Been An Age, Hasn't it.

So what happened? too much too tell. Getting to be that time of your again.
So, briefly:
1. We racked the top-up wine in the demijons and also took the opportunity to top up the barrels.
2. We tested the Sangiovese and Trovato blend for free sulfites and adjusted. Paolo again demonstrated great paranoia by wrapping up the tops of the flextank maturation vessels in cling-film and heat shrink-wrap plastic.
3. We measured up the production area as we're shifting where we crush this year and will have a different setup. this resulted in us needing another 10 feet of hose, couple of hose bards, a tri-clamp etc.
4. And we compiled a Wish List.

5. Went to Oregon to see Bob of the labels and Carl of the grapes - more on these two in a later post.

The Wish List.
And who says wishes don't come true?
Anyway, the wish list for Wednesday's consideration is;
a) Racking tube - this is a stainless steel equivalent of our pipe and fishnet stocking filter we used last year to separate wine from seeds and skin when we went from primary to secondary fermentation.
b) Punch down tool - a stainless steel equivalent of your arm, which we use to push down the cap on the wine during primary fermentation.

Via Vecchia Winery Management Team

Hello everyone! Michael here. With Anton, Marty and Paolo taking much needed holidays, I am "in charge". Therefore, let me introduce you to our Management Team.. Pictured to the left you will find us sampling our 2005 Bordeaux Blend. The item peeking out of the top of the barrel is an ullage preventer. This innovative product is from our friends at Flextank. Pictured beginning from the left side is Marty, Anton, Michael and Paolo. We all have full time positions outside the winery but that does not keep us from giving our hand crafted wine the attention and care we feel it deserves. What was once friends gathering to make wine the old way for our own purpose has turned into a strong desire and demand to craft a quality wine the old way and share with the public. In the coming months, we will be revealing our trade marked logo, wine label and the release date of our wine. We have received thus far very good feedback from the public, fellow winemakers and industry peers. We appreciate you visiting our blog and hope you enjoy our journey to create a wine that is free from added sulfites, sugars, flavor and color. After all, our ancestors did not feel the need to add these chemicals...why should we? Please feel free to comment and ask questions by email at viavecchiawinery@yahoo.com. Cheers!

Paranoia

The paranoia continues...

Just broke out the shrink wrap pvc and sealed each Flextank with it. In effect, each Flextank is now like a big wine bottle, with the shrink wrap pvc being its cap.

But why do this?

Unfamiliarity. That's all. Remember we don't do the chemical risk mitigation against air and so our wine is less tolerant than others and our wine maybe needs that little bit more protection than most from any air that may leak into the Flextanks. The pvc is just another air barrier in addition to the cling-film and the floating lids in and on each Flextank.

Here's the two Flextanks we have with SanGiovese and Pinot Noir. The one on the left has the headspace filled with a bag of CO2 and has a floating skin on the wine.

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Barrel Monkeys

Pictures at end of post.

On saturday we put the San Giovese and Pinot Noir into ageing in the flextank maturation vessels. We were particularly pleased with the Pinot Noir, which we could have bottled there and then. In fact, we should not be that surprised since the technique to which we adhere was structured so as to allow you to drink your wine early without extended ageing and the expense of keeping things barreled for a while. After all, this is a product to be drunk! In fact it is interesting that even today in Italy "il vino rosso di Toscana" can only be labelled "vino di tavolo" - table wine. No more no less. It's made to drink. You can do what you want to it and age it and have the planet deem it a super-Tuscan, but at the end of the day, it's table wine.

A further post this week will talk about ph and free sulfites.

But speaking of tradition (remember we explored "barrel spinning"? see link in list of links at left for that), well Via Vecchia Winery keeps alive the tradition of Barrel Monkeys.
The work of a Barrel Monkey is a forgotten trade, eclipsed by the popular movement that liberated the child chimney sweeps and child labour during the mid Industrial Revolution. If Dickens had lived in a viticulural region he would have written about Barrel Monkeys instead of Chimney Sweeps.
Barrel Monkeys would climb into huge fermentation vats and crushing troughs (we'd love one of those) and clean them out. Sometimes the fumes from a fermentation vessel would be too much and the child would pass out. This would be dangerous were it not for the fact that the child was made to wear a bell around their neck. For as long as the child moved, the bell tinkled. If the bell stopped tinkling the child would need rescuing. If the child played a trick and deliberately stopped so as to silence the tinkling, the vintner would bore them with that fable of Aesop's about The Boy Who Cried Wolf. "nuff said.
There is one school of thought that says the term monkey was used in reference to the bell the child wore which was like the bell a performing monkey would wear on his costume when employed at the hurdy gurdy with cup in hand.
Here, we see Via Vecchia making use of a volunteer Barrel Monkey for a day.
In the video and pic you see him with a maturation vessel lowered over him. He then turns around and around, wiping down the insides of the vessel as he turns. Obviously we helped, but we didn't fancy having him crawl in and roll it around from inside on the floor to clean it.


