Last time we spoke about what it takes to blend a particular wine while in the tasting room. Today I will explore what it takes to translate that blend, known as “bench top” in the industry, into the actual wine blend that you enjoy.

Two weeks ago the winemaking staff got together and worked out a blend of our Su’skol Chardonnay. This wine is our single vineyard Chardonnay from Napa County. The vineyard site is close to Carneros and with its often foggy summer mornings is a perfect site for Chardonnay. Now it is time to complete the work in the cellar.

First off, we translate our blended smattering of different lots and different oak types into the hard numbers for the cellar. Are we only using 25% of this lot? Is it the new oak portion? Well, the cellar crew better know that. After setting the scene for our crew they begin to prep the barrels, taking out the bungs and possibly moving barrels to an easier working location.

Next is the fun, but necessary, part folks. I smell every barrel that will be pumped into this blend, and the Su’skol blend averages to about 1000 barrels! My preferred method of sampling the barrels is actually using a turkey baster. It is fast, and far more efficient than the cumbersome wine thief that is often used. Smelling barrels when pumping out offers two very important securities. The first is that I can double check the cellar is planning on pumping out the proper barrels that I envisioned going into this blend. The second is that we can screen every barrel for any problem and remove the wine from the blend. From time to time a barrel does go bad and this is the one time we have to weed out our problem.

Next, we carefully extract the wine from the barrel using a nitrogen sparging mechanism known as the Bulldog. As the wine gets pumped out of the barrel we transfer that into a tank that has also been sparged with nitrogen. When that tank gets filled we start on another tank until all 1000 barrels are pumped out. The barrels are then carefully cleaned and stored. To ensure that no “bugs” grow inside the barrel we treat barrels regularly with sulfur gas while they are empty.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker