Co2 or Witches Brew?????

What is Peter up to?

It looks like he is stirring up a cauldron of magic and toad's toes, but he is actually beginning a cold soak. A cold soak is when you let the juice and skins sit and put off fermentation in order to allow the juice to extract crucial flavors from the skins before fermentation begins. This is the next step in the process after running the grapes through the crusher/destemmer that you saw in our last post. In order to keep the temperature down and keep imminent fermentation at bay, we add dry ice to our must (juice, stems, skins, and seeds altogether). In addition to keeping the must from heating up and fermenting, the dry ice also imparts a Co2 layer that helps protect the must and keep it from oxidizing. So next time you look at the pictures with this post and ask yourself "Co2 or Witches Brew?" maybe it's a little bit of both!

Picking and Crushing equals strong/sore backs!

We are now in the eye of the storm when it comes to harvest and things couldn't look better. While many growers in Sonoma County have had low harvests, most of our vineyard and our partners vineyards are looking really good. We have been bringing in tons of Malbec, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon and while we have done a lot, we still have a whole lot more work and fun ahead of us. Here you can see Peter and Betsy out in the vineyard making sure the Merlot is ripe, so our awesome picking crew can bring home the fruit. Once Peter, the mad trucker, drives the fruit in half ton picking containers up our 9 foot wide driveway through the mountains, the fun begins. Andrew, Peter, and Jim pitchfork the grapes through our crusher/destemmer fueled on awesome sandwiches from Betsy while Betsy checks fermentations, does punchdowns, and keeps the must moving along towards greatness. As you can see from our pictures, Creating Creative Juices isn't easy!

Crush has begun!

So, we picked our first ton of Cabernet Sauvignon last Tuesday! It was the first of the fruit we have picked this year and after some gentle encouragement from the rain, we picked it at 23.5 degrees brix and allowed the juice to have a 4 day "cold soak" to soak out some color and skin tannins prior to fermentation. This is a very important process and is necessary to making complex and well balanced wines. After the cold soak was completed, we moved the two half-ton bins in the sun to warm up and start fermenting on the natural vineyard yeast. With attention and care, each day we punch down the cap (the skins pushed to the top by co2 created by fermentation) to keep the skins wet, promote color and flavor extraction, and allow in fresh oxygen. Starting tomorrow, we'll start doing a once daily foot-treading to help the fermentation along and extract out the soft flavors that make up our creative juices!

A Tour of Spann Vineyards with The Cellar Angels

Bird Netting Time!

Bird netting is often a necessary element of bringing your grapes to fruition before the pesky birds begin destroying your crops you've been working all year on. It's most important to cover the outside rows because the quick little birds like to hide in the trees and dive bomb the grapes. Luckily, in The Mayacamas Mountains there is a healthy Eagle population so that scares the birds enough to stay out of the middle where they wouldn't have a chance of getting back to the trees that they hide/live in. Encouraging a beneficial eagle/owl population is one of the best ways to protect your crop from predators of many types. The bird netting is also great, but it sure is a lot of work!