Making Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Moscato, 2020

 

The Cantina ready for action

Ready, get set, Macerate!

Cabernet Sauvignon - 3 days

Moscato - half 0 days, half 10 days.

Top tip - don't over-fill the bucket! Mascerating grapes swell up quite a lot.

 

Carboy with golden Moscato Normale

Moscato first: we planned to divide our grapes in two, pressing the first half right away and keeping the other half to mascerate and make an orange wine.

At first, everything appeared to be going according to plan . The fresh-pressed half started to ferment immediately. The mascerating lot seemed to be doing nicely with pleasant aromas coming from the bins and some foam also from fermentation.

Things appear not to have gone well thereafter. The fresh juice tasted dry. We had planned a sweet wine such as we had made previously. That had been a great success. This was not sweet, but we were not downhearted as dry muscat is a beautiful wine too.

One of our best customers

 

The mascerated stuff may be destined for the kitchen sink. We think what happened was that in the 10 days of masceration, the wine had not only fermented totally but had also become oxydised. We pressed the must and put the juice in a carboy with an airlock and stood back expecting a fermentation that never came. We only realised that the wine had already fermented out completely when adding emergency wine yeast. Nothing happened. The wine is tasting extra dry and a bit rancio, not to say sherry-like. Peccato!

35 l. demijohn of Cab.S with 15 l. of same behind

The Cabernet Sauvignon was better behaved and fermented obligingly in our Speidel 60 litre fermenter which we will call 'Speidel Dum.' Speidel Dee would be for our white wine. Our 10 boxes of Cab S. provided about 50 litres.

Fermentation over, we racked off the wine into two demijohns. It was interesting to see tiny bubbles coming to the surface thanks to the shape of the demijohn. The same happens in Qvevri and in concrete eggs. Presumably this is part of the aging process, the 'elevage.'

 

Wine Grape Club, Staple's Corner, London

A week after the Cabernet Sauvignon it was back to Staples Corner to pick (up) our Merlot which is strange because we always thought Merlot ripens before Cabernet Sauvignon.

Merlot without maceration. Note the light colour.

The Merlot provided a little less in terms of quantity and took longer for a fermentation to get going. Maybe this is because we crushed and pressed without maceration. We will also store this in demijohns. We plan to divide the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot into two single grape cuvees and one blend of the two. We're looking forward to blending. Will it be 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 etc? The suspense is palpable down at the Cantina.