It’s been a while since I last blogged here about the open-source Roussanne we are making at Crushpad.
After harvest in late October, the must started a slow, low temperature fermentation in two neutral oak barrels inoculated with two different yeast strains (D47 and QA23 for those interested in such things). Primary fermentation is now complete and the wine will settle in for aging for several months before blending and bottling.
I’ve recently asked group members on next steps in our Crushnet forum. The early consensus is to not allow the wine to go through malolactic fermentation and for the wine to be quite, but not fully, dry. Details are in a raw podcast interview posted for group members. I will be taking the interviews recorded to date and producing a full podcast on the project before the end of December.
If you are interested in joining the group, just visit Crushnet and signup.
Congrats on the Roussanne Tim! It has to be exciting – is this your first vintage?
I’ve heard working with the Crushpad folks is a great experience, so I would suggest talking to them about microbial stability. If you are going to bypass ML, (and this is certainly ok) you will need another process to stabilize the wine, e.g. immediate filtration after fermentation and SO2 addition to inhibit the bacteria.
The last thing you need to worry about is ML happening in the bottle, which would cause a cloudy and fizzy wine. That’s one of the advantages of ML – microbial stability.