To Merlot, Or Not To Merlot

I had previously mentioned that I would tell the Merlot story, so here it goes .....

So ... I make wine. Last year I order 200 lbs. of Merlot grapes from the Rutherford bench of Napa Valley. These particular grapes were harvested, fully ripe, just before a series of rain storms hit northern California and assaulted wine grape quality. In other words, these grapes came in virtually perfect. And as luck would have it, the wine maker (me) actually did a good job fermenting them. The young wine was full of fruit, had a deep crimson color, and was most tasty.

One of the final steps in wine making is to "rack" the wine. In racking, wine is moved from one container to another, leaving behind any "lees" or sediments thus helping clear the wine. Racking the wine is done several times, but the final racking is especially important to set the final chemistry of the wine. So MsJan and I were getting ready to rack and I tasted the merlot, expecting a luscious, deliciously aging wine. What I got was .... vinegar. Thinking I was being overly critical I gave a swig to MsJan and she smelled .... vinegar!

There are a lot of reasons why this could happen and I won't go into the details just now. Let's just say that the reasons all have to do with lousy wine making technique. I immediately hit the wine with a whopping dose of sultfite (a sterilizing element used to preserve wines), but that's a little like closing the proverbial barn door. After grumping around the house for a few hours, I moved the 4 gallons of soon to be high quality vinegar to the vinegar making area (do you know how much vinegar 4 gallons is?).

The next day, MsJan and I racked all the other wines which were tasting fine, but not nearly as rich as the merlot. We finished, cleaned all the equipment, and were ready to go to lunch. I was positioning the aforementioned wine vinegar to start it's fermentation when I decided to give it a taste ... one. more. time.

Low and behold, the wine gods bestowed a wonder on my poor wine making! It had returned to it's previous wonderful state. I immediately tested it to be sure the sulfites weren't so high as to sterilize any drinker, and the sulfites were fine (without getting into a lot of chemistry, the sulfite had "done it's job" and bound with the acetic acid, neutralizing it and leaving very little free sulfite). I must have caught the acetic acid fermentation in very early stages. I added a bit more sulfite to the proper levels, and put it back with it's other wine buddies.

In July we bottle. We're keeping our fingers crossed that Mr. Merlot stays ok and makes it to the final step, which will be my mouth in about 18 months!