After hearing about "Procacci Bros." at the Food Distribution Center in South Philadelphia, where California wine grapes are shipped in and made available for sale, we took at trip this past Friday to check it out. Procacci Bros. operates out of a loading doc, where they have a huge refrigerated area with wooden crates full of wine grapes that have been sulfited and shipped refrigerated. They also have lots of bulk grape processing equipment at reasonable prices ... destemmers, crushers, wooden barrels, demi johns, etc. If you have an old Italian neighbor who makes wine in a big ole wooden barrel like his grandfather did, and he lives near Philadelphia, Procacci Bros. is likely where he buys his grapes.
We walked through the refrigerated area and checked out all the grape varieties ... I had forgotten my refractometer in our rush to get going that morning (and due to some hectic cell phone calls from work), so we just picked a couple of varieties (Zinfandel and Petit Syrah), and bought 3 boxes of each, at 36 lbs. per wooden box at $32 per box.
This made for about 80 liters (about 8 1/2 gallons) of must for each variety after destemming and crushing, and I have these cold soaking, each variety divided into to two batches in separate 7 gallon primary fermenters. The Zinfandel looks like it may work out ... there was a large variation in the grapes, leaving the two batches with very different numbers. One has a low pH and TA, and the other a high pH and TA. Once I combine the two, I think it should even out pretty well. One batch is at 26 Brix/3.13pH/.7TA, and the other 22 Brix/3.6pH/.9TA. I added 13gm of potassium bicarbonate to the second batch to bring down the TA. That left the pH at about 3.7, which is too high, but should correct on mixing back with the first batch.
The Petit Syrah, on the other hand, is problematic. The two batches there have identical numbers: 21 Brix, .85 TA, 3.75 pH. That pH was just too high, so I added 50 gm total of acid blend. Straight tartaric acid would probably have been a better choice, but I had acid blend available, and that's what I used. Now the pH is reading about 3.6, but the TA is up at about 1.0. I also added 26lbs of sugar to bump the sugar to 23 Brix.
Does anyone have recommendations for the Petit Sarah? A MLF will raise the pH, and even after my acid addition, the pH is still at the maximum it should be. After fermentation, I may need to adjust the acid upwards again to get back into a healthy pH range.
Is this a "doomed" wine? Will the TA be so high after the acid additions to get the pH at an acceptable level, that the wine will be unpleasant? Bleanding might be an answer, but I would need a low TA/high pH wine to blend with ... one of my two batches of Zin fits that description, but at this point I think I'd rather blend that with the other Zin batch. Any recommendations or commentary appreciated! Jon