Saturday - and we put the Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc into ageing in their French Oak barrels.
The pump played up again. Nothing to do with the impeller - Paolo repaired the torn blade and it held all day - but the motor itself. Seems like the motor wants to turn over, but there isn't the "kick" to start it off. We checked the load on the drive wheel, the tension of the drive belts and they were fine. It's just that the drive wheel didn't turn even with no load upon it. Anyhow, since it was making noises like it wanted to go, we resorted to "kick-starting" it. This was achieved by running the pump with the drive exposed and Marty hand cranking it until it 'caught". This worked all day long and we got through it fine.
However, since the pump is meant to be both self-priming and self starting, this is not good. We believe the starting capacitor is "fried".
Paolo designed a dip-stick to measure off how much wine was being pumped. This was needed to roughly gauge when we had enough of a Varietal in a barrel, essential when wanting to achieve the different percentages of each Varietal in each barrel. It worked fine.
Topping off the Bordeaux blend barrels was done by siphoning out of the demijons we had racked in December for the Cab Franc. We left the Cab Franc until last because it is the smallest percentage in our Bordeaux blend and our pump cannot pump with the responsiveness needed to be shut off in time when the barrel is full. There is a device that can be bought that senses the change in pressure at the barrel full point and shuts the pump down there and then.
The Bordeaux blend dealt with our Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. We had enough Cabernet Franc to make up its own barrel. Anton reminded us all that Cabernet Franc is the father of Cabernet Sauvignon, and for my money, at this stage, it seemed better in many respects. The remainder of the Cabernet Franc went into storage in a bag from FlexTank that will keep the wine safe for up to two years -you place the bag in a 60gallon drum.
Only the SanGiovese and Pinot Noir to go.
[l to r - Paolo, Marty (holding drum), Michael in back of drum, John in front of drum holding red funnel]
Here we're carefully pouring off the last several gallons in the drum into a demijon. We don't pump out all the way to the end as we do not want to suck the sediment (lees) back into the wine - remember we rely on natural sedimentation as our filtration method as we do not mechanically nor chemically filter our wines. This wine will be again siphoned into the French oak barrel.This is Anton siphoning out of the demijon the Cabernet Franc into the French oak barrel.
This is Micheal diligently tagging the Cabernet Franc barrel.
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