2020 Sauvignon Blanc Harvest

Sauvignon Blanc 

The challenges surrounding COVID this year convinced us to pass on Washington State and return to the Okanagan for wine grapes.  It had been a decade since our last foray, and with some help from Anita's cousin in Penticton, we found a winery in Naramata that was willing to sell us Sauvignon Blanc.  Anita's family has deep roots in the Okanagan grape industry, and her dad's knowledge of the valley, its vineyards and agriculture is never lost on me when I visit.  

A wet spring initially set back growing in the valley, but a warm and dry summer made up for lost time, and we initially expected an earlier harvest towards the end of September.  Then, the smoke from California arrived, blotted out much of the growing energy delivered by the sun, and set the harvest back into October.  After a couple of false starts, we finally settled on Friday, October 9th, for harvest.

The pictures and video clips below tell the story of harvest, crushing, pressing and initial fermentation of this year's vintage.

Robert, hard at work cleaning the crusher de-stemmer before heading out to Naramata to pick up the crop.  This guy is amazing and comes from Quebec for harvest, every year.  In his off time, he even insulated my garage!

A big shout out to "Wayne & Freda", a trendy little cafe in Penticton with amazing sandwiches, baked goods, and coffee.

Vineyard manager Sophie bringing in one of two boxes of Sauvignon Blanc from the vineyard.  She picked in the rain and was thoroughly drenched by the time our shipment was ready.  #goodpeople

Almost 600lbs of fruit on the weigh scale.

Wrapping the boxes in poly to keep everything dry on the way home.

Richard, the owner and winemaker, showing his skill on the forklift.

One box loaded, one to go.  Robert was very careful to measure the boxes and ensure our rental truck had enough room.

Nearly 1300lbs of Sauvignon Blanc secured for the journey up the Coquihalla Pass and on to Fort Langley.  Our truck felt like a boat with the bow riding high on the water.

Five hours later in my garage with Robert and Brent - our crushing crew.

Getting set to start crushing.  No feet involved!

Crush begins!

Looking into the crusher de-stemmer.  The auger (visible) pulls the clusters of grapes over rotating rubber rollers.  The rollers can be set to gently crack the berries, fully crush them, or anything in between, depending on winemaking style.  Below the rollers (unseen) rotating paddles and a mesh separate the stems from the fruit.  For Sauvignon Blanc, we are fully crushing the berries.

Juice and crushed berries, now referred to as must, fall down the shoot into stainless steel buckets.  From there the must is loaded into stainless steel tanks and readied for pressing.

On to box number two.  Crushing itself took only about an hour; however, the preparation and cleanup required several hours of effort.

Sauvignon Blanc must in the tanks and ready for pressing the following day.

The conclusion of a big day that started with harvest 500KM's distant and completed with a thorough cleaning of all equipment and our garage.

Press begins!  With white wine grapes, it is typical to press immediately after crushing.  Unlike red wine grapes, whites ferment on juice instead of must.

Our press crew had some fresh help...

and club members who took part in the earlier crush.

For this year's vintage, we are using a specialised yeast to highlight flavours typically found in the New Zealand expression of Sauvignon Blanc.  Called Alchemy for its magical powers 😉it produces thiols, or sulphur compounds that give Sauvignon Blanc its characteristic grassy, boxwood, passion fruit and citrus flavours.

The grape juice ferments in stainless steel tanks.  Without the lid, the foaming must is clearly visible.

To ensure that no oxygen contacts the wine, all tanks are sealed with lids.  Because the fermentation (especially in the beginning) is evolving significant quantities of carbon dioxide gas, a bubble lock is fitted to the lid.  The lock contains a water trap that allows CO2 out but no air in.

Music to the winemaker's ears!  With fermentation under way, the bubble locks are busy.  CO2 accumulation in the cellar is a significant safety concern, as it is possible to asphyxiate when concentrations are high.  Two professional wine makers in the Okanagan died in a related tragedy around the time we started making wine. 

As Robbie Burns said, the best made plans of mice and men go oft awry.  Such was the case when our cellar air conditioning unit failed.  It's important to ferment whites like Sauvignon Blanc in a cool environment.  Fortunately for us, mother nature helped out with cool and low October temperatures.

After taking the air conditioner in for servicing, a grill was placed over the opening of the cellar.  With a fan and some ducting installed inside, we've managed to keep things cool.

Ferment has been underway for six days, now.  In another week or so, all of the sugar provided by the grapes will have been consumed by the yeast leaving the wine still and dry.  Until then, warm regards from your friends at The Purple Habit.

