It’s time for me to start keeping track of my wine making efforts here, rather than the notepad I have been keeping the past 4 years making wine.

These are going to be pretty technical, and detailed, so if you’re not interested in the details just skip the wine making entries <big grin>. I refer back to these details each year when making the next vintage so that I don’t repeat mistakes, and so that I can refine the process to make it better each time. So far the entries have paid off.

This entry will be a summary of the last 3 years, and a new entry will begin this year’s crush – each day I will enter the steps I take through the wine-making process.

Yesterday, Sept. 8th, at 6:30am, Jim and I drove to Dixon, CA to pick up 1200 pounds of Merlot grapes. The past two years I have gone to Zamora, CA (North of Dixon) to get my grapes, and I have not been as happy with the wine each year – so we wanted to try something different. Napa Valley grapes cost between $3,500 to $10,000 per ton. WAY out of my budget. The Zamora grapes (Alexander Vineyards) were $800/ton, and the grapes from the Purple Pearl Vineyard, in Dixon, were only $600/ton. I only needed 1/2 ton each of the past two years to make 70 gallons of wine – enough for one 60 gallon barrel and extra for topping the barrel through each racking (moving from one barrel to another).

The first vintage was the nastiest stuff I’ve ever tasted! It just didn’t have a chance. I planted 50 vines on the side of the hill 2 years earlier, and it was the first year I would try to harvest the grapes to make wine. I’m told you should wait until the 3rd or 4th year before attempting it, but I wanted to begin learning, and didn’t care much whether it was good or bad. The Saturday I was going to harvest the wine (Mid-September) we had Beth Burns visiting to go to the Napa Harvest Festival. I check the sugar, and it was 25 Brix. I thought it was the perfect time to harvest, but decided to go to the festival first, and harvest the next morning early. That day, the birds attacked the vineyard, and when I harvested the next day I had lost 2/3 of the grapes! I ended up with 3 gallons of must, and decided to make at least one gallon. I bottled it a year later and got 6 bottles out of it. But, as I said – it was really bad stuff. I still have 2 bottles left. I’ll hold them until I have a really good vintage, and then have a tasting that includes that vintage so the judges can see how much I’ve improved over the years. I lost my notes from that vintage – so no more details available.

The 2nd Vintage (2005) was from Zamora – it was 75% Cabernet Sauvignon and 25% Syrah. The grapes were crushed on October 5th. Mom & Dad came from Vernal, Utah to help us with that crush, and Jim had to work – so it was Mom, Dad and me who did all the crush work. The day of crush the must was 24.5 brix of sugar, .64 TA (total acid), and pH of 4.25. It was put into 2 each of 55 gallon food-grade “trash cans”, and 2 each of 5-gallon plastic buckets. I threw away about 20 gallons of grapes without even crushing them thinking I had enough from the 1/2 ton I purchased to make a barrel. That decision ended up being a mistake, because I had to use box-wine to replace the lost volume with the racking.

The optimum measurements for red-grape must needs to be Brix of 24 or higher, TA of .65, and pH between 3-4. I clearly had a high pH and low acid. 1 oz. of tartaric acid will increase acid by .15 for each 5 gallons. I obviously didn’t understand the acid testing process, because TA had to be a lot lower in order for pH to be so high. I tried it several times, but never could really figure out how to tell when the solution turned the right color because my TA readings were always higher than they should have been.

Based on my calculations, I only needed to raise the acid by .04, so I added 2 ounces of tartaric acid to each of the 55 gallon containers; each holding about 35 gallons of must, because you have to leave room for the foam-crown when you add yeast later.

I then added the potassium metabisulphate to the must before taking any more readings. I calculated that I needed 12.25 grams (0.43 oz) of the chemical for each of the 35 gallon tanks to inoculate the must. For each of the 2 5-gallon buckets I added 1.4 grams (.05 oz).

After all that, my acid test readings showed .53, so I added more acid. This was a comedy! I ended up adding more than a pound of acid (1/2 lb) per tank, and 2 oz per bucket of tartaric acid. I ran out of it and it was too late to buy more, so I had some citric acid – and added 2 oz of that to each tank. I added all of this in 2 oz. increments testing acid each time until I was comfortable with the readings.

On Oct. 6th I added the yeast (6 packages of Pasteur Red) to each tank, and 1 packet to each bucket.

For the next 8 days I punched down the crown 4 times each day at around 6am, Noon, 6pm & 11pm.

On Oct. 14th – the must registered zero Brix and the boiling had completely stopped so I transferred the wine into barrel #0866 (french oak – 3 years used). I got two barrels from a broker who buys used barrels and sells them for other uses. most wineries don’t use a barrel more than 3 years for making wine, but hey, I’m on a budget so I thought it would be ok for at least one more year.

I kept the barrel topped each day, but noticed a bad sulphur smell growing in the wine. The color was so light it looked like a Gamay Rouge from V. Sattui – because it hadn’t been on the skins long enough to get a deep red that I had hoped for.

On January 15th I racked the wine into barrel #0816. Topped it with burgundy box-wine from JV Warehouse. I was so disappointed I almost dumped it. I hated the taste, and the sulphur smell was terrific.

On May 11th (Mom and Dad were back for another visit) I took a bottle of it to Michael Richmond – the wine Maker at Bouchaine Winery, here in Napa. He tested it and found it high in Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S). He dropped two pennies in the glass and swirled it for a while. We tasted it and most of the sulphur was gone! He told me to add 0.29 ml of 2% CuSO4 (copper sulfate) solution to the barrel, and to also add more SO2. He gave me the copper solution, and two 5-gram SO2 tablets.

I was told that for each racking I should add 16.8 grams of Potassium Metabisulphate after the transfer.

I went home and added the .29 ml of CuSO4, and the two tablets. On May 15, I added .29ml of his solution, again on May 18, and the remaining .2 ml on May 24th. I purchased some CuSO4 from the wine store in crystals, and bought a metric scale so I could measure the chemicals in the future. I added .18 grams of copper, but could still smell the sulphur.

I added .29 grams of CU++ on 5/13 and 11 grams of SO2. On May 14, 15, 16 I added .29 grams of CU++ each day. I could still smell the the sulphur but decided to let it set for while. Topping each day through August.

On September 1, 2006, I added another .29 grams of CU++, and on 9/28 I added .30 grams of CU++.

On 10/6/2006 I had the wine tested, and it was 12.5% alcohol, pH 4.11, and .41 TA. I panicked thinking it wouldn’t hold up so I added 32 oz. of tartaric acid directly in the barrel to the wine. The pH dropped to 3.48 and TA up to .68. I later learned that was a HUGE MISTAKE! I should not have added acid to the wine at this stage – and that the pH and TA in the finished wine was ok – the only time to be concerned about it is in the must.

Mom & Dad came to help with the 2006 vintage, but we had to crush earlier than we expected, so Jim and I had finished crush – so when they were here the week of October 5th, we bottled the 2005 vintage and named it Winetta in honor of them being involved with crush and bottling.

We got 299 bottles from the 60 gallon barrel, and it has aged well enough in the bottle the past year, that it’s drinkable. My family rave about it, and my brother in law, Ernie, who doesn’t like wine – really enjoys my wine. It’s too acid for my taste, but I’m happy my family like it.

I decided that I wanted to name my little winery Mordazini, after my great grandmother’s maiden surname. It is Italian, and I felt most appropritate for what I’m doing.