Emptying the tank
Today, we emptied our red wine tank, and as you can see, we really got stuck in!
While hard at work, our head winemaker, Charl Coetzee, put together this photo story to let you in on the behind-the-scenes process of red wine making.
With red wine, the fermentation happens on the skins of the grapes. As soon as fermentation starts, the skins form a cake which rises to the top, leaving all the juice underneath.
So when we want to empty the tank, we subtract all the juice at the bottom of the tank, pumping it away, leaving the skin cake to settle on the bottom of the now-empty tank.
We then open the tank to make sure that all the juice has been pumped away and that only the skins are left over. We would also dig out some of the skins into the basket of the basket press to make emptying the tank a bit easier.
- The basket is then transported to the basket press where the rest of the juice – which is, of course, our newly fermented red wine – is pressed out of the skins.
Of course, when making wine, we have to taste all the time to make sure that everything is fine with the newly-fermented wine. It's part of the job you'll seldom hear complaints about!
PS: Just to let you know, the wine in this tank is a Malbec and is not about to be bottled. It will only be available for use in one year, as it is part of a future Bordeaux blend. We’re sure it’ll be worth the wait!
Tatler’s Best Hotels
We’re thrilled to bits to have been included in Tatler magazine’s selection of Best Hotels for 2012, selected for our ‘Food, Glorious Food”! Click here for the full article.
Pick a fig, any fig
If you love figs, this is the time to visit the Babylonstoren garden, as we’ve got figs… well… we’ve got figs growing on trees! And right now, the fragrance of fig in the air is quite irresistable.
Our trees are between 3-4 years old, with their first crop ripening, fig by fig over the next few weeks. Probably the most striking of the trees is the striped yellow and green Tiger Fig (below).
We have thirteen fig varieties growing in our garden, namely: Tiger figs, Greta, Brown Turkey, Caromb, White Genoa, Kadota, Cape White, Black Mission, Adams, Diana, Smyrna, Marseille and Imperial. Some fruits are yellow or green, others black or brown, as you can see in these images:
L-R: Tiger Fig, Gretha Fig, Caromb Fig, Kadota Fig, Smyrna Fig
And when you can’t resist tempation any longer, give a soft, ripe fig a gentle pull and the skin will easily peel away at the stem, breaking of in your hand ready for eating.
Good weather for owl watching
It’s a full moon with clear skies tonight, which makes it perfect weather for owl watching. I you’re lucky, you’ll get some great photographs too, like this evocative sequence of one of the Babylonstoren owls taking off.
Click here to read more about our owls, and to hear what they sound like too.
Our table grapes
We’re enjoying monitoring the progress of our table grapes on the farm, where we have 18 different varieties, planted in a pattern of ripening, from the earliest ripening (eg: Prime Seedless), to the latest ripening variety. Right now, the grape bunches are hanging heavily on from the trellis, awaiting another 2-3 weeks of ripening.
Most of these grapes are Vitis vinifera, with the exception of our Catawba grape, which is fairly unusual in South Africa, and can have a pronounced musky or “foxy” flavour. Catawba is a Vitis labrusca grape, better known as the wild Vitis variety, which is used for wine as well as juice, jams and jellies.
