Winemaker's Journal
January
A beautiful January day in the vineyard. Most people have the notion that January is a quiet month in the cellar, a time when the winemaking crew takes extended vacations to exotic places with umbrellas in their drinks. The fact of the matter is that it is a very busy period.
Take this January for example. The 2008 wines have just completed their primary and secondary fermentations and we will spend the next few weeks tasting, tasting and tasting some more to make our final decisions about the 2008 blends. Once the blends are determined on the bench, our focus will be to assemble them in the tank room. Unless you have a tank that is big enough to contain the whole vintage, this task is an illustration of why we needed to do our algebra homework. It involves some precise calculation and long days of moving wine. When the dust settles, we have a series of identical tanks.
Before we can put the 2008 in barrel, we have to make room for it in the cellars by pumping the 2006 to tank. There isn’t tank space for all of the 2006, so the process is an enological version of leap-frog. Pump out some 2006, remove the empty barrels, put new barrels in place, fill them with 2008, then pump out more 2006. See what I mean about busy? It will be well into February before we have all the 2008 cozied down to rest in barrel.
