[Dave Burt]

Reply to this topic to post your chemistry results for the 2017 Pinot Noir and any adjustments you are planning to balance the must.

Notes on these grapes:

Nk’Mip Vineyard planted their Pinot Noir rows in an East/West orientation as opposed to the usual North/South. This results in the south facing side of each row receiving sunlight throughout the day and grape clusters on this side ripen earlier, and are picked earlier than those on the north side. Nk’Mip designates grapes on the south side as Tier 1 and north side as Tier 2. Two other relevant features of these grapes are that the vines are quite old, and the cropping rate is extremely low. Put this package together and you have grapes with concentrated flavours and that have reached full phenolic ripeness. We paid a bit more for our one ton of Tier 1 but I think it will be worth it.

[Dave Burt]

Here are my chemistry numbers on the 2017 Pinot Noir:
Brix 27.3
pH 3.90
TA 3.9
YAN 106

I am curious to see if anyone else gets a TA that low. I will be adding water to bring down the Brix to 24, and acid to raise the TA to about 6.2.

The high Brix is comparable to what we consistently got with our Hill Top Vineyard Pinot Noir (Central Coast, California). Don and I always had to add water to those grapes, usually targeting a Brix of 24. The Hill Top Pinot remains one of the best wines in my cellar.

Update on my Pinot Noir (as of Oct. 17, 2017):
* My targets for must adjustments were a Brix of 24 and a TA of 6 g/L
* To lower the Brix to this target Willem’s spreadsheet indicated an addition of 6 L of water (assuming 42 L of juice)
* For acid I added 2 g/L = 84 g, plus 6 g/L for the water = 36 g, for a total of 121 g
* I dissolved this in the 6 L of water
* I added 3/4 of the acidified water to the must and tested for Brix and pH – this was a precaution in case the pH dropped into the realm of a white wine as it did for Ian above – it didn’t.
* Added the remainder and tested: got a Brix of ~25 (hard to be precise as no definitive line in the refractometer), and a pH of 3.51
* Inoculated with RC212 rehydrated in Go Ferm

Off to the races!

[Anonymous]

Brix 27.1
pH 3.81
TA 3.75
YAN 91

Took a long time to settle the sample
Brix and acid adjustment!

[Jan Nilsson]

Brix 27.5
pH 3.9
TA – don’t trust my NaOH solution

Took me a long time to settle my sample too.

[Jan Nilsson]

It’s interesting that the TA is so low. “Winery Technology & Operations by Yair Margolit mentions “The main reason for acid deficiency in must is the reduction of malic acid during the ripening period. ” see page 51 in the revised edition. He suggests adding Malic acid as one solution to this problem rather than tartaric. When using DL-malic acid only the L-malic isomer is consumed during the ML fermentation and the D-malic isomer is left and will not drop out during cold stabilization. He indicates this is a good way to re-establish the natural balance between the malic and tartaric acids in the grapes. So, if anyone has malic acid this sounds like a good alternative.

I will use tartaric since I don’t have malic and will use the average of Dave’s and Ian’s TA values to adjust my TA. Adding approximately 2.4g/L to bring the TA to 6.2 should bring my pH down to about 3.6 – 3.7. Since I don’t yet have a reliable NaOH solution I will just go with this. I would like to hear any comments on this strategy.