Filthy Good Vino

“Bon élévage”

The French use this term with reference to both wine and children! It translates to “A good upbringing” or “Being well raised”.

For kids this covers life before adult hood begins. For wine the period of time following the initial alcoholic fermentation right up until the point of bottling.

Every week I taste the Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Cabernet, just like every day I read my daughter, Genevieve, stories. I listen to the wine to see if it needs something from me. Sure I’ll look to see if there are problems, has it contracted Wine Flu AKA Brettanomyces or did the Flu Shot I gave it early in life help. Is it reduced, smelling of rotten egg gas? Is it oxidised, needing a sulphur addition?

More importantly I focus on the little things that I can do to help it grow up into a well rounded kid. After the last taste, I thought:

So, it’s racking time …

Doing QC before racking the #FilthyGoodVino Bathtub Cabernet!

You can see a layer of pink lease at the bottom of the glass container at front.

Racking will take the clear wine from the top and we’ll get rid of tge sediment. It will introduce oxygen to help the wine develop & blend the new oak, old oak & glass stored components together.

Here’s the lees from racking a glass storage vessel.

It’s mostly dead yeast & bacteria coloured by the wine. Depending on what wine you’re making you can choose to keep the lees with the wine to get flavour and texture fromthe autolysis, break down of the cells. Lees is “reductive” it chews up oxygen too and can help keep the wine fresh. One the best examples of the potential impact of lees is in the production of Champagne. After the second fermentation in bottle the wine is left in contact with the yeast lees. Over time as they break down the impart patisserie characteristics & a creamy mouthfeel. Same principles apply to white wines in barrel.

The #FilthyGoodVino Bathtub Cabernet is looking good and I perceive that it won’t benefit from further lees contact. Admittedly the wine has already been racked so most of the lees have already been removed.

Interestingly Gaia Gaja mentioned that they keep their lees and use them to top their barrels.

Syphoning off lees from our Demijon – Clear hose makes it easy to see if you’re sucking up the lees!

The first and only press for Vintage 2015 is done and dusted! The Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Winemaking Cabernet was squished a few weeks ago, after 24 days on skins. The perfume and earthiness I was looking for have arrived. The texture has lengthened, developed beautifully and is looking good.

It’s been 10 years between Vintages. Winemaking again has brought delight and pleasure, not just for me, for everyone involved in the project. The garage has been lit up with smiles, laughter, shared magnums of Filth, just a whole lot of fun!

By the time this post is published the wine will be resting safely in barrel, to begin it’s long journey to the bottle.

The Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Winemaking Project will return in 2016!

We’ve had so much fun playing with grapes and friends that we could resist doing it all again. If you’re interested in joining us, hit me up via the Contact Page and I’ll get in touch when we start preparing for more action in the garage!

Check out the smiles, laughs and all the action from our day pressing! Read on to find out more about pressing.

Pressing is another chance to guide a wine.

How fast do you press?

How much pressure to you apply?

What machine do you use?

All of these factors can impact the extraction of particularly tannins from the skins and dramatically impact the texture of the final wine. Press too fast, too hard and you risk extracting bitter, hard tannins.

Taste is critical!

Wines separated into two basic components:

Free Run: The liquid you can drain out of the vat full of skins and seeds without doing any squashing.

Pressings: The liquid extracted by applying pressure to the grape skins using a press. Sometimes these are separated further into first and second pressings.

Throughout the pressing process we constantly taste the wine coming from the press. In the Yarra Valley the tannins tend to be pretty supple, particularly using a basket press. In general the pressings are mixed straight back into the free run. Ours went straight back in adding to the structure and texture of the wine & it’s overall yumminess!

In some regions tannins from pressings can be hard, sappy and bitter and need to be kept separate from the free run. Think McLaren Vale.

Vintage Lunch Went Back to Basics!

Fuel for the pressing of the Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Cabernet. 
Fish, chips, a dimmi & bottle of Chardonnay. Good Friday lunch break.

Another Ghetto Winemaking solution! Cable ties & duct tape are a winemaker’s best friends!

When G heard us saying the Cake looked amazing she assumed we meant birthday cake, not, cake from pressing the Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Winemaking Projects Cabernet. So we put a candle in it & sang happy birthday …. 4 times!

Cap is looking might close to going over this am! I wish my assistant winemaker wouldn’t splash whilst bathing in the wine! We’ve run a barrel of free run off for barrel fermentation with about 15% of the alcoholic fermentation to go. Normally I’d add some pressings to this, but, our press didn’t arrive on time! Instead we’ve combined Filthy Good Vino’s two bathtubs into one for post fermentation maceration. Watch the video to learn more about exactly how this adds layers of yumminess to our wine!

Post Fermentation Maceration Explained – Gotta Keep Pushing! Check out what happened from Day 11-14

Ghetto Wine Strainer Kinda Worked! Had to go to the B-Plan!

Back-up Ghetto Wine Strainer Worked … Eventually!

Running off Wine into New French Oak for Barrel Fermentation!

Fermentation is winding down & it’s time to get our oak barrels ready to fill. There’s nothing quite like the smell of a new French oak barrel. We’ll be running about a third of our wine to barrel for barrel fermentation. The barrel fermentation should give us some opulence and juiciness. We’ll combine the other ferments to give them a bit of post fermentation maceration. It’s all about layering different flavours and refining the texture / mouthfeel of the wine. I’ll explain everything in detail in my next post.

Prepping new oak for the Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Winemaking Project! Necking a mag of 2007 Vietti Perbacco to give us energy!

Nothing like smelling new oak barrels!

Barrel Ferment ticking away nicely! Through the Eye of the Barrel!

We’re still focusing on tannin for the Filthy Good Vino Bathtub Winemaking Project. This time it’s all about giant teabags … full of stalks, not, tea! Just like the seeds stalks contain tannins, flavours and aromas that we want to guide and layer into the wine. Check the “teabags” and a detailed walk through steep the biggest teabag you’ll ever see in the video.

 Dismantling the stalk teabag!

The before shot! Making the stalk teabag on the day of picking. Checkout how green those stalks look!

Extraction of the Stalk Teabag DONE!

Amazing colour pick-up! First time ever I’d be happy having anything to do with Tie Died Cloth!