Shier Winery

With winter finally easing, and spring approaching, I have a few tasks at the winery.  I placed 50 gallons of wine on a pallet and exposed it to the outside cold for four weeks.  The result was some dramatic clearing with a good amount of tartaric acid precipitating out.  I bottled half of the wine over the weekend, which came to a little more than 10 cases.  The rest should be bottled next weekend.  I also rotated the remaining fifteen (15) carboys from the 2012 Riesling out to the cold for two weeks at a time, and they seem to be holding clarity and crystal precipitate while stored at 55-60 degrees F in the cellar.  I should bottle these before the weather really heats up.   I tasted the 2012 Riesling from several different carboys.  It has a bit of oxidation in the pallet (a hint of malic acid). I've been worried about the level of oxygen pretty m...

The 2013 Riesling is more than halfway finished on its journey to the bottle.  Over the past weekend, I added toasted french oak chips to the FlexTank and carboys.  Before the chips sink and impart their flavor, they give the wine the not-so-appetizing look of a large container of hot and sour soup.  Over the next two weeks, the chips fall away and the wine will be racked clear, but it will keep a slight hint of the oak flavor. 

Over the weekend, I racked all of the 2013 wine off the lees in the carboys and the FlexTank.  The temperature in New York's Hudson Valley has been in the single digits and in some cases below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. On one of those cold days, the nozzle in the oil furnace that heats the winery became clogged and the furnace shut off.  Fortunately, I have a cold sensor with an alarm system, so a repair was made before any pipes could freeze. The one day temperature drop in the cellar resulted in significant precipitation of acid crystals along the inner walls of the FlexTank.  The polyethylene terephthalate ("PET") carboys showed less precipitation of tartaric crystals but showed significant yeast clearing.  My observation is that the wine appears slightly, but noticeably, darker in the FlexTank than in the carboys.  While I did my best to eliminate any headroom in the FlexTank, and I use a high density thick-walled tank, the FlexTank is breathab...

I racked the FlexTank and WinePod this past Sunday.  Since the WinePod is used only for primary fermentation, I transferred the wine to four 5-gallon carboys.  The FlexTank is capable of handling secondary fermentation, so I transferred that wine to a clean FlexTank.  After 22 days, the Brix measured 0 degrees (SG = 1.0) in the FlexTank and 5.5 degrees (SG 1.022) in the WinePod.  The WinePod sugar sensor was out of calibration, and showed a reading of 3 degrees Brix.    I'm not sure what caused the error, whether it be from the accumulation of yeast at the bottom of the tank or just a faulty sensor.  No matter how it is measured, the wine fermented slower in the WinePod than the FlexTank.  It will be interesting to see whether this results in any differences in the final product.  I assume the wine that was in the WinePod will continue to dry down (maybe to zero) now that it is tra...

Greg Snell recently brought the Winepod back to market after a four year absence.  http://www.winepod.net/winepod/winepod-details.aspx I decided to bring my Winepod back to life for use in commercial production.  After four years of producing pre-commercial batches of Finger Lakes Riesling in the Winepod, I set the Winepod aside in 2011.  Thin lines of rust began to appear on the surface of the stainless steel tank.  The Winepod can only be used to conduct primary fermentation on just under 20 gallons of wine.  My initial commercial run was 320 gallons.  So I performed primary and secondary fermentations in four 80 gallon FlexTanks.  But I've been saving bottles from those past Winepod productions, and when I open one to share with friends, I'm surprised how beautifully they have aged.  So the question comes to mind: "Is the quality of wine produced in a FlexTank different from that produced in a Winepod?...

It is still warm, but the leaves are turning at the Shier Winery.  Almost time to start the winemaking process all over again.  In order to clear space in the tanks for this year's Riesling, I had to bottle 35 cases this past weekend.   For those out there that have never used a hand corker or lifted and carried 5 gallon carboys, it is a little bit of a workout.  But the worst part is breathing all of the sulfur dioxide that keeps the whole operation sanitary.  Luckily the exhaust fan that I installed to pull out the carbon dioxide also earns its capital investment by clearing the SO2 cloud. 17 of these carboys filled 35 cases of 2012 Riesling.  99 cases of bottles.

The Shier Winery will be showing off 2012 Rieslings at Olanafest 2013 this coming weekend (September 21) in Hudson, New York.  Below is a link to the event: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e7whvx0gc8dcc9e1&llr=wu8xszbab