In my last post I said what my lab work involved. To get those measurements to be accurate to the block in the vineyard, the fruit should be picked evenly. To do this imagine a 16 row vineyard, you would pick 4 clusters on a row and then skip 4 rows so that you would have 16 clusters that were from all over the block. While taking the samples for the lab, it is also good to do yield estimates. To do this when I would pick a cluster I would count every cluster on the next 5 plants. So in the end I would get 16 numbers. These numbers and total weight of the clusters were used to figure out much fruit that block would have.

Taking samples into a bucket. The to go boxes are used to separate the different blocks.

In the Sequitor vineyard their were two sections the Rosemary (above) And the Lavender (below).

Sadly, I do not have any pictures of bottling. I had a very simple job during bottling though, I put bottles onto a conveyor belt. They went into to get filled with wine, corked, foiled, labelled and then put into boxes.

Along with Lab work I was also sampling and bottling but in this post I shall describe my time in the lab. It was to figure out the Brix (sugar level), TA (titrable acidity), and pH (acidity) of samples from different vineyards to decide when they should be picked.

Titrable Acidity is the amount of acid found the sample. It is figured out by taking a 5 ml sample of must (grape juice) and putting it with 25 ml of water. Next you put it on a magnetic stirrer and insert a pH reader. NaOH (sodium hydroxide) is slowly added through a burette until the pH is at 8.2. You put all of your numbers into this formula:

g/L = ml NaOH x normality NaOH x 0.075 X 1000

 

Weekly post that addresses student’s exploration of your ILC learning objectives, activities and outcomes; specifically a weekly post that explores answers to the questions in the Learning Objectives.