, plus ¼ of a cup of tartaric acid to Z2 and ½ of a cup of tartaric acid to Z1. Even if I were adding two more acid additions, I would fall somewhere in the range of half to two-thirds of what the formula tells me would reduce ph by .4. Conservative.

I gave it a day, then started doing punch-downs by hand every 12 hours. Twice a day – in the morning and in the evening. Some might say a sanitized tool is better for punch-downs, but I gave my arms a good washing before doing the dirty work, and when you reach in and get intimate with those grapes, you really get a feel for the temperature of the different parts of the bin and so forth. It’s grimy and cool mixing up those bins of budding wine. Getting those flavors mixed in, pushing down the “cap” of skins and seeds and in my case stems that rise to the top as fermentation gets going.

Two days later, I poured half of my remaining sugar solution down the drain, warmed up the other half and added it to the bins. I did a second acid addition, thinking this is all I’ll do here too. After punching down I took samples and brought them over to the winery again.

Z1: 15 degrees Brix, 8% alcohol, 3.17 ph
Z2: 15 degrees Brix, 8% alcohol, 3.18 ph

Dave Yates, assistant winemaker at Jaffurs, likes to be right at 3.2 at this stage, and I like his wine quite a bit. So this is good. Craig wasn’t too direct about it, but I think he feels 3.2 is a little low, a little too acidic. Apparently ML/secondary fermentation can bring the ph up some, and there is often acid volatility during fermentation…point being I am right in the ideal range so no more acid additions.

The way I see my Brix/alcohol level situation, based on the different readings and the probability I took watered-down samples after the cold soak, the Brix was most likely somewhere between 22.5 and 24.5, probably toward the high end of that. Having added 3.5 lbs., or 54 ounces of sugar, it comes out to my having added enough to increase the Brix about 2/3 of a degree. So even if I overcompensated, I should be okay — i.e. if my chaptalization added 1.5 degrees, which it shouldn’t have, and I was at the max estimate of 24.5, I’d be at 26 which is still okay. In the most-likely 23.5 range, and the most-likely 2/3 of a degree increase, I’ll have been in the 24-25 range, which is perfect.

The lesson here is I didn’t really need to manipulate at all. Based on doing this math on the sugar, I would have been fine adding nothing. Based on the ph readings of <3.2 after two tiny acid additions, I probably would have been at 3.3 without doing any manipulation. Lesson learned: don’t futz with the wine unless you find some grave deficiency, and even then take it easy on what you manipulate.

By the 29th, I took a sample and tested for dryness:

Z1: -0.5%
Z2: 0%

Pretty fast fermentation, which was interesting because while Z1 always felt warmer than Z2, neither felt hot during my punchdowns. I’d expect a 5-day fermentation to dryness to be a hot one. And in the future I’d like the fermentation to take longer, again for greater extraction of color and flavor. Either way, I was almost there.

I tasted both. They tasted, oddly enough, like wine! Actually starting to taste pretty good, behind a kind of fizzy acidity that I know from the not-quite-dryness to be reflective of a still-fermenting wine. The bins were still emitting CO2 and bubbling a little, and forming a cap; Z1, the bin with 10 gallons more grapes, had more of an all-out cap. Anyway, my theory is the berries were still fermenting. The juice that was out of them was all but fermented, but there was still some cluster-fermentation to go.

Since I don’t have much in the way of photos to accompany this entry, that’s probably enough ramblings for now. In parting I’ll offer a summary as to where I was on October 29th, with Halloween on the horizon:

I had another day or two to go before my new wine would be all the way dry. The acidity was where I wanted it, perhaps a notch low on the ph scale, but I figured ML, or secondary, fermentation would probably address this.

However, I was now faced with a new concern: as usual, I hadn’t taken enough lead time to get everything I needed for each stage of the winemaking. It was almost time to press the wine from my must – and I didn’t have a press, or even access to one (at least one that wasn’t the size of a truck).

Worse still, I didn’t have anyplace to put my pressed wine. Sure, I had 26 gallons worth of glass carboys I’d procured at the winemaking shop – but from the look of it I would have upwards of fifty gallons of wine. And isn’t fine red wine best made by aging in oak?

So I had some homework, and some procurement, yet to do. In keeping with the theme of excellence accomplished by means of ill preparation, the time it was about to take me to get my hands on enough barrel and tank capacity, in addition to a press, without breaking the bank, would give my new wine a couple days of that extended maceration I had originally decided to forego.

