Yesterday we filtered the must, and pressed the pomace of the tinto, and placed the wine into the barrels for aging. The forecast I had made in an earlier post about this year's yield being comparatively low--a forecast Gonzalo made off-the-cuff before picking the grapes--turned out to be, fortunately, incorrect; the yield turned out high, with full, juicy grapes, and the total amount of wine produced is roughly 600 liters (800 standard sized bottles), 500 tinto and 100 albariño. The wine will sit in the barrels until March or April, when it is bottled, and has a peak shelf life of about one year. On Christmas night, it is a tradition at Gonzalo's to drink the wine of the new vintage, so we will get our first official taste of the wine that night. Though it won't be entirely finished aging in barrel, Gonzalo said that by then the wine will reflect its final character; "If it's a good wine it will already be good," he said, "and if it's a bad wine it will already be bad."
Unofficially, we took a first taste of the wine (it had fermented fully since the initial pressing), which was interesting. The wine was really more like grape juice, since it was nearly impossible to sense the alcohol or any wine characteristics yet. It was a very smooth, almost sweet juice that is entirely devoid of any tannin at all--in a few months we'll see what the aging does to it.
Oh, and to those who were kind enough to express some of their concerns about the winemaking process to me--so far, no aroma of feet or leg hairs in the wine. Phew.
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