Are Fruits Treated With Sulfur Bad For You

Report 2010 'No Harvest' Harvest 2010

(late post translation in English of September 20)

On Saturday 18 September, we had planned Airen grape harvesting our grapes Carabaña, and everything was ready for it (the crusher and stemmer clean and in place, the van loaded with boxes clean) But when we got to the vineyard at 8 am Saturday morning we raided the doubt. We wandered for half an hour through the vineyards, and decided not to harvest for the following reasons:

1) strong Carabaña had rained on Thursday and Friday, and had a lot of mud. That meant almost certain mud at the bottom of the basket, and a high probability that ended in the stemmer, the crusher, deposits, and consequently in the wort.

2) The vines had sucked a lot of water and the grapes were fat and swollen, and the juice seemed to be diluted. So if you reap, the sugar content (percentage) would be lower and the wine would also have less alcohol content.

3) A black cloud announcing "Last Judgement" was just above Carabaña, while in villages neighbors (Tielmes, Perales, Morata) the skies were pretty clear. We interpret that the universe was sending a clear message. And we were aware of it.

What we did was take a sample (not one made to shit on me ten!) And we analyze the winery. Successful. The estimated alcohol content had fallen by 0.4% compared with the sample we had taken before the rains.

representative sample of Airen

Carabaña Clouds over

skins, stalks and manure

Pressed

The previous Friday (17 Sept) were in the cave of tempranillo pressing the skins that had been macerated with grape harvest a week ago. Each year we pressed manually, using a press like this.

Press manual (open cage after crimping)

This press is being used for small amounts of Tempranillo, Grenache Shiraz, and we have this year. But this year we also have 3,500 kgs Tempranillo with which we use the hydraulic press

hydraulic press works: the press is filled with grapes and close the lid. Then a bag swells and crushes the grapes against the filter that is around the inside of the press. You can program the pressing cycle in terms of pressing pressure, the number of times and frequency of repetitions.

Press full of skins, pips and grape / wine

scheduled the release of one of the lowest levels of press as much as possible to avoid crushing the seeds, if they break the seeds would give the must / wine taste bitter and other flavors and aromas unpleasant and unwanted.

Hoping to finish the pressing

the end, everything went well and managed to avoid unpleasant tastes and odors in wine. In theory, we could have gotten a lot more wine, which could have been used as table wine of low quality. But we believe that there are already enough of that type of wine in Spain and the rest of the world!