Racking Wine

Measuring the specific gravity of the juice last Saturday showed that it was time to rack. Yeah! Wouldn't you think that would be the perfect pick up line? Hey baby, you want to come back to my place and rack? Who could resist.....once they figure out you're not some kind of weirdo masochist that is.

Ye Old Winemaker said that once the juice got down to 1.0 that it's time to rack. So the SG went from 1.3 down to 1.0 in just 3 days, and that seemed fast. But the juice was in the pfvs for 6 days which is normal so it's all good.

The kitchen (see mess above) was the perfect winery to perform racking, as you can see. This involved the primary fermenting vessels, secondary fermenting vessels, trash cans, trash bags, grape juice, grape juice and more grape juice. The only thing that didn't get covered in grape juice was the ceiling, thank goodness.

The saving grace in this whole event was the auto-siphon device to move the juice to the carboy. The first transfer I didn't figure out that I should raise the 40 pound pfv at least a couple inches above the other vessel. But after I got a nasty blister on my thumb, I figured I need height. And the cat stand, see to the left, was the perfect height. Now the crazy, I almost spilled it, event of raising 40 pounds up to that height was something to see. Grape juice, grape juice, and more grape juice. On the floor, on the walls, and on everything else. This new height worked perfectly. No more infinite up and down. The juice went from the bottom of the pfv smoothly to the next level....the secondary fermenting vessel.

I realized that there was a good amount of juice still left in the pfv so I took matters into my own hands. I raised the pfv up again, and squished grapes in the can while the juice ran slowly into the bowl. This "extra " juice was dumped into the subsidiary A/B buckets. Waste not, want not I always say. And anyway we only have 13 gallons of wine. Definitely no waste. More juice everywhere...counters, cabinets, and walls. More fun.

Now the beautiful juice is in the glass containers, secondary fermenting vessels, bubbling away. On it's way to being wine.

I think we'll celebrate with a unique wine......Mokelumne Glen Vineyards 2006 Lodi Dornfelder, Zinfandel. It did exactly what I love about wine. When it was first opened, it smelled like wine you wouldn't want to drink willingly. Then give it a couple of hours and it became tasty. Now today, a day later, it tasted like the best Zin in the world. Life is like an open bottle of wine. It changes, becomes complex, smooths out, and hopefully getting better with time.

Remember imbibe and enjoy!