My fermenter has a TA of 9 with 3.6 pH. The TA is so high because my VA is twice over the legal limit. I sent a sample into a lab for testing and the results that came back were quite sad. This is all part of the learning process though and I will be able to distill the wine into brandy so it is not totally lost.

There is quite a bit of second set fruit. Second set from is the fruit that is not on the main shoots of the vine. They are much smaller and ripen much slower. I went around at an organic, dry farmed, head trained vineyard and picked multiple varieties. The varietals I picked were Grenache (60%), Cabernet Sauvignon (15%), Zinfandel (20%), and Petite Sirah (5%). I chose to do carbonic maceration as the sugar levels are low and a dry fermentation should be obtainable.

I am back at my house now and we are still pressing off tanks. The style of wine and the types of grapes are very different. Here we use multiple types of grapes for every wine and they are all very dark. Unlike Pinot in Oregon, which is one of the lightest red wines there is. We pressed off some Tannat which was basically black, also some Grenache and Graciano. Here we use a basket press, the yields are much smaller but the quality is the same as non pressed grapes.