Week 22 (18 - 22nd)

This is my last week at the HRC. It is hard for me to believe that six months have passed, the growing season has come and gone, and now I am walking away from this experience. Everyday at the HRC has taught me a lesson, an irreplaceable skill and unique education. I am extremely thankful that I was able to learn from such passionate educators and will be forever indebted to them.

Nick taught me a titration alternative in order to measure sulfur in wine samples: Aeration Oxidation. This allows you to  measure both free and bound sulfur, which can be added together in order to determine total sulfur. Though this method takes a little more hardware, it's more precise and the method utilized by most wine makers. 

After loading and unloading 400 bails of straw, we are finally covering the pinned j-vines for the winter. The only problem with this method is that straw makes an enticing home for mice. In order to combat this we place two mouse poison blocks next to each vine. We then fluffed roughly a bail of straw per vine, covering all sections and capping the top with chunks of straw. 

We finished the back-breaking work in two days, covering all the j-vines with a blanket for the winter. An alternative method to straw would be to cover the vines with dirt, however, this can be messier and more difficult to uncover in the spring. Bring on the snow!

Two analytical ways to assess the season: our spray program and precipitation. We only sprayed three times (and then two organic potassium sprays to control powdery mildew on our European varieties) throughout the season, where some wineries spray once a week. Spray programs are meant to by dynamic, targeting specific needs at specific times. This some growers find hard to grasp, which is unfortunate for the environment and the consumer (and a waste of money). Due to these practices mutant resistant pathogens are more likely to arise as well. 

Week 21 (Nov. 11 - 15th)

Three coolers of grape samples from vineyards around the state arrived this week. All the grapes were frozen, so we first had to let them defrost. I next crushed the samples by hand and pressed them out with the little press on the right. We collected two tubes of each sample.

I recorded the brix, TA and pH for each sample. This kept me busy for the greater part of a day.

The wine cellar is filling up! I am clinitesting, racking, and adding sulfites to roughly five or six batches per day.

The end of the week finally warmed up enough for us to start and finish pinning down all the j-vines. We also were able to dig up the nursery, a task which we had been delaying for the past few weeks in order to allow the ground to dry out and warm up. This project was important to get done before a hard frost, as all of last year's crosses (some being cold-vulnuerable) were planted in the nursery for this growing season. We used an under-cutter, which was attached to the back of a tractor, to pry the vines up. We would then collect marked vines (healthy vines with little disease) and organize them in bundles. We discarded the majority of the nursery, maybe 70%, as these underperformed and/or had genetics that were susceptible to diseases. We moved all the bundles to a cellar, where they were burried in peat in order to remain dormant until spring. 

Week 20 (Nov. 4 - 8th)

Since our winery is for research purposes, we need to remove as many variables as possible in order to objectively assess the benchmark quality of the wine that a various vine produces. One of these variables which we control is the residual sugar of the wine. We ferment all of our batches to completion, meaning we wait until they are completely dry. In order to determine this, we utilize the "Clinitest" method. We drop a tablet into 0.5mL of wine and then observe the color change to determine how much sugar remains. A dark green solution is indicative of less than 0.3% sugar, which we consider dry, while a bright orange is greater than 5.0%. At this point we re-rack the wine into a smaller container in order to get it off the lees and eliminate the head space. We also add more SO2 in order to bind free oxygen, which can aid in spoilage. 

After we re-rack and add sulfites to the wines we move them into a 28 degree storage room,where they will remain for the next four months. This also polymerization process to take place, effectively complexifying the wine. The low temperature also allows potassium bitartrate to precipitate out out of the wine (cold stabilization), while eliminating the chance of the wine spoiling. 

I still get the opportunity to spend my afternoons outside! We are pruning the j-vines in block 20 and 23 this week. As you can see we got a dusting of snow, but this isn't slowing us down. However, we now need to wait until the ground thaws so that we can pin the vines to the ground.