ZABIBU

As we had so little Chardonnay this year we thought we would do something as a bit of an experiment - the Nogng ‘blanc’. For the Chardonnay/Pinot blend we pressed the fruit quickly after it had been through the destemmer/crusher and had not added any pectinase enzyme.  

There seemed to be plenty of juice, pulp and fruit left in the press cake and so we thought we would add 40 litres of water and 12 lbs of sugar and see what we could get with the numbers.

 This is the interesting bit- the Chardonnay/PN blend came out at a TA of 1.9. Well this came out at an initial TA reading of 0.3.

Oooops!

Our tap water here on the edge of the Ngong Hills is pH 8 and has been pH 8.3 when its very dry. Well instead of using good rain water which we have plenty of I went and used 40 lts of tap water. So the acidity went right out of the window.

So we corrected this with 60 grams of tartaric acid and this brought it back to where we wanted it. Added the yeast and the nutrient, bentonite and a bottle trap and let it get on with fermentation. By the afternoon of the following day it was bubbling away and at 9.0 %potential alcohol and 19 degrees Celcius.

Lets see what happens.