TA | Turtle Vines

Our 2013 Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir are enjoying the cold temperatures here at Turtle Vines. Not like the rest of the country, but cold enough for wine!

A lot of people ask…”What do you do in the winter?” Well, you need to rack off the dead yeast (lees), check pH and acidity, determine if secondary fermentation is complete, sulfur the wine so it does not go bad…and of course taste the wine and make sure something “funky” is not going on while you weren’t watching. Right now we don’t have all the equipment for testing, so we are sending it to a lab…here are the results and the actions we took.

By the way, did a blind tasting of our 2013 Sauvignon Blanc vs 2011 Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc and even as ours is only 3 months old 3 of 4 people preferred it!

Sauvignon Blanc
Alcohol – 12.7%
TA – .375 … sulfured to 0.6 g/100ml
pH – 4.1 … will come down to around 3.9 after acid addition
Sulfured to 60ppm
Malolactic Complete

Pinot Noir
Alcohol – 13.9%
TA – 0.465 … adjusted to 0.55 g/100ml
pH – 3.95 … will come down to around 3.85 after acid addition
Sulfured to 75ppm
Malolactic Complete

The first question I normally get this time of year is…how do you know if the grapes are ready to pick? The most important thing is taste. If it does not taste good as a grape it won’t taste good in your glass 2 years later. Next is sugar and acid content. To measure sugar we use a refractometer (the silver/black tool in the middle of the picture). At Turtle Vines, we don’t like high alcohol wines, so when the sugar is near 24 brix (%) it will make 13.5% alcohol wine. In addition, you want your acids to remain fairly high. I use test strips (above right) to give me an indication. Even if it goes low you can add some to the wine later. Lastly you look at the seeds. These will add tannins to the wine. You want the seeds to be brown. This will give a nice flavor. If they are green it will add a vegetative flavor you don’t want in red wine. See the picture below. Brown seeds with green tips. I hope they are all brown by the time we pick next week. As an aside, last year in our first harvest they were mostly green, but the wine still tasted nice.

Turtle Vines

Pinot noir – great grapes make great wine

Tag Archives: TA

2013 Wine Update

Is it ready to Pick? Brix, TA and Seeds