Turkovich Family Wines Week 14 ~ Wino Abroad

If You Break It, You Are Out!

A Rite of Passage for a Wino

November

Week 1

Sometimes I have to sit down and take a minute to actually comprehend the madness I joined in on and managed to survive it, write about it. and somehow become healthier after it...'It' being harvest! The amount of hard work from so many hands, that goes into just making one bottle of wine here is amazing; I think this is the case for many boutique or small family wineries.

During this trip, my eyes have been opened; romanticized the industry may be, but that is not always the case.

But I must say this...it's hard not to romanticize these little bottles of delight when you know the grapes were hand picked, the amount of complications, arm workouts, and long days spent crushing the fruit; punching down the many fermenting bins by hand, or keeping some bins whole cluster which means feet stomping of the bins, just so we can get more peppered and herbaceous aromas to play with later on. The danger of getting on top of tanks and pumping them over, but the joy of finally getting to taste that wine after it's been pressed; now for those of you who know how a freshly pressed red that has gone through its 1st fermentation tastes...you may be thinking, what in the world is she talking about? That stuff is harsh! But for me, tasting the wine at this stage was a first time experience for me! When something is your first time, especially the older you get, it just seems so much more exciting!

Now... all of these things may happen in a winery, but they may not all happen by the hands of man or women =)

I can't help but romanticize these experiences as they dance through my head with each sip of wine I have; I thought I appreciated wine already, but now...I respect it, and the people that take part in this madness called harvest every year.

Barreling Down

Leaky Barrel Issues

Looks like we have a leaky barrel

O no there is a spot in the grain where there is a leak

A must have tool box if you are dealing with barrels, especially ones that may leak.

Seguin Moreau USA

has a wonderful video showing you what to do, in case you have leaks such as in the picture above.

Repairing Barrel Leaks

Crystal Clear Wine

It is standard practice to apply a final filtration prior to final bottling, and let's face it, most people are freaked out by cloudy wine. You should see the look on my brother's face when I show him my home brew.

In the pictures below we are using a turbidity meter, we do this to see how dirty the new wine is and to see how much we need to filter the wine so it is eventually ready to sell to the public.

From left to right: Albarino before filter, Albarino after filter, & filter

For wine to be stable enough for bottling, the meter should read below (1)

We are checking proteins in the wine to see if they are stable. If proteins and tartrates are stable, then filtering can clean this wine, if they aren't stable, then more fining must be done.

Today I get to work in the lab and help check the alcoholic strength by ebulliometry for this year's vintage.

A little background on the sort of test we are running,

"Ebulliometry is based on the principle that the boiling point of wine is depressed in comparison to the boiling point of water as a consequence of, and relative to, the wine’s alcohol content. The method is very accurate for simple mixtures of ethanol and water, and reasonably accurate for dry wine styles. Residual sugar content of greater than 5g/L is a significant interference. Other wine components such as acids, tannins and flavour compounds do affect the result slightly but can generally be ignored." ~Determination of alcohol content article~

Steps on how to run a test

First things first, we must determine the water boiling point, the boiling point is affected by atmospheric pressure, after testing about 5 wines, we will determine the water boiling point again.

Distilled water first

Put in the thermometer

Make sure the valve is closed, you don't want your sample leaking out

Now we know what the water boils at: Put out the burner, discard the water sample, and now we are ready to run tests on the alcoholic strength of the wine.

In goes the sample

Putting the thermometer in and taking it out had to be the scariest part of doing these tests! Luciana said, "If you break the thermometer, you are out!" I guess if someone were to ask me if I work well under pressure, I can say yes confidently =)