Week 16 (Sept. 31 - Oct. 4th)

The yellow jackets have discovered that some grape skins are thinner than others and are therefore easy enough to chew into. This now makes it difficult to harvest, as we have to be careful where we grab the clusters. We have to pick out broken berries with our pickers, since these smell bad (have a high volatile acidity) and will make the wine taste bad. The broken berries are now also attracting flies and asian lady beetles! Yay!

An afternoon project with dad! I was fortunate enough to bring home substantial scrap pieces of trellis in order to build a trellis for my very own, lavish front-yard vineyard. After a few hours of digging and pounding, the trellis is complete and ready to support my six vines!

Jenny came back this week! She had been at home with the baby up until this point, but now the Thull Team is back in action (with their own language and everything!).

While the reds are fermenting, CO2 bubbles cause the skins to rise to the top (above the juice) and form a cap. In order to allow the wine to fully extract the color and flavor we need to "punch down" the cap twice a day. I have had to punch down the various Marquette batches this week. We tested out three different yeast strains, each of which will contribute its own flavors and aromas to the wine. The variation from yeast strain to strain is due to the different types of enzymes that yeast produce. The enzymes are important because they deglucosylate (remove a glucose) flavanols, making their aromas detectable.  

We stepped away from the vineyards and into the pumpkin/squash patches on Tuesday, the 1st, in order to harvest this year's crop. After many hours, and many sore backs, we harvested all 180 varieties totaling to roughly 10,000 lbs. Most of this will go on display in the Landscape Arboretum and sold at "The Apple House," which is a store connected to the research center. This had been Jenny and John's project all year. The effort definitely payed off!

Nick, the winemaker, and I chopped and pressed a few bushels of SweeTango apples on Friday. We ended up having more juice than we needed to run an apple wine test trial, so I was able to bring home a few gallons for myself. One of the many perks of working at the HRC!