Bottle Shock – (there’s a song in that!)

Sometimes, well most of the time, when I smell and taste things I smell or taste them imagining the scents as a barcode. Each smell or taste (and they always work  together) has big flavours and little flavours and hints of this and bangs of that. These all line up in my mind like a barcode with those wide and thin stripes in a line but not in any order. And then I subconsciously label the stripes.  Though since I noticed I was smelling in barcodes it has become a damn nuisance as I discover stuff about people that I do not want to know. Man that sounds crazy.

On Christmas night we bottled a little bit of wine from our own grapes.    The Vidal Blanc.  So we got to have the first taste.  And the barcode went wild. The wine  is still very young and has a ways to go, but initially my bar code said bangs of grapefruit and banana lumps, with hints of kerosine.  I tasted rain and ants. The ants were a sub note.  Yikes.  And a little early compost.  Hmm. The swallow really was citrusy. A bit too citrusy actually as this is supposed to be a sweet wine. Wait, it was horrible. What was going on? 

However my wine was still in shock. After the trauma of bottling, the wine needs to settle. Bottle shock will disturb a lot of flavours.  So I had to wait. The colour is good though.  I think it really is too young to take out of the carboid.  But there is dissention in the ranks. John likes to get the wine off the sediment earlier and let it age in the bottle and I would rather leave it in together with the dead yeast for a few more months, so this is our compromise. I will take notes and we will do a blind taste test in the late summer.

I poured another glass of the newly bottled wine last night and stuck my nose in it and it really is rounding out a lot better after 24 hours of sitting and chilling. The banana taste has shifted to a banana pineapple. The compost has become earthy and the ants have gone. (I hate the smell of ants) The rain is still there though and the kerosene has backed off.  Still not very sweet.   I was hoping for amber honey notes to go with its colour.

Vidal Blanc wine can sit in a bottle for years so it still has some maturing ahead of it.  The next cask will be left for another three months. Then we will taste it and maybe bottle it too.

Bottle shock or not.  I know for sure that I picked too early. Even though the sugar levels were right in the grapes they can go higher. Next season I will leave them on the vine longer.   Once again impatience got the better of me!

Snow this morning and just above freezing so not too cold. The dawn is white on white. I had better rug up and start feeding out.

c

PS Mama was let out into her field again and had a nice lie down in the sun for a few hours yesterday afternoon. On the mend. I know she hates to be alone but she has done better since I put Mia back in with the calves.  Mia is such a space cadet and never sits still.  Not conducive to convalescence!  Ok time for me to get out there and see what they are up to in the barn.  c