My Sister, the Home Winemaker

One of my sisters makes her own wine. She has a small stainless steel tank in her living room and we all get to barrel (tank) taste whenever we visit. And, of course, she is kind enough to give all of us a few bottles for ourselves each year. Sometimes it is a white wine like the Chardonnay two years ago and sometimes a red, Syrah, Pinot Noir etc. I asked her to write a little story about her winemaking and here it is.

Before I made wine, I never gave a thought to the grapes themselves. Or if I did, in my mind I pictured beautifully ripe dew-laden grapes, in perfect clusters, with not a shriveled grape in site. It’s not like that at all. Our first year of winemaking my husband and I picked up 500 pounds of Syrah grapes at a vineyard in Morgan Hill. We knew before arrival that they were perfectly ripe (24 Brix) with a pH and total acidity within a normal range. We were shocked to look into the picking bin and discover an assortment of feathers, spider webs, leaves and foam with our grapes! And did they stink! They didn’t smell like grapes, much less like wine.
 
Well, perhaps time does cure all. Now a few years later and a somewhat more experienced winemaker, I drink my deeply rich red 2009 Empty Nest Syrah – and I can honestly say that I NEVER think about those grapes, only the beauty in my glass and the taste on my palate. A toast to feathers and spider webs!
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This year we sourced our Pinot Noir grapes from a very small vineyard in Monterey County at the edge of Pinnacles National Park. We caravanned down from Campbell to pick up about 1,000 pounds of grapes. As we turned on to a rising dirt track leading to the vineyard, we passed a very small house on our left. A few hundred feet later there was a slightly larger house to our left, then one larger. As we passed the third property, a pit bull followed along beside us until we passed their property line to the largest house at the top of the rise. I would describe the “big” house standing stately before us as a Spanish estancia and that’s what it was. All the relatives of this Mexican family live on the same property, overlooked by this very picturesque golden yellow painted home that was probably built in the early 1900s’ and a small but beautiful hillside vineyard tilted to catch the afternoon breezes from the Monterey Bay. You never know what treasure you may find down a dirt road.

This is the first year that we’ve made Pinot Noir and the weather was so bad around picking time that it was very challenging to get the grapes at a high enough Brix before the rains started (which dilutes the Brix). It was nip-and-tuck – should we pick today or on Monday – how about waiting until next weekend? It’s really inconvenient if not impossible to pick the grapes, crush and begin fermentation when you’re a working couple.

Eventually we picked, but our Brix was lower than we had hoped for. We started fermentation anyway, and the next weekend it was time to press. But when we pressed, our wine was the color of diluted raspberry juice. We were very discouraged, because when one has a newly fermented wine, it pretty much tastes like fermented grape juice – just alcohol. One of the other ways we typically judge our wine in the beginning is the color – and this was so far off that we thought we’d need to settle for a rose.
 
Today – almost 4 months later, the problem has self-corrected and now our wine is a true Pinot color. Who knows anything about anthocyanins and/or what made our wine darken? I should mention that the TA was a whopping 11.9 at picking.