Winter Winery Fun
Winter Winemaking at Gilstrap Brothers
Temperatures are in the mid 20s this week, speaking in Fahrenheit. With our vines well dormant, it’s time to go to work on the winter pruning. Our vineyard location at three thousand feet, and 45 degrees north latitude, requires that we get every available heat unit into our vines during our modest growing season. With that in mind, there’s no opportunity to wait for a warm spring day for the vineyard work with bud break just around the corner.
2nd racking:
This week we’re racking our reds in oak and cleaning up our 2B10 white merlot that’s currently in stainless. The first racking takes place just following New Year’s. Racking is simply the process of moving (pumping or siphoning) the clear wine off the settled matter in the bottom of the barrel (or tank). Once every barrel of that particular wine is racked off into a freshly cleaned stainless tank, the barrel washing begins. Our second racking is still resulting in some sludge in the bottom of the barrels which our barrel blaster makes quick work of. A little chilly to be working with hoses, pumps, and water outside, but after three days, we’ve got all our wines back in their original, now clean barrels.
‘Time to work on our white merlot in stainless. At this time of year, the process on our 2B10 white merlot is simply a matter of fining for clarity. Fining is the process of collecting small particulates in wine and “clumping” them together into a size that will either settle out to the bottom, or be removed during filtration, or both. For this process, we’re using a bentonite compound that looks like a dry silicate clay, or fine sand. Mixing bentonite and water together creates a “pudding like” slurry that can then be added to the wine and will easily go into solution. This bentonite fining adds no taste or bouquet elements to the wne.
Circulating the tank for a period of time ensures that the mix is distributed throughout, and then it’s just a matter of allowing the now larger particulates in the wine to settle out. One trip through filtration will remove any bentonite particles and then a sterile filtration in the bottling line will complete the process. But that’s a month or so down the road.
Please visit www.gilstrapbrothers.com for our winemakers’ description of our very popular 2B10 white merlot!
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