Happy Birthday Bro,, time for the Montepulciano harvest finally and winery update

14 Ottobre
Happy Birthday to my little brother today!

I am thinking this picture tells of his good spirit, while at the same time punishing him for not emailing me more often. haha

I have been blessed with visits from lots of KC and US friends these last 3 weeks; the Thomases, Wilcoxons, Tanners, Cordells, Lemoines and Masseys have all been to visit and I have been acting as tour guide in my spare moments.  The last 3 got to watch the pressing of the Cabernet Sauvignon which had completed fermentation and had spent just over a week on the skins and seeds.  The pix below are not in a good order, but the wine and skins etc are transferred to the big red press which has a balloon inside which gently extracts any juice left behind after the free run liquid escapes.  We have about 2500 liters of C.S.  now resting and waiting for the malolactic fermentation to begin. 

 We are looking at a no win situation with our Montepulciano grapes.  While they are ready chemically, the sugar level never raised to a level we were happy with while the total acid has decreased to the correct level.  We will make a lower alcohol wine, but that is ok as I don't want any 15% wines anyway.  We have had a prolonged period of cool, damp weather which is encouraging a mold called bortrytis to infect the grape clusters, so we can't wait any longer.  Tomorrow is the day.

 All of our reds have been analyzed and have perfect numbers, so we are pleased.  Raffaele's Pecorino completed fermentation a couple of days ago, but mine is still at 4% sugar, so probably will finish next week.  We have adopted different fermentation ideas to see what differences result in the wines.  Other than that we transfer the reds every so often to remove the "muddy" precipitates which can add off flavors and we are ready to sit down with our winemaker and start ordering various types of oak barrels to finish them off, so to speak.  I am not a barrique fan, so there will be few of those with more tonneau and larger barrels as the needs dictate with perhaps different places of origin for the oak to see which works best.  I am even open to some MO oak someday...