Tuesday, August 23, 2005

             

                   

 

Meet Monsieur Almeras, he's our enologist.  Boy did we get a surprise today when we did our first contrôle de maturité! This is a test to see how the grapes are progressing in sugar and acidity. We have 4 different parcels, and the biggest one we divide into two since the upper half is Côtes du Rhône Villages and the bottom half is just regular  Côtes du Rhône, so that makes 5.  For the contrôle de maturité you have to go to each parcel and pick at least 100 grapes, 200 is better according to M. Almeras, so we did somewhere in between. You have to make sure to get grape samples from all parts of the vineyard, avoiding the outside rows and the first vine in each row since they tend to get more sun. As we criss-crossed the vineyards, we put the grapes in plastic bag labeled with the name of the vineyard and the grape variety. Have I mentioned that our grapes are Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre? Mostly Grenache, which is the grape varietal most typical to our region. Anyway, back to our contrôle, once we had our 100+ grapes, we headed back home for our rendez-vous with M. Almeras. He arrived with his equipment for our big test. It included; two plastic bowls a sieve, a refractometre, some pipettes and various other magic chemistry-related potions! First, he crushed the grapes in the sieve to extract the juice, then tested the grapes for sugar and acidity. Here in France, we talk about the sugars in potential alcohol, not in brix, and boy were we surprised when it turned out that all of our grenache was already above12 degrees potential alcohol! M. Almeras was concerned that the acidity levels were fairly low too. So, what does all of this mean you ask? Well, at this stage of development the grapes tend to gain one degree of potential alcohol per week. Which means in a week, all of our grenache will be at 13+ degrees! Which means that we will need to pick them much sooner than we had planned unless we want to have a wine that is 15 degrees, which we absolutely do not want. Panic! Have you seen what our "micro-winery" looks like lately? What, I haven't sent any pictures of the finished floor? Well I will, and needless to say, the floor is really nice, but if we don't get some vats in there fast, we won't have anywhere to put these grapes that we suddenly need to harvest almost 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Well, I spent the rest of the day making panicked phone calls and running to our equipment supplier to pick up our power sprayer, pump, and various other things we will need. I also confirmed the delivery of the de-stemmer as well as the rest of the important equipment we ordered from him. The biggest problem though is EDF (Electricité de France) or, the electric company. You see, to run all of this equipment we need 3-phase electricity, and we have been working with them to get it installed in time for the harvest. Last week they told us that it the work couldn't be done until the 2nd week in September, and last week, that was ok, but this week it's NOT!!! So I called the man and begged him to help us, stating that we would have 20,000 euros worth of vinification equipment that we wouldn't be able to use if they couldn't get it done before that. The problem is that the company that they sub-contract the work out to is on vacation until the 5th, and the week of the 5th, they are already booked solid! So I pleaded with him to find me someone else to do the work, he said he would do his best and call me back. Usually that is the kiss of death here in southern France, usually you hear back from him 3 weeks later, but miracles do happen, and he called me back just a few hours later with news that he had found someone that could come and do it before the 1st of September! Someone, somewhere wants us to make wine this year. Now let's just hope we can get the vats delivered....