Next — Chapter 4: Barrels, Tanks, a Press…and The Two Daves to the Rescue!

Taking a quick break from the saga of my 2007 home-vintage Zinfandel, I thought it prudent to post a couple of great photos Craig Jaffurs sent at the tail end of harvest at his winery.

This first was taken of me during some intense destemming work at Jaffurs on a heavy Syrah-delivery day…a photo that pretty much encapsulates all that my apprenticeship has been about: grape skins, juice, fatigue, thrill, and grins.

The second is a suitable replacement for the utter-crap, out-of-focus shot I snapped of Craig, Dave, and Matt inside the winery (no need for you to scroll down if you haven’t seen my bad picture). It was all I had, so I posted it. This, however, is more of an official shot of the Jaffurs Wine Cellars 2007 Harvest Crew.

From left to right, Nick, Dave, Matt, Chris, Craig, Larry, and yours truly.

Next: back to the Zin-making adventure, with inoculation and fermentation on deck.

After reading a few accounts on how best to extract flavors from Zinfandel grapes, I decided that crushing (in this case, by foot-stomping), then cold-soaking on the stems for 3 days, followed by primary fermentation to dryness then pressing off (without any extended maceration due to concerns about oxygen exposure control issues in my little home operation) would be the way to go.

As one article I read indicated, winemakers tend to decide between cold-soaking (where either crushed & destemmed, crushed, or destemmed bins of grapes are stored prior to fermentation for anything from 2 days to 1 week or longer to let the skins break down without the astringency of alcohol) OR extended maceration (where, at the conclusion of primary fermentation, you let the must soak for up to two weeks or longer to extract tannins from the broken-down skins and further break down the skins for greater flavor extraction during the press)…but not both. I’m not sure why one, but not both techniques, would be used – the best I could come up with in hunting this answer down was that you’d get too much extraction by doing both. But unless you’re dealing with thick-skinned varietals like Cabernet, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want as much extraction as you can get. Nonetheless, this is my first effort, so I’ve decided to go for significant extraction but to err on the side of being conservative if I am to err at all.

And to help me decide on which version of extra extraction to pursue, I found enough accounts by winemakers, even at major wineries, on how extended maceration can sometimes fail, in that if you do not maintain an adequate layer of carbon dioxide covering your must, that evil element of oxygen could ruin part or all of your wine before you even press it. Immediately following primary fermentation, I know from my work at Jaffurs that the must continues to exude CO2 – try sticking your head down near the surface and breathing through your nose, and you feel your nose-hairs curl and your head wants to explode. That’s the CO2 and its resultant lack of oxygen causing your oxygen-intake mechanisms to freak out. However, as each day passes following completion of primary fermentation, less CO2 is put off by the must, and you “must” (get it?) then provide doses of CO2 atop the must yourself, whether by gassing it with a CO2 tank and hose, or utilizing dry ice. The fog you see from dry ice as it “melts” is CO2. Anyway, long story short, many commercial winemakers have begun to feel, in this era where consistency seems to be a supreme goal in their world, that not enough control over oxygen exposure can be maintained as extended maceration stretches out past a few days.

Although I don’t care so much about consistency as quality and complexity, one of the biggest issues home or first-time winemakers apparently face is spoilage (I don’t even like writing that word), possibly due to lack of knowledge on how to maintain control over numerous variables, possibly due to poor sanitation measures, or just from foolish mistakes…either way, if I am going to add some extraction elements to really get at the flavors in my Zinfandel without going overboard, then I am going to make the more controlled choice – cold soaking, rather than extended maceration. (By the way, there are some other extraction techniques too, such as the use of enzymes during fermentation which help break down the skins for both color and flavor extraction. But I need to make sure I do a good job with this first effort, so again, one extra-extraction element is plenty for the first go-round.)

THE CRUSH

So, as covered in “Chapter 1,” due to a lack of thinking ahead, I was able to make the excellent, advanced, fine-winemaking decision of not destemming. Around six p.m., while the fading summer light still aided us on my “crush pad” (concrete patio behind my garage), I got all the buckets and “crush bins” and so on sterilized, created a sterilizing “foot bath” for my army of crushers (my kids) to step into before stomping on batches of grapes, and laid out a series of towels and patches of plastic and bins and buckets to form my little crushing production line.

