1996 Cabernet Sauvignon

Rancho Salina, Sonoma

October 17, 1996

This is a second crop fruit and we got 350 lbs., 295 lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon
and 55 lbs. of Cabernet Franc.
The sugar was at 26.6 degrees brix at harvest
and the T.A. was at .66%.
We are using a 71B yeast culture. We added 40 ppm of sulfite to bring the sulfite level to 70 ppm
and Pitched it with the yeast.

October 19, 1996

Fermantation is starting slowly. The must is so full of skins that I am having trouble stiring it up. The second crop with all the small berries is going to give us a really dark red wine.

October 24, 1996

The must has been fermenting smothly and is still fermentating, but we decided to press it today. It has gotten lots of color because of the small berries. We got 21 gallons of juice from pressing today. I kept the free run and pressed juice seperate and will see what the diffrence turns out to be. We tasted it before pressing and estimated the sugar to be about 6%, which is a bit soon to press, but it was convenient to do today. Fermantation is still kinda producing some foam, so it is kinda foaming out of the barrel a bit.

December 3, 1996

Fermentation is still going on but at a very slow pace and I have racked the wine today and we now have about 20 gallons. This wine has a real interesting taste and it seems to me that it will be a real good one.

December 23, 1996

Airated the wine today and tasted it. it still has a bit of sugar left and the fermatation has stopped. I will have to go and get a diffrent yeast called K1 and use it to finish it. I will have to start the K1 yeast in a container (probably a gallon of apple juice) and then add it to the wine. Hoppefully I will get to this by next week.

January 6, 1997

Starting a new batch of yeast and trying to get fermantation to finish. I have put a small amount of K1 yeast into some apple juice and from there after it had a nice big head on it, I mixed it with a gallon of Cabernet. Now I am waiting to let that start fermentating rapidly, then I will mix it in with all the Cabernet and it should finish the fermentation.

January 28, 1997

All the Cabernet is now in the house instead of the cellar because the temperature in the cellar is too cold for yeast activity. It is fermenting rather slowly.

March 1997

The wine is now in the cellar and waiting

July 7, 1997

I racked the wine and added about 1.5 lbs. of toasted oak chips.

August 25, 1997

5 gallons blended to make the Cabfandel

September 4, 1997

Of the 15 gallons left I racked it today and added some sulfite and some tartaric acid to bring the acid level up from .45 to about .60.

November 21, 1997

I racked this wine today and took some of it to make another batch of the Cabfandel We now have about 8 gallons of Cabernet left.

July 1, 1998

Bottled the wine today and got about 3 more cases for a total of about 4 cases of this wine.

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Changes last made on: Tuesday August 4th 1998