We continue to monitor several fermentations and when they finish, we rack the wine into a new, clean tank, leaving the sediment behind. We will clean the old tank out and run chemical analyses on the wine and give it a taste. This will help determine what we need to do to get it ready for bottling.
We have been working on four batches of wine to assist with a research project at Iowa State University. The objective of the research project is to learn if a DTMA (Della Toffola Maceration Accelerator) will help improve our dry red wines. We ran one batch of one ton of Marquette through the DTMA and have another ton as our control that did not go through the DTMA. We repeated the process with Frontenac. Hopefully, we will learn whether this treatment of the grape skins helps to extract more flavor, color, and tannin from the grapes. Eventually, you will be able to taste both batches and judge for yourself.
And, not surprisingly, the cellar has been totally focused on processing grapes and fermenting juice for about a month so there is lots to get cleaned up.
