Tristan's Winemaking Blog - Installment 1

[tristan johnson]

Welcome to my new Video Blog about making wine from Brehm Vineyards Frozen Must. You've probably seen all the hubub on our site about the Brehm must and how much we love it - I wanted to take that a step further and chronicle the process of working with Brehm must from start to finish. Really, its about the same as working from fresh fruit except for the very beginning - since there's no crushing involved.

This fruit is Brehm's 2009 State Lane Cabernet Sauvignon from the valley floor in Napa. It shows relatively low sugar and high acid with full phenolic ripeness in the seeds and stems. I expect it to make for a fruity and flavorful wine with lower alcohol and higher acidity, more in the style of European wines. It's fermenting now with MT yeast, and I added Opti-Red, Lallzyme EX and Tannin VR Supra to the ferment. There's an added incentive for me to get this one right too: Half of it is going to my little sister and her new husband as a 1 year anniversary gift!

This is also my very first attempt and movie-making, something which I think shows a little bit in this video. Things I've learned from the first episode:

- No matter how much you like to listen to music while working in the garage, it's probably a bad idea to keep it going in the background while filming.

- A shot list is a pretty sweet way to make sure that you're going through everything step by step.

- Similarly, a script is a good way to keep from rambling and to make sure that you say everything that you want to say.

- My camera doesn't focus as closely as I would like.

- Clean your garage before you show it to the world.

I also learned how much space video takes up on your hard drive and on a web host. To resolve upload, download and storage issues this episode has been split into three sections of about 10 minutes each. Future installments should be much shorter - you just have the bulk of the work to do up front with any winemaking. Luckily there is still plenty of working and waiting left to go before this wine is finisehd, and so plenty of time to make improvements to my cinematography and directing. Stay tuned, there will be a new post covering a new aspect of winemaking every month until this wine is bottled. Next up: Pressing!

-Tristan


Find more videos like this on MoreWine


Find more videos like this on MoreWine


Find more videos like this on MoreWine

[Stephan Dalyai]

Great stuff, Tristan! Keep up the good work. One question- You have your punch down tool sitting in the Star San. That doesn't kill the yeast if you don't rinse before punching down?
Thanks,
Stephan

[tristan johnson]

Stephan -

That's a great question. The answer is that yes, it does kill a little bit of the yeast when the StarSan comes in contact with them. That said, the effect on the overall population of yeast is negligible. To put it another way, the effects of the StarSan are not going to interfere with your ferment. I've never made wine and not handled my punches in this way. Also, with brewing, we typically run our pre-fermentation beer (called "wort") into carboys which still have residual StarSan in them, then pitch the yeast. Again, there is not an issue with the StarSan interfering with the ferment.

Tristan

[Michael Alessio]

You should go metric Tristan - your math on measurements will be so much easier!

[tristan johnson]

Michael -

Agreed by at least a factor of 1x 10^3.

Actually, I do all my measurements and math in the metric system for just that reason - after all the science classes it just kind of stuck. But I find that in the US it is still easier to talk about these things in imperial units as far as making sure that I'm understood is concerned. Maybe someday it'll be different. Sigh.

Tristan