In the next of the winemaking decisions, I elected to go semi-conservative on sulfite additions during the crush. The “UC Davis” philosophy, as some call it, is to utilize 50 parts per million of sulfur dioxide applied to the grapes during the crush. This kills or inhibits any “wild” or “natural” yeasts, preventing any uncontrolled or unwanted fermentations to take place before you’re ready with your “controlled” fermentation and a yeast of your choosing.

Many premium winemakers, or small-lot winemakers, do not sulfite at the crush stage. At Jaffurs, for example, in a fairly common technique among small-lot, artisan winemakers, only a few spritzes of a highly watered down sulfur solution is sprayed on the top of the must prior to the cold-soak – just to keep any molding or other spoilage from occurring to the top of the must. The idea being the general body of the must is all one big unified mush that is not exposed to oxygen or other elements. Some winemakers prefer to allow the wild yeasts to get involved, sometimes along with other, intended inoculations. The premium winemaking philosophy tending to be a more natural approach, or at least one that does not reduce the flavor additions naturally provided by the grapes by over-controlling sterilization measures.

So anyway, I decided to fend off errors and spoilage with a partial, or reduced sulfite addition. By my calculations, to reach 50 ppm, I’d need to add 2.5 to 3 teaspoons per 200 lbs of grapes/must. I had a quarter-ton, or 500 lbs., so I decided to go with 2.5 teaspoons total for the entire batch. About half the common sulfite addition…no need to overdo it but I don’t want any fermentation going on before my cold-soak stage has concluded. One could argue that in keeping the grapes cool enough for the cold-soak, fermentation can’t begin anyway…but again I am making sure to fend off error as well as focus on quality and complexity this first time through.

Then it was time to release the hounds! Send the crush-troops out to do their stomping work. Here they are: crush troop captains Sophie and Brick, with support from the private, Tallulah, held by field general Nadine. There was even help from a NATO ally, my father (AKA “Hampa”), and I got some steps in myself (little feet on little bodies don’t squish those grapes all that thoroughly, it turns out).

You might wonder about the question of sterility issues when it comes to foot-stomping. I did too and researched this. These days any commercial-winery foot-stomping is normally done with sterilized boots being worn by the stompers. It just keeps out any unwanted stuff. Without boots handy, I did the next best thing and “sterilized” my stompers’ feet with the sulfur solution I’d used to clean the bins, having them step into this “bath” before stomping each batch.

Also, good wine, even great wine was made for many, many generations before commercial crushers and even rubber boots were made. So I’m not panicky over this. Old-fashioned tends to be best in winemaking, it seems, at least when accompanied by some modern control/sterilization measures. (Also, the alcohol generated by the yeast, particularly once it reaches a percentage higher than 12-13%, pretty much kills off all unwanted stuff you might have brought to the table by being a bit too old-fashioned.)

My dad and I plucked a few buckets of stems out of the crushed must, so in this fashion I did a partial destemming. By the time the stomping and my poor-man’s destemming wrapped up around 8 p.m., I was left with two bins of must: about 40 gallons worth in the bin I decided to call “Z1,” and 30 gallons in “Z2.”

I pulled some must from each bin and blended the sample, then tested for Brix readings with a hydrometer around 9 p.m. Came up at 25 degrees Brix. This is about exactly where I wanted to be: I am not a huge fan of 15+% alcohol-content wines, notwithstanding some pretty good Syrahs here in Santa Barbara County with at least that much alcohol content. I prefer wines that are not so “hot” as to require massive fruit-bomb flavors in order for the taste to register over the alcohol “heat,” so I would like to come in around 14% alcohol, or high 13s.

Quick Ten Minute Viticulture School Lesson: depending on certain more complex factors, your final alcohol percentage will usually wind up around 55% of your Brix reading. In other words, 25 degrees Brix, in this simplified formula, should yield an alcohol percentage in your bottled wine of approximately 13.75% (again depending on some other factors).

Meaning I’m right where I wanted to be.

THE COLD SOAK

Taking my two bins, which I did not feel were as cool as I’d have liked after transport and stomping, I placed a tied-off plastic bag of ice in the middle of each, burying the bag in the must. Ideally I’d have double-bagged to keep the water out upon melting, but the bags were small enough so I wasn’t too worried about the amount of water they’d add (it would just drop my Brix count by a slight notch). Utilizing a strip of plastic (which I sterilized) and a clean washcloth on top of the must (to keep any burning of the grapes/must from happening), I then set a chunk of dry ice atop the must in each bin. The idea being both to help the bin keep cool, but mostly to add CO2 to the top of the bin. At a real winery a shot of CO2 gas would be added to the fermentation bins at this stage, so I was doing the equivalent – again, poor-man’s style, with my Halloween dry ice.