Here are the flextank maturation vessels. They each hold 200 gallons of wine.

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Light at the End of the Tunnel

Finally! There's light at the end of the tunnel or, should I say, wine at the top of the bung hole?
Yes, flextank got those maturation vessels shipped out to us and Anton and I collected them today.
They look good in the winery - quite a different dynamic goes on looking at them. What do I mean by that? Well, everyone knows about traditional wooden barrels and you all know what they're about, laying on their sides, being barrel-ish. Their size and presence is a known quantity and nothing grabs you. When it comes to these Flextank maturation vessels though, now that's another story.
You see they have Presence. For a start, they're taller than us and wider. So you stare at this big thing and realise it's going to a big thing full of a lot of wine! A big lot of wine, if you like. So, something bigger than you are AND full of wine, stood there just being full of wine. It's full of wine and it's really large. Imagine something you can climb into, being full of wine. Imagine floating in it full of wine. It goes on and on. Far more imposing that the subtle and unassuming wooden barrel on its side that you have dominion over.
Anyway, they arrived so tomorrow we put the San Giovese / Pinot Noir in one and the straight san Giovese in t'other.
Photos tomorrow then. TTFN.

More Wine Goes Into Ageing

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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Where's The Stuff #2 - Barrel Update

[no pics for the mo' - so here' s something we initially threw in with a file on images we associated with Via Vecchia Winery - it's someone waiting to get into the Galleria Degli Uffizi in Firenze. My nephew Stephen knows all about that because I took him there when he was about 12 years old and I made him queue for about 1 and 1/2 hours and I remember saying, "...because it's the Uffizi and you'll be grateful I made you stand in line to see the stuff inside when you're older." ]

The French Oak barrels are in Chicago. Will they get here tomorrow - Tuesday - ? We've been hit with some cold weather, so any excuse to delay shipment. They closed the schools here today because it was 5F / -15C and poor kiddies couldn't wait for their buses. I don't know, when I was a lad....blither, blather, rant, rave...what the world's coming to!

All I can say is I'm glad I buy the engine oil that's good for up to -20C below otherwise the engine would be very hard to turn over in the morning and probably wouldn't. As it is my gearbox is a bit stiff for the first few miles, so I guess that oil's not as tolerant of the cold.

I actually had ice form on the windows inside the car today despite the heat turned all the way up and on the second highest speed.

Anyway, enough of that. Hopefully we get the French Oak tomorrow and we'll get them into the winery. We'll let them "sit" for a day and then on Wednesday we will blend into them the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. That will probably do, then on Thursday we will do the Shiraz and bag up into storage the excess Cabernet Franc, if we don't bag it up on Wednesday.

The Sangiovese and Pinot Noir will have to wait the arrival of the flextank maturation vessels. Still looking to ship out on Feb 9th (not good, not good).

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Scali's & Let Down

[pic of Dante, in Pisa not Firenze as you'd likely assume]

Wednesday we had a change of venue for the weekly Via Vecchia Winery meeting. We went to Scali's restaurant. Quite a gem of a place, really. We met Frank (came over from Italy about 37 years ago with his parents) who runs the place and enjoyed his hospitality - he treated us to un piatto d' antipasto e poi, un digestivo per tutti. It's a great place that takes care of your needs and if you're appreciative you may get to sample something special that's not on the menu.
He actually loves our sanGiovese wine and was really impressed when he learned we make the genuine article without any added sugar, yeasts, coloring, glycerine, sulfites and so on as everyone else does. It was also nice to speak in Italian as I don't get that much of an opportunity these days and great to talk of mutual experiences of dining in Italy and so on and so forth. I'm sure we'll get into war stories before too long. Here's his link...
http://www.scaliristorante.com/home.html


