winemaking variables

Re: "wrist action" I would say wrist action counts for yeast pitching, yeah.

I think some of the variables are hot versus cold soak, yeast type and fermentation temperature, days of must in contact with solids, degree of finished dryness , bulk and bottle ageing durations, pot met used, number of racking operations, ageing sur lees, type of enclosure, volume of bottling vehicle, and.... hummm, that's all I can think of right now. More will come when I close this and try to sleep...

Patrick

I would say ingrediant selection (ingrediants very from place to place, and time of year) and ingrediant preperation (more care / less care, speed of prep), speed of manufacture, efficent tool use, guesstamation. Ken

Hi Andy

I th>

Andy, I agree - you follow the basic principles and hope it turns out & that you like it. There is one other point - when you make a wine for the first time, look at it as a learning experience (write things down), and be prepared to change the wine when you make it the second time around. I've learned a lot from the wines I've made the first time around, and I made changes to a number of them when I made it the second time around. Darlene

Two years ago, I made about 20 gal of California Merlot. All grapes from the same supplier arriving together. I used 3 primaries. When I crushed them, I set out my carboys and put part of each crush run in each primary so they would all be blended. I even made sure that each carboy got about the same amount of early and late run. The primary vats were all kept in the kitchen and the secondaries were all kept together in the wine room.

Now, two years later, there is a distinct difference between each carboy. Go figure.

Ray

Reminds me of a story I was reading about making premium single malt Scotch (that commands $1000 per bottle supposedly). They start all the Scotch the same way, using different barrels for each batch (but each barrell is the same style). They let it sit about 25 years, and out of 10 barrels one is excellent quality, a few are ok, the rest terrible. Same techinique for all, varying results. I guess thats what a happens in the real world .