Vinous involvement

Ufta, went AWOL there for a few days while we immersed ourselves in winemaking and asthma.

6 AM Saturday morning we hit the road to be in Greenport, LI, in fields managed by Michael Kontokostas and the Kace Group, by a tad after 8.  And there the lovlies were, in their stacked pickers crates, about 750 lbs. of Cab. S. which, after chatting and bsing for a while, we dumped into plastic trash bags and loaded into the back of B's minivan (with a good deal of low-riding resulting - dude, check those shocks & your tire pressure).  Back to 11th Street and we'd finished crushing by shortly after noon, when P brought in some beautiful pastas from Bar Toto, Lori put out some salamis & bread, we popped a bottle of last year's 11th Street Sangiovesi and ate the lunch of the just.

Then, back to destemming.  Now, really, that's tedious.  It encouraged talk of retiring the mid-90's crusher we've been using and ponying up for a crusher destemmer.  B&L de-destemmed before the rest of us and declared their grapes ready for yeast.  Lori & P, bless their obsessiveness, kept destemming for what seemed like a couple hours more, then we pitched our yeasts, started the cleanup, more or less passed out.  

The grapes are much lower brix than California grapes would be, so we'll have pretty low alcohol - we didn't chapitalize.  Somewhere around 10% rather than 12%.  Worser things could happen, and when I remember how many folks stumbled out of our last year's wine celebration party, the lower content might be a positive good.  

Anyway, it's been a lot of time in the cellar the last few days, punching down, making notes.  The must is heating up, the brix is dropping and it's already smelling like wine rather than grape juice.  Giddyap.