Crush and Press 2015

One thing always leads to another and as soon as you've brought in the grapes you've got to get to processing them.

The reds are put through the crusher to essentially break open the grape without crushing the seed inside.  Really its to let the juice flow out and expose the inside of the grape to the yeast that will be added to the must.  Once crushed the slurry of grape juice skins, pulp and seed makes up the must (we pull the stems out).  We then add the yeast and let the yeast work its magic on the sugars and turn them into alcohol.  After about 7-10 days the fermentation is pretty much complete and we drain off the free flowing wine and then we have to press the skins and pulp etc must (now wine) to release the rest of the wine that they may hold.  Once that's all done the wine finishes fermenting, usually another few more days and we'll rack the wine off the sediment into a clean new carboy.

The whites are treated a bit differently.  We crush and press them the same day so only the juice is fermented (no skins).  We add the yeast and after about 7-10 days the fermentation is all but done.  We then syphon the wine off of the sediment into a fresh carboy.

Always great to get the grapes processed and fermenting, even better when you've got some help and have some fun.

Evangeline (KW96-2) Grape

Just a quick update on this great grape.  Again its real name is KW96-2 but we will call it Evangeline until it gets officially named.  This vine gets stronger each year and produced heavier than I had expected this year.  Clusters can be 8-10 inches long and loose and some weight easily in the 200-300 gram range.

This grape is a cross of St. Pepin and Seigerrebe - early ripening, hardy to -30c, some good mildew resistance.  We harvested at 22 brix and 3.5 ph, almost too late.  Could have picked it 2 weeks earlier at about 20 brix and 3.1 ph. Created in Nova Scotia by Dr. Andrew Jamieson - thank you Dr. Jamieson!