Racking to Barrels & Aging

Racking. Pressing the grapes after fermentation produces liquid (wine) and a variety of solids (dead yeast cells, or tiny bits and pieces of grape skins, or grape tissue). This solid material can add "off" flavors, so it is important to separate the wine from the solids as quickly as possible. The solids are referred to as "Lees". The solid due to their weight naturally will fall to the bottom on
the storage containers. There are some materials that can be added to the wine to force the particles of solids to cling together. If you've attended any Winery tours, you may have heard tour guides refer to Egg Whites being added in the past.
Racking essentially is drawing the wine off the top of the solids and moving it to another storage container. Commercial winery's use stainless steel tanks and use filters to separate our the solids. Homewinemakers typically use glass carboys to temporarily store the wine. By using Glass you can see the solids sitting on the bottom of the glass container. The wine can be moved by placing a clear plastic tube in the wine, and creating a suction to draw the fluid to a separate container. I usually use a gravity feed system. A electric pump can be used, but this (to me) seems to bring in too much Oxygen.

Typically I'll rack the Wine two or three times over a six week period. After six weeks, the majority of the solids have been removed, and it's time to move the wine to a long term storage vessel. This can be a stainless steel tank, an old Beer Keg, Glass Carboys, or Oak Barrels. Carboy's come in a variety of sizes, as small as a couple of gallons up to about 7 gallons. I have Oak barrels that have a 15 gallon, 30 gallon, and 60 gallon capacity. There are larger sizes as well, but those are strictly for commercial use.

Oak barrels are very expensive. A French Oak 60 gallon barrel can cost as much as $800 per barrel. I'll do a separate post of barrels as that is a whole topic in itself. The positive side, is that Wine barrels will continue to impart Oak flavor for about 5 years, however the amount of Oak influence declines over time. A brand new barrel, will add Oak characteristics quickly, which means wine needs to be moved to a nuetral barrel sometime before the wine is bottled. A nuetral barrel is an Oak Barrel that no longer imparts Oak flavor, so this is a barrel typically older than 5 years old.

So, when Racking is done, I move the clear wine to the Oak barrels for aging. I will store the wine in Oak for a minimum of one year, and as long as 18 months. The decision on how long to leave the wine in Oak is tied to the age of the barrel, and just sampling the wine over a number of months to see how it is changing in flavor and character. Since I use some nuetral Barrels for aging, I have to add some new Oaks chips, or "berries" to the barrel to ensure Oak flavor is added to the wine.

Oaks barrels, chips, or berries are toasted under a flame. This adds a sweet caramel hint of flavor. Coopers (experts that make Wine Barrels), toast the barrels in various degrees. It depends upon the barrel manfacturer, but typically you can get a light toast, a medium toast or a heavy toast. More on this later.

Since the barrels are wood, they are prone to evaporation, so I have to add the equivalent of a bottle of wine a month to the barrel, during the aging process. This wine comes from leftover wine I have placed in carboys during the aging process.
As an example, if I harvest 500 lbs of grapes I will get close to 38 - 40 gallons of wine. I will move 30 gallons to Oak, and put the remainder into a 5 gallons carboy, and individual Gallon jugs. All with airtight caps. I will take one of the gallon jugs and fill 4 - 5 individual wine bottles and cork them. As the Wine Barrels lose wine to evaporation, I will "top off" the barrels once a month with one of these wine bottles. When I run out of bottled wine, I break down another gallon jug.

That's enough for now. More later.