The Natural Way....

As you all know, we are farming our vineyards organically and we want to produce a wine as natural as possible, thus we do not add any yeast to our crushed grapes to help them ferment.  We rely solely on the yeasts that exist naturally on the skins of the grapes.  Our oenologist, being the scientist that he is, frowns upon this, but at the same time respects our wishes.  So, in order to give our fermentation a kick-start, we are making a "levain" or starter, much like you would do if you were making bread.  My mom and I went out to the vineyards at about 8 pm tonight to pick some perfect bunches of grapes, as dark and unblemished as possible.  After a long day of cleaning out vats, and organizing the "winery", we drove out at sunset to collect some grapes.  When we got home, I dumped them in a bucket and crushed them with my hands, covered it with a towel and will leave it sit in a warm place to start fermenting.  When the first vat is full, I will dump this bucket in and hope that it will help get the grapes fermenting!  Only one more day to prep, and it will be full of errands to run and projects to be finished.  It's so exciting, I can't wait to get out there and start picking.  A friend asked me if I was dreading starting all over again.  On the contrary!  I'm so excited and optimistic.  Here we go again on a whole new adventure.  True, we have one harvest under our belt, so it seems to be a bit more relaxed, but we still have oh, so much to learn!  Yippee!!!

Comments

[Rob Cole]

That's reallt cool that you're using the native yeasts. I would probably be too scared to do that if I were in your shoes!