Advanced · 23.0 litres · Light dry red
Pinot Noir
Thin-skinned, pale and unforgiving of heavy handling. The whole method is restraint: a cool ferment, gentle punch-downs, an early press and as little pumping about afterwards as you can manage.
Starting sugar
22.1 Brix
5.55 kg of fermentable sugar
Original gravity
1.092
from the ingredients, not asserted
Finishing gravity
0.995
dry
Alcohol
12.8%
Brix alone predicts 12.2 to 13.3%
Residual sugar
0 g/L
approximate, from gravity
Ready after
9 months
best around 4 years
Made to Light dry red, and every computed figure lands inside the published range for it.
ABV inTA inpH inRS inWhat decides this wine
A cold soak before fermentation, then a cool ferment. Three days at 8C before pitching extracts colour without tannin, because anthocyanin is water-soluble and tannin needs alcohol. It is the only reliable way to get colour into Pinot without ruining the texture.
What goes in
| Ingredient | Weight | Sugar | Volume | Share of sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pinot Noir22.0 Brix (picked off the midpoint) Picked at 22 rather than 25. Pinot at high sugar loses its transparency, which is the only reason to grow it. | 34.00 kg | 5.55 kg | 23.12 L | 100% |
The ingredients contribute 23.1 litres and the water makes up the rest to 23 litres. Those figures are checked against each other when the site is built, because a recipe whose volumes do not add up produces a wine weaker or stronger than every number above.
Acid and sulphite
Acidity of the must
7.0 g/L
at pH 3.45
After malolactic
5.0 g/L
malolactic takes roughly 2 g/L with it
Tartaric to add
23 g
to reach 6.0 g/L. Bench trial before treating the batch
Sulphite at bottling
1.3 g
potassium metabisulphite, for 31 mg/L free SO2 at pH 3.60
The batch
- Must volume
- 23 L
- Ferment at
- 18-26 C
- Molecular SO2 target
- 0.5 mg/L
- Malolactic
- Yes
- Yeast
- RC 212to 14%, high N
The sulphite figure is worked out against the pH of the finished wine, not of the must. Malolactic and deacidification both raise pH, and dosing a finished red to its must pH under-protects it by roughly a third. Recompute for your own reading.
Method
- 01Destem, crush lightly, and sulphite at 40 mg/L.
- 02Cold soak at 8 to 10C for three days, punching down gently once a day.
- 03Let it warm and pitch. RC 212 is a hungry strain, so add nutrient in two stages.
- 04Ferment at 18C rising to 26C, punching down twice a day and gently.
- 05Press at around 1.010, before dryness, which keeps the tannin softer.
- 06Finish fermentation in the vessel, then malolactic.
- 07Age nine months in bulk with as few rackings as you can manage.
The two instruments this recipe needs
Every number on this page came from a hydrometer reading and a pH reading. Without those two you are following a recipe rather than making a wine, and the sulphite figure in particular is meaningless without a pH you have actually measured.
Measuring
Hydrometer and trial jar
SOLIGT Triple Scale Hydrometer and Glass Test Jar for Wine, Beer, Mead & Cider - ABV, Brix and Gravity Test Kit
$18.98
Tracks the ferment from must to dry. The gap between your starting and finishing gravity is the only reliable way to know the alcohol you actually made.
Measuring
pH meter
Apera Instruments AI1113 pH Calibration Buffer Solution Kit (7.00, 4.00), 8 oz. Each
$18.00
The most important instrument on this page. pH decides how much of your sulphite is actually protecting the wine, and dosing without knowing it is guesswork.