September 2012

Heart shaped must

by Serena on September 17, 2012

Given the lack of sleep during harvest, I was wondering if anyone else sees the heart shape in the grape must?

This is the stage after the grapes have gone through the sorting & destemming table.  The grapes are now considered “must”.  Must comes from the Latin words “vinum mustum” which means young wine.  The must is the grapes, juice, seeds, and occasional stems or whole clusters.  For Pinot noir we let the must cold soak which means we chill the fermentation tank/bin to encourage color extraction from the grape skin into the juice.  Cold soak is an important step because once the fermentation kicks off, there is very little color that is extracted from the skins.  Next post, I’ll tell you about yeast & fermentation. – Serena

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The sorting table

by Serena on September 10, 2012