As to putting the wine into barrels, which was meant to be tomorrow's activity, we had to cancel that because all shipments of French Oak barrels and Flextank maturation vessels have let us down.
The French Oak will get her next Tuesday (we hope) and the Flextank won't ship until feb 9!
Flextank cannot explain why they didn't ship since they were meant to go out 2 weeks ago! In fact they shipped the storage bag from Australia and it arrived here in three days! I suspect shippers play havoc with delivery due to the recent restrictive laws on driving hours that now include waiting time for loading/unloading - so they don't move until they have full or "economic" loads.
Flextank will see if they can get the maturation vessels out earlier. I do hope they can.

Welcome to ...
Yugoslavia
Slovakia
Brazil
Rep. Of Korea
China
Israel
And more from in the US, Canada and Italy.

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Where's the Stuff?

(left to right - Marty, Paolo (me) , Anton and Michael).
Well, the storage bag arrived from FlexTank. All that way from Australia and it still beat the local shipment of the barrel equivalents out of California. oh Well. The French Oak barrels are on their way too as are the barrel bungs.
We hope they will all arrive for Saturday as Saturday is the full moon ("luna piena"). We like to do things by the full moon. A lot of people doubted me on that, but seems like I'm not alone. I don't even feel the need to explain why we do it ... it's good enough that it has been done that way for as long as people can remember (well, a very small group of people in Toscana).
If any of you have yahoo mail, I think i can hook up a webcam and run it via Yahoo Chat so you can see what we're up to on Saturday. If I do I'll let you know on here which Chat Room we'll be in. Just go in and request to see our webcam. I do not promise anything though. In fact it might be dangerous as we will be tempted to show-off and do stupid things. So maybe not such a good idea after all. Forget it...maybe.

Almost forgot - going to a restaurant interested in our wine tomorrow.

Hello to...
Italy, Belgium, Ireland, GA, KY.

Barrels Update & "Welcome Estonia"

A day of movement on the barrel front today. I (Paolo) spoke with John at Flextank and we're good to go with the [2] 200gallon maturation vessels, floating skin, 100litre ullage preventer and the storage bag. We'll photo these in action, but for those interested you can follow the Flextank link at left and see what these are.
Everything's coming in from California apart from the storage bag, which's coming from Oz.
The Sangiovese/Pinot Noir is destined for the vessels, some Cab Franc for the storage bag, and some Bordeaux blend will probably take the ullage preventer.
John's had trouble with shipping, as has everyone.
Anton finally got the French Oak barrel guy's wife or Admin today after a week's silence. They are being let down on shipping, but she assured him she'd get our order priority. We're excited about these French Oak barrels.
As shipping seems troublesome, I reached out to Amanda of American Bank Equipment and asked her if she could recommend a broker or carrier that could handle barrels for us. She called back and will get us the info of a guy out of Oregon (Oregon again) that she knows. He could be our Plan B to get our French Oak delivered if the supplier can't lock down frieght himself.

Welcome to new visitors -
Hail Estonian Visitor from the region of Harjumma, city of Lagedi!
Hail Floridian Visitor from Spring Hill!

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Taxes and Reporting and Barrel Action

The FED's Wine Operations Report has been submitted by the Winery.
This was done on-line and ahead of the due date.

The State's Tax report is drafted up, but not posted to them yet. Will probably do that tomorrow.

No FED Excise duty to pay and no associated report for that since there's no tax due from us since our wine is still fermenting and we haven't sold any bottles.

Looks like we'll put all the San Giovese and Pinot Noir in flextank maturation vessels. A wee bit of maths showed there was little in it pricewise between flextanks and wood barrels anf John said he may give us a deal on transportation if we did take two of the tanks. At least with flextank they won't "play out", we get no evaporative loss, and they let the wine mature at the same rate as a 2-year oak barrel, without the woody taste.
We're hoping using flextank maturation vessels will really let all the characteristics of the wine shine through. We believe the SanGiovese is a more subtle wine and although used oak barrels are OK, they probably do cover some aroma and taste. So, here's to a real "fresh" wine!

John at flextank didn't know anyone using them for San Giovese in the US, but said that they were probably doing so in Australia where they're using over 600 of these tanks now, and he says there's no reported difference in the taste.

The balance of our wine will go into oak barrels.

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