With everything spotless and sterilized, I then placed plastic over the top of the bins, secured the plastic with bungee cords, then placed the lids that came with my trash-bins atop the plastic. Double-sealed. The bins went into the corner of the garage, where I surrounded them with bags of ice and dry ice in buckets, and covered the whole assembly with a blanket. I opened the garage at night when temperatures dropped below 50 degrees, and kept it closed during the warm days.

My poor-man’s refrigerator, all set up for a few days of cold storage! I went back to work at the winery, kept on with the rewrite of my current book, and did my best to ignore my grapes for a couple of days.

Next: Chapter 3: Inoculation and Fermentation!

Let us not forget the mission on which I embarked, in this here GARAGEVINO venture, in the first place: to make extraordinary wine. And while there are viticulture and enology schools, certificate programs, and extension classes galore; along with a plethora of intern, slave (I mean volunteer), and apprentice opportunities available in the industry, there is, of course, no better way to learn than to do.

To paraphrase the way I began this blog, Learn not — do or do not, there is no learning. Well, there’s both. But study without action? Library stuff. And I want to make wine.

So after contacting a few listings and reaching out to the measly few grower contacts I had, I decided, for my first garage vintage, to go with Zinfandel. Reaching him through his posting on winebusiness.com, I made a small deal with a Paso Robles grower named Mike Prowse, deciding to buy one-quarter of a ton of his fruit. Much of Mike’s crop had gone to Cambria, a winery in Santa Maria, if I remember Mike’s story right. But Cambria, or whoever it was, hadn’t taken as much as in the prior year, so he had some rows left unharvested. He decided to open the flood gates to any smaller buyers and I leaped at the opportunity.

The reason I went for it was Mike’s growing program. He keeps his yields low, this year down to somewhere around 1.5 tons per acre. He dropped a significant quantity of fruit in June to get down to that low yield — adding complexity to the grapes that remain on the vine. His vines are head-trained and he uses sustainable growing practices. Very close to organic, with very few if any pesticides or herbicides used, particularly this year. He indicated he’d done a test on the rows we were discussing a few days before and the fruit came in at 26 Brix and 3.6 ph. His price was reasonable at $1500/ton — on the high end for large quantities of Paso Robles Zinfandel but not when you’re buying small quantities as in my case. The fact he prorated it for me was a favor — ¼ ton for $375. There was one catch — but it was a catch I liked: for only a quarter-ton he couldn’t bring in a crew to harvest — he and I would need to do it ourselves.

How great is that — picking the fruit myself, with the farmer who grew the grapes, for my first vintage.

And so early on the morning of Sunday, October 21, I took a set of four freshly sterilized food-grade plastic trash bins (two 44-gallon jobs, two 30-galloners also), obtained at Craig Jaffurs’ recommendation from Smart & Final — plus a set of shears, a baseball cap, gloves, some cold-weather clothes, and headed up the highway in my Sequoia for the two-hour drive north from Santa Barbara.

Here I am cleaning my soon-to-be fermentation vessels, AKA trash bins, the night before I head up to Paso Robles. (Even if it’s midnight when you get around to it, there’s something exciting about sterilizing bins of your own after you’ve spent much of the harvest season cleaning them for the winery you work for. You do, however, begin to feel a bit odd as the clock creeps past midnight — you wonder, as you clean trash bins and set aside squares of plastic tarp and towels in your car, whether your neighbors are thinking they live beside Ted Bundy, or some other maniac bent on creating an opening scene out of Law & Order: SVU.)

Mike’s vineyard is near the tiny town of Creston. He’s got a website if you’d like to find out more. By a little after 8 a.m., I pulled through his gates, we got acquainted, and he went and got his ATV. I noticed as I pulled in, by the way, that it was 40 degrees out. My grapes would be nice and cool from the cold October Paso Robles overnight chill.

As you can see, Creston Hills Vineyard, as he calls his place, has that Paso Robles “hills of Tuscany” look to it — and Mike and his wife have Australian Shepards to help them enjoy the property, duly announced by the sign at the entrance to their driveway. Note the bird-netting over the rows. Over most of the rows, anyway.

Mike set the ATV up with a trailer and loaded a quarter-ton bin on the trailer.

