Bottle Labeling and more pruning

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Today I helped Cliff calculate grape content percentages for a few of his wines that he had bottled the day before. I used the extensive records he has kept of the entire wine-making process for each of the wines he has made/is making from the grapes he picked in the 2006 growing season. Just before bottling them, he had recorded the pH, TA (acidity), and SO4 content of the wine, which he later typed up on his temporary labels along with the date the wine was bottled, and the name of the wine based on its grape content. (Once he begins to sell his wine, he will also add other mandatory information on the labels, including alcohol percentage and net content as well as his specific brand label, name and location). He then printed them off and we went down to the cellar to stick them onto the three different wines he had bottled. Once the labels were stuck onto the appropriate bottles, they were placed upside down (to prevent the corks from drying out) in boxes, which were then taped up and labelled as well. One of the wines we had added the bentonite to last week was now clear, but the other one was still cloudy, so Cliff said he’d have to add something else to that one later on to try and clear it up. Next we went out to the vineyard and continued pruning. We managed to finish almost an entire lower row before 5:30. It is still a bit too chilly to dig for grubs.