2024 Chardonnel
October 2024
Yesterday my son & I drove 4 hours to Glade Spring Vineyard. Working with the vineyard owners, we crushed 125 lbs Chardonnel, 300 lbs Chambourcin, and 300 lbs Chelois. Then crushed another several hundred pounds for the owners.
The brix is a bit low on this one, so chaptalizing was required.
Then we tasted a few of the owners’ 2023 wines, a sparkling Vidal and several blends. All are very good, giving us ideas for blends.
Ingredients
| Fruit | 125 lbs Chardonnel, divided into 2 batches |
| Maceration Enzyme | 2 ml Cinn Free, divided |
| Yeast | 1 packet Lalvin QA23 1 packet Lalvin 71B |
| Sugar | 2 lbs, divided |
| Nutrient | 6 tsp Fermax + 2 tsp YAN, divided |
| Starter | 1/2 tsp Fermax + 3 Tbsp sugar for each yeast |
| K-meta | as required |
| Malolactic Bacteria | Lalvin 31 (see below for amount) |
| Finishing Tannin | 15.6 g FT Blanc Soft |
Method
| Crushed the grapes and divided into two containers. Did not check brix or SG. | 10/05/2024 SG — |
| Checked SG on both buckets — 1.080. Calculated about 1 lb sugar per batch to raise the SG to 1.090, which is the target.
Made 2 starters with QA23 and 71B, respectively. |
10/06/2024 QA23: SG 1.090 71B: SG 1.090 |
| Added Lalvin 31 MLB. This was difficult as the package is designed for 66 gallons of wine, but it’s a very small amount of material. Since it’s supposed to be dissolved in water for best use, I did so with most of the package, then added 1 part to each bucket of Chardonnel and 2 parts to each red bucket.
Did the first punch down. Fermentation produced a strong cap. Did not bother to check SG yet. |
10/07/2024 QA23: SG — 71B: SG — |
| Added 1 tsp YAN to each container and did second punch down in afternoon. | 10/08/2024 QA23: SG 1.048 71B: SG 1.048 |
| Racked the free run wine, grossing 8 gallons total. Press the pomace to grossing another 3.5 gallons.
Reserved 1.5 liters from each batch as a control. Blended all remaining wine into a single batch. |
10/13/2024 SG 0.994 |
| Bottled one 750 ml bottle each from the reserved QA23 and 71B wines. Added remainder of each to main batch.
Pumped all wines into homogenized batch. Acid is much reduced, so it appears MLF has completed. Will conduct chromatography in the near future. Added 15.6 g FT Blanc Soft and 3/4 tsp K-meta. Racked into two 19 liter carboys, one 1.5 liter bottle, and 0ne 750 ml bottle. |
11/21/2024 SG 0.994 |
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Notes
| Yield | ?? bottles |
| Alcohol | ??.?% ABV |
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