the machines turned off, the large room full of clanging steel and loud water hoses quiets, the extra help goes home...and then there is silence throughout the winery. EXCEPT for the murmuring whispers of mingling yeast.
After making what I call the dough (mixing dry yeast with liquid to rehydrate it), we stood around and listened to it snap, crackle and pop. The yeast was going crazy, just so hungry for sugar and ready to poop out alcohol. oh yes. But, it really does smell like baking bread...
We then inoculated the juice by gently adding the starving yeast to the tank of sauvignon blanc grape juice. Those little guys shut up, and started their feast in our lovely tanks. We shortly thereafter transferred all the juice (already starting to become wine!!!) into barrels and lovingly tucked them in the dank cave to hibernate.
Since then, we have been going out to the cave every morning to perform fermentation monitoring, where we take the temperature of the juice and use a hydrometer to see what the sugar is at. Sugars go down, temp goes up...with the anticipated result being stablization in a couple weeks with little/no change.
The smell of fermentation is delicious. P.S. don't stick your nose in a sulfured barrel, just sayin'...
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