NSJ

Part two of the wine saga involved taking the mash from part one, putting it through a press, and then into an oak barrel. This happened shortly after part one and I forgot to blog about it. The tannins from an oak barrel are important to making a wine that lasts a long time. (Grenache is not the best choice for a long lasting wine, but it was the only high-end grape available in the fall when Niko was born.) Oak barrels only leach tannins for a couple uses. Rather than having to buy new (expensive) barrels every couple years, it is more economical to add long strips of oak to the barrel. These are aptly named “barrel replicators.” Typically Sam only keeps the replicators in the barrel for part of the cycle in order to boost the tannins but we left them in for the entire time the wine was in the barrel.

Part three, completed on a recent weekend, involved bottling the wine. This was much simpler than I expected. We pumped the wine out of the barrel into a container which fed a bottle filler. Once the bottle was filled, we corked and boxed them. The next step is trying to figure out how to get six cases of wine from CA to CT.