He had me grab a pair of the picking bins, outfitted one of the ATV’s handlebars with a small bucketful of water (used to dip our shears when they got sticky from the grapes), gave me a short tour of his property and pulled into Block 2 for the morning harvest.

Here I am clipping clusters. Zinfandel can be inconsistent, berry-to-berry, cluster-to-cluster, even vine to vine. In some cases, you’ll find green, pink, deep purple and raisined berries all on the same cluster. Some say the raisined berries give you extra tannins on a per-pound basis; some say the vast range you find in the fruit gives Zin its unique character. Either way it was nice to be able to pick out the clusters I preferred.

We tested a few with Mike’s refractometer; some clusters appeared ripe but when held up to the sun were pink rather than purple and tested around 19 or 20 Brix; the purpler, riper clusters were as high as 28 Brix. I caught a grasp of how to pick and choose the right mix to shoot for 25 or 26 Brix in my little bit of tonnage.

We would clip clusters into our picking bins, which when full might have been 30 or 40 pounds. Take the bins, dump them into the quarter-ton big-bin on the ATV trailer, and vine by vine, row by row, the big bin begins to fill up. Had the opportunity to remove any stray leaves and other junk at every stage. Mike was pretty helpful in telling me which clusters I’d picked shouldn’t make the cut.

And no, I didn’t actually drive this thing (for fear of running down a half-dozen of Mike’s vines), but here I am for a photo op aboard the ATV.

As the sun rose, the vineyard heated up, maybe closing in on 75 degrees. Bees and birds began to join us for the festivities. Whether it came as a result of the bird netting being a little loose or semi-removed, the one issue I began to have with the harvest was the large number of berries I encountered that had been munched upon, either by bees, other insects, or birds. I assume birds got it started and insects followed once berries were punctured. It wasn’t a consistent issue, but I did skip the occasional vine and plenty of clusters in an attempt to keep the fruit whole and clean of pest-tasting activity.

The big bin fills up…

And right around noon, I had my quarter-ton. Pretty sad if you think about it, but that’s what you get when two gringos are doing the picking: a quarter ton in 3.5 hours of picking. Machine harvesters, we ain’t.

Mike drove the fruit up to my car so we could transfer to my sterile bins. Ideally we might have just stayed with the quarter-ton bin, but I wouldn’t have had any way to get it out of my Sequoia back at home. So fistful by fistful, Mike and I transferred the fruit to my four smaller bins, all but filling them up. Seems I’d bought the perfect amount of gallonage, bins-wise.

Then Mike asked me a question, and I realized I’d forgotten one whole step entirely.

“How are you destemming?” Mike says.

“You could do whole clusters,” he says.

We discussed the idea of utilizing the destemmer he had tucked away in his garage, but since we hadn’t arranged this in advance, it might take too long to get it out and put it to work. In the end I decided I’d do my best to pull stems from the bins after or during the crush — which I planned to have my kids do the old-fashioned way. So I’d be going old-fashioned the whole way.

Turns out, after talking to a few excellent winemakers, that whole-stem fermentation is a great idea for Zinfandel. The very next day, in fact, while working at Jaffurs, I confirmed this as a common practice (at least for certain varietals) — as a half-ton bin of whole-cluster Syrah was set aside for foot-stomping the following day.

By the time Mike and I finished transferring the Zin to my bins, it was almost 1 p.m. and closing in on 80 degrees out. My idea on this vintage was to cold-soak the fruit before crushing for at least 2-3 days, so I didn’t want the grapes to warm up past 55 or 60 degrees if I could help it. I realized further that in my excitement to get up here and pick the fruit, I neglected to get my hands on some dry ice to keep the bins cool.

So I cranked the AC in the Sequoia the whole way back, called around some stores on the drive south, and discovered some Halloween dry ice was available at Ralph’s near my home. I picked up a few bags of regular ice along with the dry stuff, shoved it in the back with the bins, and pulled into my driveway around 3 p.m. nearly frozen stiff…but with four cool bins of cool fruit in a cool car ready to begin their cold soak in proper fashion!

My three kids and wife came out to have a look at what Crazy Daddy the Garage Winemaker had spent the morning picking. No, it was not, as it might appear, an organ harvest, or heart-transplant medivac trip — but a successful harvest of my first, official, quarter-ton of California winegrapes destined for the inaugural vintage of GARAGEVINO wine.

Next: Chapter 2: The Crush, and Other Notes