2020 Summer Update and New Vintage Plans

We had a busy spring!

In amidst our rebranding to The Purple Habit, hiring a designer for our new lables, finding a local printing firm, chasing down a new supplier for bottles, and managing numerous personal and professional COVID-19 challenges, we managed to bottle -- what I think you will agree -- is an outstanding expression of the Syrah varietal.  Presenting . . . . our 2018 vintage!

Rebranding Complete!  A QR code now takes interested club members to a more detailed write-up on the vintage.

Bottling Day

On May 9th, we bottled the 2018 vintage.  In spite of all the equipment and people moving around, the process is well-practiced, and we moved through several tanks of wine over the balance of the day.  Had it not been for COVID-19, and a lack of volunteers (I like to think our kids volunteered 😏), we would have had club members on each of the stations pictured below.

Ready to go - tanks, pumps, bottles and other equipment, prior to starting.

The bottle filler accommodates 4 bottles at once and automatically fills each to a predetermined level.

Our two kids, Ben and Grace manning the bottle corker.  The corker works on a two step principal.  The operator pulls the lever down to compress the cork so that it can fit inside the neck of the bottle.  A final short push of the lever quickly inserts the compressed cork into the bottle where it expands and seals.  After processing several hundred bottles, anyone over 40 is pretty much guaranteed some shoulder agony.  These two didn't notice a thing.  Corking is wasted on the youth!

Corked bottles awaiting application of tin capsules for the neck of the bottles.  In a world full of plastic, we still invest in tin for our vintages.

Anita operating the capsule spinner, a device that literally molds the tin capsule to the top of the bottle.  Another shoulder killer!

We've been making wine together for almost 20 years 💜

Once the bottles are filled, corked, and capsuled, the new lables are applied.

The Purple Habit 2018 Syrah ready for boxing.

After clean-up, all equipment is stored in the garage until dry and ready for stowing.  Who recognises the new stylistic element included on our lables?

Vintage Plans for 2020

We had waited hopefully for some positive change in the COVID situation and the border, but I think it is for naught.  On a typical year, it's a enough of a challenge buying fruit in the States.  Unfortunately, we won't be going south for 2021.

However, I think there is a reasonable chance of finding quality Pinot Gris or Sauvignon Blanc locally in the Okanagan.  We've had good experiences with both varietals in the past, and each was well received by the club.  When I find a supplier, I will finalise the pricing.  Because white wines generally aren't processed or aged in oak barrels, the cost will be lower than our reds, most like around $325 a share (18 bottles).

Please let me know if you are interested.  We likely won't make as much as past red vintages.

We hope you are enjoying your summer!

Warm regards,

Darin, Anita, Grace and Benjamin

2019 Winter Update

Hello friends,

I was thinking of ways to modernize our updates when I remembered starting a wine-themed blog, back around the time my kids were born, circa 2008.  To my surprise, the blog was still there, having languished since my last post, way back a decade earlier.   I've moved some of our earlier wine updates over to the blog,  but this is the first one purpose written for our "new" communications channel.  For a guy who lives and breathes "digital transformation" in my day job, I'm a bit slow to the game personally.  Well, here goes...

We left off in October at the crush, and that was only half the fun for the new vintage.  The next step was to take a few measurements and then get down to the business of fermentation, that naturally occurring happenstance that to some happy extent begat and formed the civilization we know today.

Analytic Setup for Titratable Acidity

The rig above is used to determine the amount of acidity in the grape juice.  The amount of acid in the wine and its relative strength (pH) have a considerable effect on both taste and fermentation success.  Wines too low on acid taste flat and are also susceptible to microbial spoilage.  Wines with excess acid can be unbearably tart and not very enjoyable.  Because late harvest often equates to unripe fruit and high acidity, I was pretty keen to see where we had ended up.  Our acid target turned out to be right on the money, and there was no mistaking the excellent quality of our 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon.

With all the lab numbers looking great, we were ready to add yeast and get the fermentation underway.

Prepping the Yeast

It's a myth that fermentations can occur naturally and produce the relatively high alcohol wines that we enjoy today.  Ironically, the ethanol that yeast produce as a byproduct of sugar metabolism is toxic to them and generally kills the wild variety after it surpasses a level of five or six percent.  Nearly all wines today are fermented using cultured yeasts, some of which can withstand ethanol levels beyond fifteen percent.  If you ever hear a winemaker say "fermented with wild yeast" understand she's either making it up or relying on cultured yeast already in the vineyard from composting grapes skins of previous fermentations.

