Refractometer readings 10/10/10

2: 15.7, 14.5
4: 14.8, 12.9
6: 14.5, 16.2
8: 16.8

(Key = Row: Reading)

Average: 15.0

Bit lower than last week, not looking as good as I'd hoped then. I've now erected two new bird deterrents, which happen to look like rather warlike, silver owl sentinels:

Refractometer readings 29/09/10

1: 16
3: 15.7
5: 17.7
7: 16.1
9: 17.6

(Key = Row: Reading)

Average: 16.6

This is better than this time last year although I'm now purposely not testing grapes that look under-ripe so it may be due to that. I'll test every week from now.

Harvest 2009

This is being written just prior to the 2010 harvest as I just recently found some notes I made from last year.

In summary the vineyard was heavily bird damaged, that coupled with the frost damage from May lead to a much reduced yield.

I came across bunches that were all-but eaten like this again and again.

The haul...

All the grapes, de-stemmed and sitting in the bottom of the fermentation bin

After lightly crushing them, I tested TA at 9.75ppt and brix at 20.4 (with my refractometer, which apparently you shouldn't do, but I didn't have enough juice for the hydrometer).

I added 0.88g sodium metabisulphite and 40g of sugar.

Wine after the primary fermentation, siphoned off and pressed out in to a demijohn. It's not much, but it's all good.

Pre-harvest assessment

So I've seen a much reduced crop in this first year compared to what I was expecting, with something like 30-40% of the vines producing grapes, with some of them only being a single bunch. Added to this the birds have started eating some of the grapes - as I thought they might but decided to chance it and not spend the £200 or so on a bird net to cover the whole thing - so the harvest's gonna be reduced even further. I recon it'll be something like a handful of bottles.

On the plus side I now own or have on order all the equipment I need to make wine. It seems a lot of English vineyards have started the harvest already (www.englishwineproducers.com/news.htm) so as soon as I get everything I need and as long as I get at least one dry day before, I'm gonna harvest the grapes.

I was going to test for acidity at the same time as taking the sugar levels, but the amount of juice required for each test would reduce the harvest by a not insignificant amount, so I plan to chance it and adjust acidity at the post-crush stage.

This year's gonna be a bit of an experiment so I'm going to try and write everything down so I can get an idea of what's going on for next time - pH, acidity, sulphite additions, times etc. - then hopefully next year it won't be so much of a last-minute, hope-for-the-best sort of thing.

Refractometer readings 07/10/09

19.8
18.0
21 :)
14.4
16.6
16.3

Average: 17.7

Refractometer readings 01/10/09

17.2
19.2
17.6
13.5
15.9
16.2
19.9
18.3
16.5
18.5

Average: 17.3

Refractometer readings 25/09/09

Brix, from various grapes

14.7
12.3
16.1
15.7
16.9

Average: 15.1

Hoping to reach 20-22 ideally