maison ilan – update

Update 8.8.2012(29.9.2009)Ray Walker

Things have been very busy at the winery lately. With all the fruit in
tank and fermenting I have been focusing on tasting, testing, punchdowns
and of course more tasting. I decided to use a fair amount of whole
cluster on the Morey half way because I was curious about doing it, the
otherhalf because my destemmer broke. Luckily a new destemmer came about
an hour after I went from hand destemming pergatory to whole cluster
just 2 clicks before madness.

I decided also to be quite quick to initially punchdown and then to not
be overly pushy with the must and just quickly get to once a day
punchdowns. This of course raised eyebrows in the winery with my mates,
but the results are brilliant.

During the harvest it seems things went too slow and rain was always
tapping on our backs, the fear of berry burst and dilution of flavors
seemed to be my fear alone withthe more seasoned producers (read:any
Burgundy experience at all) were much more calm and content. Now on the
other side of harvest it all went too fast. I took pictures amidst the
sticky grape sorting and bin lifting but was it enough?

Looking at my clean tanks and clean floor it barely looks like someone
did anything here, what a loss. As clearly there is much more to ths
winemaking process than what shows when it is all cleaned up. Working
for someone, for someone else’s wine is so very different than making
something with your name (our daughter’s name) on the bottle. There is
of course a level of pride in doing a great job for someone else that I
have always had. However the situation where you have no one else to
correct for your errors and no one tells you what to do or that you are
mad for doing something makes every step far more painstaking.

Well, there is much more work still. I will be sure to update.

Cheers

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