Yippeeee It's Raining - Time for Bottling

The rain has arrived - the lifeblood of the earth and the vineyards! My raingauge at Tres Palmeras has clocked in over 5 inches since my last post. Still not all we would like to see, but certainly way better than where we were seeing ourselves. Still going to put that bucket in the shower, just need to find something to put it into from there.

With the rain comes indoor sports. In the winery that sport is bottling. See Bottling pics. Before bottling there can be many chores-coming out of barrels, possible filtering, lab analysis-alcohol is very important to the government! Then there is the FDA, USDA......that is why some of us turn into chemistry geeks, but we really want to be artists.........

Speaking of filtering- this is something I do try to avoid. Sometimes that means a little sediment in the bottle, but it is worth it knowing that I have good fruit, have minimized my impact on that fruit and since I make red wine which allows me that latitude.

It is not wrong to filter, in fact many times it is the smart thing to do- for white and Rose' wines, generally it cannot be avoided. Those wines are not 'stable' as we refer to them in the winery. That means that sometimes they have a little sugar or malic left in them and microbes. Those things left alone without filtering are looking for a party- fermenting and bubbling- and usually stinky and nasty in a closed bottle. Supposedly that was how champagne originally came about, but these days, a little more control is a good thing.

Well, the barrels are calling- the Mustang Winemaker