Painting the Town Red

The cellar is burgeoning with red wine at the moment. This is on the back of the last week or so of harvesting where we have taken in much of our cab and shiraz. Its been a juggling act of timing the pressing of red wine tanks, cleaning tanks, refilling them, filling barrels plus an ever increasing pump over schedule. Oy!

It is incredibly interesting to monitor and track the fermentation of the various batches of wine and witness how the colour, aroma and taste changes over the course of the fermentation. Every morning we go through the cellar and record the sugar and temperature level and taste the wine. Based on this, we adjust the cooling or make any necessary additions to the wine to ensure the fermentation runs according to plan.

Studying economics laid the foundation for a deep love for graphing numbers and graphs themselves (I'm serious). Graphing the fermentation makes it far easier to see what is really happening. Here is an example of a merlot ferment at Backsberg. (Note that 'balling' refers to the sugar level)


Ideally, once the wine is fermenting (and the sugar level dropping) one wants the ferment to be taking place between 26-30 degree celsius. This is especially key in the first number of days of fermentation. Beyond 30 degrees the yeast (which you add for fermentation) cells are not at all happy with life and they start dying off, and this means trouble.


Above is a pic of me mixing some yeast to add to a tank of shiraz that we just harvested. Temperature is also key in this instance. Here the yeast are happy with life at around 38 degrees celsius. SB