It's been a while since I've posted anything, but much has been happening in the Bad Astronaut Wine world, so I think it's about time I got back to it and filled you all in!

First of all, the 2008 Wines are incredible! We bottled the Zin a little while back, and I'm having to hide it from myself so that I don't drink it all before it reaches it's peak.

If you participated in the bottling, and/or if you have some of the wine, I would say that it's just about now fully over the bottle shock and is tasting really good. I'm really looking forward to how it will taste next year!

Pretty soon, we'll be bottling the 08 Merlot, the 08 Petit Sirah, some 09 Charonnay, and perhaps a couple other surprises!

Tomorrow will be the first official tasting of the Bad Astronauts Galactic Grapefruit Wine. We did an unofficial tasting a little while ago in Sonoma, but since then, we've gotten approval on the label, printed the labels, and labeled and foiled the bottles. Tomorrow, we'll be pouring grapefruit wine at the Sacramento Institute of Fun's Jazz De-Mystified event (the Institute of Fun is another one of the businesses I'm involved with, by the way).

Next weekend, we'll be pouring at Revolution Wines' Christmas Walk.Big things are happening for the Bad Astronauts.

The Zin is perfect. We've had a nice hot (but not too hot fermentation) and it's pretty much dry now. pH is around 3.36, I'll be adding ML today, and we'll be pressing tomorrow.

Red wine pH should be between 3.4 and 3.6. TA should be around 7 g/L. Malolactic Fermentation (which converts malic acid into lactic and makes red wines smoother and more awesome) has the following effects on acidity (according to this site: http://brsquared.org/wine/Articles/MLF/MLF.htm):

* a pH increase of between 0.1 and 0.45 units (more typically 0.1-0.25)
* a chemical deacidification usually reducing titratable acidity by about 1-4.6 g/l (as tartaric)

So, our wine currently has the following stats:

pH 3.5
TA 8.5 g/L

After ML, it could potentially have the following stats:

pH 3.6 - 3.75
TA 3.9 - 7.5

I'm not ok with the risk of the pH being over 3.6, which makes me think I should adjust pH to 3.4. However, I'm also not ok with a TA over 7, which makes me think I shouldn't adjust.

After some more reading, it sounds like what we've got is a higher concentration of Malic (a weaker acid) than of Tartaric (a stronger acid). This explains why the pH (which measures the effect or strength of the acid in the wine) is high (less acid strength) and the TA is high (more acid).

So, if I adjust with Tartaric acid, I think it will decrease the pH and increase the TA, but the Malolactic fermentation will have a larger effect because we have a relatively high concentration of Malic.

If you're a chemist, please let me know if I'm on the right track here!

If you're not familiar with TA and pH, here's some reading.

We picked up our Zinfandel grapes from Fair Play Farms in El Dorado County this morning. Fair Play Farms is where Perry Creek gets their grapes for their premium high altitude (2401) wines. They taste great, and the numbers are pretty much right where I want them to be. A crowd of people showed up at the winery to help crush them, and we had it knocked out in just a couple hours. Thanks everyone! Once everything was crushed and the equipment cleaned up, I pulled off 6 gallons of juice to make into a Zin Rosé.

The sugar fluctuated from between 23 and 25 brix. I'll take another reading tomorrow before adding yeast and see if it's settled on something.

pH was at 3.5. This is maybe slightly less acid than I want. However, TA was .85%, which indicates slightly more acid than I want...so what do I do? My current thinking is to do some research tonight and test again tomorrow before making any adjustments at all.

The Bad Astronauts Winery, in cooperation with the Sacramento Institute of Fun (of which I'm a co-founder) will be holding a wine appreciation class this Friday evening at Revolution Wines. Teaching the class will be Corti Bros' Wine Merchant Donal Smith. The fee for this fun and wine-tacular event is just $40. Contact me for more information.

This is the first public Bad Astronauts event, and we're limiting participation to around 30 people. We still have about 8 spots left, so if you're interested or if you have questions, give me a holler!

Here's the latest from our Merlot vineyard:

It's been a strange week weather-wise. After triple digit temps last week we now have cold, damp fog that lingers. Brix is at 23 plus or minus and I'm guessing harvest in about two weeks.

Chenin Blanc: 15.5 brix
Barbera: 26.5

Looks like the barbera picked up some sugar from the skins because after the first day of fermanting it's just barely under the sugar reading I took before the cold soak. I'm excited about both these wines.