Truffle Pig Wine

I only did one white this year, a Riesling from Wismer Vineyards in Niagara (up on the Bench), and it's now finished fermentation. I racked it off it's fermentation lees this evening and it'll now spend the next six months aging and clarifying.

I'm most surprised by the clarity of the wine -- it's super clear. I guess fining it with Argilact before I started fermentation helps clear up the wine significantly. I also fermented it for the last couple weeks in one spot, up high, to prevent having to move or jostle it. This seems to have helped.

As for first impressions: not nearly as sharp and acidic as last years Riesling (a 6.5 TA vs. 9.5), and a significant amount of citrus on both the nose and the palate. There's a little residual sulfur smell on the lees, but this not much transfered in the racking and I'm sure I can get ride of it before bottling with a little copper. I'm happy with how it's turning out. .

Still have 3 brix left to go. I haven't been monitoring daily sugar levels because I only have a high-end hydrometer and a low-end hydrometer and nothing in between.

But I checked it today because it's still giving off CO2 and it looks like the juice is down to 3°B, which is good -- means the fermentation is slowing down nicely but still chugging along.

I might warm up the juice a little at this point, to make sure the ferment doesn't stick, and finishes strong.

I've got a gap in my hydrometer collection (-5°B – 5°B and 15°B – 25°B), so I don't really know what the numbers are today, but I'm going to guess around 8°B based on how high the lo-end hydrometer is riding.

I'm pretty happy with this rate of fermentation. I haven't been able to keep the temperatures very low (it's been hot in the apartment lately, and we're having an Indian Summer, so outside is no cooler), so a relatively warm fermentation is inevitable. However, it's not *ripping* right though, and progressing at about 2°B a day, which is just fine.

Plus, the juice smells fantastic! There's no longer any H2S smell, just a little mustiness coming from the yeast nutrients I've added.

I just talked with Norm and the acid numbers are all crazy-weird: A TA of 5.1g/L and pH of 3.05. This presents a bit of a problem -- ideally I'd want to add Tartaric Acid to bring that TA up a couple g/L, but I don't really want to take the corresponding hit of lowering the pH so much (what's a Riesling like with a pH in the 2.8 - 2.9 range?)

Anyway, I added .5g/l of tartaric acid before fermentation started, so I just added another 1g/L now to raise it to a total of 6.6g/L -- still low for Riesling, but as high as I dare push it. Ideally this would be up near 7.5 or even 8, but there's nothing we can do about that.

Also, there's still a bit of H2S smell on the juice, so I racked once to add oxygen, and later tonight I'll add another .2g/l of Fermaid K to raise nutrients a bit more.

As for fermentation progress, here are today's numbers:

Brix: 17°B @ 60°F

I've tackled the H2S problem by adding both nutrients and some oxygen to help the yeast ferment properly.

I typically don't like to add yeast nutrients to any ferment until the fermentation is completely underway, so I waited until today (2 days in). I added .2g/l of Fermaid K to the bottom of another carboy, and then splash racked the fermenting juice into the new carboy -- thus adding both nutrients and oxygen.

Update: a few hours after the racking and there's been a significant reduction of the H2S smell. It's not completely gone, but it's better. I'll confer with Norm and see if there's anything else I can do that will help.

Fermentation is roaring along. I've chilled the juice down to about 12 - 14 degrees Celsius in order to slow fermentation and preserve as much of the fruitiness as possible. To chill the juice, I've placed the 23L carboy in a beer-keg bucket, and filled the bucket with cold water. I keep the water cold by rotating frozen cooler-packs in the water a few times a day.

PM update: I've noticed a significant H2S smell coming from the airlock, this will need to be dealt with tomorrow.

I inoculated the 2007 Riesling today.

Before inoculation, I racked the juice off the lees formed by the Argilact I used to settle the juice a couple days ago. I lost about 1/2 a litre -- not much, and the juice was very clear. And Before dumping any yeast or acid in, I racked off and put 1L of reserve juice into the freezer, in order to add back a touch of sweetness (if desired) before bottling.

Norm wasn't sure of the TA yet, as he hadn't run numbers, but anticipated it was going to be a little low, and would need 1/2 to 1 g/l of Tartaric Acid to bump it up a little. So, since I don't know the TA, I added 0.5g/l of Tartaric.

I then inoculated (according to Scott Labs yeast-rehydration recommendations) with 5g of VL3 yeast and 5g of Go-Ferm.

The fermentation took a few hours to get going in a 1L bottle of juice, and once that was roaring, I dumped it into the larger carboy, with the rest of the juice.