IneBrEEated.

Despite many attempts to shoo away this honeybee from the wine press, the little sot kept coming back for yet another slurp of Vinoland's 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon.  Can't really blame the bee for wanting to do a little wine tasting, the new vintage tastes lovely, hot out of the press.  Which begs the question.  Can bees get hangovers?  At the very least, this bee is going to have a bad headache come morning.

This particular pressing shows lots of promise having a concentrated cherry vibe and solid framework of tannins.  The addition of a little bit of aging in oak, with its contribution of vanillin, will no doubt round out this juvenile pandemic-vintage.  And that's it.  I'm done! 

"Man's oldest drink."

This is a great little book.  Making Mead was first published in the United Kingdom in 1968.  This expanded edition, Making Your Own Mead, was updated in 2013 by Dan Vallish.  It's a very welcome addition to my little wine-library.  Thanks to Fox Chapel Publishing.
The book begins with a quick, but comprehensive, romp through the history of mead, putting Bacchus right back into Bacchanalia.  It seems that the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Elizabethans, even British soldiers of the Napoleonic era, and others, were all enthusiastic mead drinkers.  Included in the book are 43 recipes for making mead, a list of the equipment needed to make homemade honey wine and the basic techniques to get started.  And now, one eureka moment later, I finally understand the difference between the ale-like meads and the wine-like meads that I have tasted in the past.  It's the yeast, stupid.
I'm feeling the need for mead.  The recipe for 'Ale Mead' calls for just one pound of honey.  I may have to have a go at making mead myself.  Move over, Vinomaker.

Bee spree.

It was a gorgeous day today, the temperature got all the way up to 71°F.  Loved it!  And it seems that there is no rain in the forecast for, perhaps, the next two weeks - love that.  It means that I should be able to proceed with my pruning uninterrupted by unpleasant weather.  I actually got a little too warm whilst pruning the Pinot grigio today.
The local honey bees are loving the warm spell also.  Vinoland's industrious bees are busy filling their pollen sacs with grains of yellowy-goodness from a multitude of weeds and wildflowers that are blooming now.  Vinoland's rosemary plants are teeming with bees.
A particular, famed groundhog may see his shadow tomorrow in Pennsylvania, presaging six more weeks of winter, but the busy-bees and I will not be too concerned.  I feel I can safely predict that winter in California will not be too protracted this year.

The birds and the bees.

The birds and the bees are in busying themselves with reducing Vinoland's Cabernet Sauvignon crop.  It's not that I begrudge my avian and apian friends a little fresh fruit now and again.  It's just that I can't help but feel a little pang of disappointment at the fact that some of my lovingly pruned and farmed grapes will not get the chance to fulfill their destiny by becoming wine.  I already knew that the minute the local animal population becomes this interested in the fruit, the fruit is ripening.  I really should have taken a sugar sample before today, but I've been a bit busy.
The birds and the bees were correct.  The fruit is rather ripe; the sugar is at 25 °Brix and the seeds are mostly brown.  However, Vinomaker thinks the juice tastes just a little green still.  I don't.  I think the juice tastes simply delicious, typically Cab-like.  Apparently, so do the birds.  And the bees.

Whites are in.

It's been a long day, but Vinoland's two white grape varieties are now just grape juice and are safely chilling their little bottoms off in the cellar.  The Pinot grigio fruit looked beautiful and came in at 26 °Brix (not sure about the Orange Muscat sugar).  I'm pooped.
This year we experimented with rice hulls as a press aid and they really seemed to help with the extraction of more grape juice.  There was plenty to go around, enough to share with this thirsty honey bee.
Whites down, reds to go.

OMG!

Orange muscat grapes, that is.
Vinomaker and I picked our Orange muscat (OM) today.  Well, what was left of it.  Looking almost like something that had escaped from my compost bin, Vinomaker had deliberately delayed harvesting the OM in the hopes of making a late harvest wine.  OM clusters are rather loose which generally reduces environmental favourablitly for Botrytis cinerea infection (unlike Pinot grigio clusters which are tight and thus susceptible to infection), so instead, dessication, as the result of an extended hang time, was the plan.  Coming in at 34.5 °Brix there is certainly plenty of sugar for Vinomaker to work with.
Although the fruit was quite unprepossessing, (OM never looks pretty as the grapes have a tendency to crack and amber as they ripen), the aromatics of orange skin and honeysuckle as we processed the fruit was absolutely delightful.  No wonder honey bees are attracted to this grape variety.

The Industrious Bee.

Erm, the industrious honey bees are eating my Cabernet sauvignon grapes.  I can't really blame them because the grapes are very sweet.  However, the bees should be wincing due to the high acidity - if only I could see their little, squinting eyes.
The numbers are in; °Brix 24.2, pH 3.38 and TA 8.75.  Sugars have been driven up due to nearly a week of mid to high 90s temperatures.  Time to water.