We are going to try and make our own wine this year. We went today to EMTU to pick about 70 pounds of grapes and use the kit that our nephew gave us to make 6 gallons of wine (30 bottles). We hope we will have some wine to drink in about a year. This will be the first of 3 practice batches before we have our own grapes.

Chris took this picture of all of use doing it the old fashioned way, taking the grapes off the rachis (stems) by hand. We then put them in the white food grade 20 gallon pail….tested for and adjusted the acid. We started at 0.65 and we wanted 0.75. We also added about 30 ppm of sulfur. We will let it sit for 2 days and then add yeast for it to ferment. Should take about a week and then we crush.

Last week we helped our friends John and Chris Mason at EMTU pick Pinot noir at their vineyard in Forestville. Today they were kind enough to let us help them with the pressing of 1/2 ton of grapes and barrel them. We all did 2 barrels, or enough for around 550 bottles.

They are doing their wine in small lots so this is a process they will do a few more times in the next couple of weeks. I hope you can see from the pictures that the wine has a wonderful color and I’m sure will make great wine…..you should get some of their 2007 Pinot noir when it comes out in a few months as it is very special.

We spent Tuesday morning with John and Chris Mason at their vineyard, EMTU. They grow organic Pinot noir (clones 115 and Pommard) as well as some Merlot. I am now getting information from my class and friends on the Harvest and most places seem to be down 20-40% from last year. But not at EMTU from what we can tell. The fruit was fully formed and has a wonderful taste. They are experimenting this year doing a little at home so we picked about 1/2 a ton with them. Nothing like being out in the vineyard with good friends picking grapes. I’m sure if we had to do it for 8 hours/day for $2/tub we would not have the same feeling.