February 19 - February 25, 2012

	Wednesday February 22, 2012 We should have our freezer working tomorrow. The electrician is working on it now. By chilling our 2011 red wines, still in the barrels, down to as low as 23 degrees before bottling we should be able to drop all the tartaric crystals out of the wine in a few days once the wine in the barrel drops under 29 degrees. The freezer will hold 24 barrels or 600 cases at a time. Wine with an alcohol of 15% will freeze at about 20 degrees so we want to keep it above that point. Some of our customers think the wine is spoiled if they see these harmless diamond shaped crystals at the bottom of our wine so we are trying to please them. Our 2011 wines have a PH of about 3.6 so the chilling should not change the taste. They may even be rounder and finer to the taste. We have found our 2009 Estate Cuvee is showing some sediment in the bottom of the bottle after being in our storage building at 50 degrees at times over the last couple of years. At that temperature it will take wine several months to cold stabilize. Pat and I tasted two bottles of this 2009 Estate Cuvee the other night and found them to taste the same. One bottle was returned by a customer 3000 miles away and kept in his house at a temperature low enough to drop the crystals out of it. The other wine was held in my cellar at 60 degrees and showed little sediment. Some winemakers think cold stabilization can affect the taste of wine negatively. It will be fun to see if I agree after stabilizing these 2011 wines. The energy should cost us only a few cents a bottle. Friday February 24, 2012 I just tried the 2010 Petit Verdot bottled in July and it is still my favorite wine right now but if you remember the diary.....I like real intense wines at times, one or two times a week. I just did a crash course on cold stabilizing red wine. I Googled for 6 hours. You could do the same thing and learn as much as I did. I was mostly right about what I think will happen to our red wines but I talked to few people in the business also and learned a few things. Every week now will be fun because we will be analyzing many samples of the same wine after and before stabilization. I have confirmed the PH may change a little, but will it change the taste of the wine? Keep an eye on the diary but just assume there will be interesting things to explore everyday. I checked at 4pm and the wine in the barrels are down to 40 degrees. That is a drop of 20 degrees in 24 hours. I still think it will take another two days to get to 25. It is complicated and I doubt any other winemakers have chilled down wine barrels full of wine to 25 degrees. It is done in tanks and not through wood. We should be where we want in 6 days......Most of the tartrates will be out to the bottom of the barrel. 9:45 Pm: I found a great deal two weeks ago for an LCD 46 inch through Amazon Wherehouse.......$442 delivered. I could not resist. I wanted to have an upgrade for our Guest House where people who help us at events stay over night. I finally got delivery a few minutes ago, yes at 9:40 Pm. I have received several phone calls since Monday from Pilot the delivery people. First they said they would deliver on Monday and then they called late in the day to say if it would be all right for Wednesday, sure I said. They called at noon on Wednesday and said they would be here in 45 minutes. Then at 7 PM I got a call and they were in Santa Rosa. They agreed to come back Friday, today at a more reasonable time.....Long story........As you see this was not a great experience tonight claiming an LCD after 9:30 Pm. Tomorrow is another day, but as they left, one guy told me they still had one more delivery. I feel for the poor.............
	Dave david@coffaro.com
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