On May 1st, I decided it would be a good idea to blend my own batch of Viognier. I headed to Vintner’s Cellar in Plano with very little expectation of producing a world-class wine, I just wanted to go through the process and create something. Here’s my first report.
Yesterday I returned to rack the wine–the process of separating wine from its sediment, or lees, and transferring my creation into another glass container using a plastic siphon. My “instructor” Larry McDowell measured the gravity of the yeast (.994). This is a good thing—the yeast had converted the sugars in the grape juice into alcohol. I must tell you at this stage, the juice looks like murky off-color pee floating on top of lemon curd. (If you were at the gynecologist, you would be talking kidney infection.)
We inserted a long siphon into the nasty plastic bucket with my soon-to-be-FUQUA-caliber-award-winning wine, and transferred it to a splendid glass bottle where the wine will sit for two more weeks. Lesson number one from lesson number two: do not eat a spoonful of lees. Pictures below.