Fermenting in the Garage

Once the yeast is hydrated in warm water (just like baking bread), it gets added to the fermenters, and the show begins.  This year fermentation took eight days to complete.  Fermentation creates a lot of carbon dioxide, which can be dangerous to breath.  We always ensure the garage door is opened, before we check on the tanks.  It is a sad fact that occasionally wine makers are overcome by carbon dioxide and perish.  Unfortunately, this tragedy has happened in British Columbia, since we started making wine.

During the fermentation process, the grapes eventually break down into skins and free run juice, or wine.  Ultimately, when the mixture is poured into the wine press, the free run juice runs right through the press and into a receiving pail.

Darin and Joe loading the Wine Press from the Fermenter Tanks

A Purple Mess is Nearly Unavoidable

"Free Run" Juice (Wine) Passing Through the Press into the Receiving Pail

Eventually, the press becomes full of skins and the juice that they retain.  Oak panels and blocks are placed over the skins, and a ratchet, screw drive assembly is tightened down compressing the skins and separating the remaining juice.  This type of press, which dates back over a thousand years, can squeezes the skins hard enough that the remaining mass, called the pomace, is nearly dry and paper like.

Wine Skins Remaining Without Free Run Juice

The Ratchet Screw Drive Compressing the Skins

The "Pomace" to be Recycled into Compost

The new wine remains in garage tanks for a few days to clarify, a process where dead yeast and other solids settle out of the wine and form a mud on the bottom of the tanks.  The wine is then transferred by gravity from the garage to tanks in the basement exercise room.  During this period of the young wine's life, a secondary process called malolactic fermentation takes place, a process where bacteria convert the sharper (apple tart) malic acids in the wine to milder lactic (milk) acids.  This process is nearly inevitable in any wine, so we like it to occur during the winemaking, rather than creating a fizzy bottle of wine on your supper table.

Wine Travelling by Gravity from Garage to Basement

A Receiving Tank in the Basement

Brand new 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon

New Wine Resting in the Gym

After a month or two, with the window partially open to keep the wine around 18 degrees Celsius, everything is transferred into 225 litre French oak barrels in the cellar for long term aging.  Our cellar is temperature and humidity controlled.  A wine cellar that is too dry, promotes undue evaporation of the wine from the oak barrels, reducing the overall yield and "giving too much to the angels."  We lose about one litre of wine a month from each barrel at 65% relative humidity - this is typical.

This year, for the first time in 15 years, one of our new barrels leaked.  We follow a standard procedure for preparing barrels that includes filling them partially with hot water prior to use.  This one was okay till the wine was added, and then it was quite the mess.  Fortunately, it looked worse than it was, and we only lost a couple litres of wine.  In the interim, I plugged the leaky oak staves with barrel wax.  Over a few weeks, the staves swelled up with wine and solved the problem.  Still a bit unsightly!

Slightly worried that a new ($2000) barrel was leaking wine like a sieve!

What a mess on the underside

Leak arrested.  The dark patches are barrel wax

With the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon squared away for the foreseeable future, we turned our attention to the 2018 Syrah, which was pumped out of the barrels to tanks in the garage.  We expect to bottle and release sometime in the spring.  In the meantime, we are working on a new label design to reflect our rebranding as The Purple Habit.  We hope to share that with you soon.

All the best from Darin, Anita, Grace and Benjamin.

2018 Syrah

The New Approach

In 2018, after rebranding as The Purple Habit, the club began buying fruit directly from the Fielding Hills Winery, gaining professionally managed access to its Riverbend Orchard on the Wahluke Slope outside Mattawa, Washington. 

 

This vintage marks the beginning of a new approach to club wine by leveraging the expertise of the winery staff surrounding harvest timings and the logistics necessary to pack and ship the fruit from Washington to British Columbia.

 

By moving oversight and management of harvest and logistics, the club is better able to focus on crush, fermentation and winemaking.

The Journey

The 2018 Syrah was bottled on May 9, 2020, and is a finely integrated expression of mature fruit balanced with soft tannins, acidity and alcohol.  Spend a bit of time pondering its inky colour and your senses may detect some aniseed  on the nose, followed on the palette with flavours of blackberry, liquorice, spice and pepper.

 

Over twenty months, numerous steps and processes were involved to craft this wine.  

