Pinot Blanc

I brought my Pinot Blanc grapes out of the freezer and processed them recently.

There were enough grapes to fill the small basket press one time. It took the better part of a day from start to finish, largely due to the fact that the grapes were pretty solid.

By the end of the day, I ended up with 20 gallons of juice. I put it in 4 five gallon carboys. The first 5 gallons pressed off at an incredible 41 degrees Brix (percent sugar). The next 15 gallons average around 25 degrees Brix. Armed with this info, I decided to head 2 different directions with this wine.

The 5 gallons first will make a late harvest dessert wine. At 5 gallons, it’s a tiny batch. But, it could turn out to be wonderful. Potentially, I can match the profile of the best Canadian ice wines with 10% alcohol and residual sugar in the ~23% range. Yummm.

The second batch of 15 gallons will be made into a dry Pinot Blanc (no residual sugar). Again, a tiny batch (less than 6 cases of wine).

At a minimum these are fun experiments. And who knows, they might just come out as delicious wines. Either way, the effort going into these wines is crazy… It’s a lot of hands on work to produce very small batches.

I’ll post some pics of the pressing process soon – some of the shots came out quite nice.

So it’s official – Seufert Winery will have 3 releases from the 2005 vintage (I hope!):

• Pinot Noir, Coleman Vineyard
• Pinot Blanc, Bellevue Vineyard
• Late Harvest Pinot Blanc (botrytis), Bellevue Vineyard