{"id":145,"date":"2007-12-18T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/18\/racking-the-merlot-and-cherry-wine\/"},"modified":"2007-12-18T06:00:47","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T13:00:47","slug":"racking-the-merlot-and-cherry-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/18\/racking-the-merlot-and-cherry-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"Racking The Merlot And Cherry Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I made good use of my new 3-gallon (11 liter) carboys<\/a> this weekend. Three 1-gallon (3.785 liter) jugs, plus one wine bottle, of cherry wine<\/a> fit perfectly into the carboy. Eight gallons (30 liters) of Merlot filled a 5-gallon (19 liter) and a 3-gallon carboy with a little left over in a wine bottle.<\/p>\n

Higher yield from red wine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m still surprised by the yield from my Merlot grapes. I bought 100 lb<\/a> (45.45 kg) in October, and I was expecting about 5-gallons of wine, which is about what I’m getting from the 100 lb of Chardonnay grapes I bought at the same time. I think I know what happened. I treated the Merlot with pectic enzyme, then fermented it like any red wine, so the skin and pulp were soaking in a water-turning-to-alcohol mixture for a week. This, to say nothing the fermenting yeast, broke down cell walls and membranes making it a lot easier to squeeze liquid out of the pulp. The Chardonnay, on the other hand, were pressed immediately after crushing. The result: more Merlot wine from the same amount of grapes. I’ll have to make a note of this for next year to see if the extra yield from red wine is real or if this year’s experience was just a fluke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made good use of my new 3-gallon (11 liter) carboys this weekend. Three 1-gallon (3.785 liter) jugs, plus one wine bottle, of cherry wine fit perfectly into the carboy. Eight gallons (30 liters) of Merlot filled a 5-gallon (19 liter) and a 3-gallon carboy with a little left over in a wine bottle. Higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment","category-winemaking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t