Technical Stuff

• 2018 was a very smoky year in the Okanagan; however, as Mattawa is nearly 500km south of Osoyoos, very little smoke affected the grapes.  Only two day of smoke were reported
  
  
• Pre-harvest testing revealed fruit to be roughly 26 degrees Brix (sugar content) with a very acceptable pH of 3.7
  
  
• Harvest took place on September 24, and the club grapes were packed in 500 pound cardboard totes and shipped by reefer to Fort Langley for crush
  
  
• The fruit was cold soaked for four days, followed by eleven days of fermentation before pressing on October 10
  
  
• Malolactic fermentation concluded on December 6
  
  
• Aging took place for seventeen months in a combination of new and neutral French oak barrels, each racked every five months
  
  
• 14.3% alc./vol.  TTA 5g   pH 3.9

2019 Harvest and Crush

In spite of the challenges with import procedures, government, weather, and scheduling, the grapes arrived without incident on October 17th. 

The Cabernet Sauvignon fruit looked and tasted superb, and the test results showed good maturity, perfect sugar, and just the right amount of acidity.  Crush proceeded efficiently, and we began fermentation two days later.  Last Sunday, we concluded this important phase of the vintage by pressing the grape juice off of the skins, a process and a technology that dates back several thousand years (and no, no feet were used!).

What follows are a few pictures of the events up to pressing. 

The first tote of grapes delivered.  The shipment was loaded in Washington on the day of picking, refrigerated to near 2 degrees, and shipped to Surrey.  The totes were then transferred to a different truck with the tailgate service needed for delivery at our house. 

Because it was raining, we put all three totes in the garage.  This location offered the added benefit of making the crush proceed more efficiently.

Beautiful Cabernet Sauvignon fruit.

Preparing the garage for crush.  The white device on the left is a crusher-destemmer.  It is designed to crack the berries and remove the stems of each cluster.

Club members Darin, Brent and Bob

Grape clusters are transferred to buckets with any leaves or other removed first.

A 200L stainless steel fermenting tank is filled about three fourths to the top.

Fermenters are covered to keep out fruit flies.  In about 48 hours, cultured yeast will be inoculated (added) to each tank.

Record keeping is very important :-)

Harvest 2019 Approaches

It's nearly time!

After a disappointing, wet and cool September, the vineyard is back on track with harvest planned in the next week to ten days.  Even though the Wahluke Slope is more than 500KM south of British Columbia, tensions were high last Tuesday when the US Weather Service issued an early frost warning.  Even mild frost kills the leaves of the plant and would have necessitated early harvest, low maturity, inadequate sugar levels, and disappointment overall.  Yet now, with several weeks of warm, sunny weather predicted at the vineyard, it looks like we will hit optimum maturity and have an outstanding crop.  Such is the risky nature of agriculture and winemaking.

On that note, we'll need some club members at Fort Langley to help in the crush, when the grapes arrive.  I will provide more details when the dates firm up.  So, if you're up for an afternoon and evening working with the fruit, please let me know.

We are still mired in government and logistics, at this point.  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, changed its processes and regulations significantly this year.  In order to get a ministerial exemption to bring our fruit into the country, I had to personally get letters of "supply shortage" from the BC Wine Grape Council and Provincial Government.  On top of that, the agency is still trying to decide whether or not we need a new Safe Foods for Canadians license (absolutely endless phone calling with little results).  Then there are also trucking and brokerage issues to resolve.  I think we will need another model for fruit importing, next year.

2018 Syrah

Last Sunday was racking day for the Syrah.  Every four to five months, the wine is transferred out of the barrels into stainless steel tanks and then back into the barrels.  The general idea is to provide some limited exposure to oxygen, which is required for aging, and give me an opportunity to clean sediment from the barrels.  It is a slow and quiet process that fills the cellar with soft aromas of oak, fruit, and spices.  I am very happy to report that the 2018 will be ready for pick up this spring.  It is rich and purple, has notes of pepper, and a very fruit forward cherry tone.  It is a lovely expression of Syrah from central Washington.

Below, a few pictures of the racking and a bit of trivia for your edification.

Setting up the "Bulldog Pup" an argon gas pressure pump that gently moves the wine from the barrel to tank.  Does anyone know why we use argon and not CO2?

"Gas on!", the wine flows through the site window and food-grade tubing to the receiving tank or barrel.  Does anyone know why the Bulldog Pup has a tie down strap on it?

The Syrah temporarily taking up residence in a 200L stainless steel tank - it was racked back into the barrels about an hour later.