Last weekend, I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a one time Saturday only class offered by Piedmont Community College Workforce titled Harvesting & Analysis of the Must. This class was taught by the father of modern Virginia wine Gabriele Rausse.

First, for those of you who do not know, the must is the grape juice that comes from the grapes that will later be fermented and used to make wine. This class would help someone analyze when to harvest and how much the winemaker may have to alter the juice.

The class began in the classroom with Rausse telling us many stories in his career of winemaking along with a discussion about the analysis of the Brix, PH, and Acidity in the wine. For most, this may be boring or may feel like it is over their head. But little do most people know, winemaking has quite a bit of chemistry involved. That chemistry is important in making a good balanced wine with the right about of alcohol and the right amount of acid.

Brix, is in fact, the sugar content that is found in the grape juice and that sugar will later be turned into alcohol. For example, if a must has a brix of 22.0 the wine will more than likely be 12.6. Rausse gave us a chart but there is also a formula that you can use.

Next in the class, we took a trip to Blenheim Vineyards. Most people know of this winery because it is owned by Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band. They split us up into two groups. My group was set up first to sort the incoming grapes from another vineyard (as seen in the picture above).

I found sorting the grapes was a lot of fun and very interesting. We were sorting one of my favorite grape varietals Cabernet Franc and this year for some reason the fruit flies have been able to penetrate the skins and actually help cause what is called sour rot.

Sour rot makes the juice smell and taste like vinegar and as we all know vinegar is not something we want in our wines. This was surprisingly hard but with a lot of help it was a lot easier. When were done sorting the grapes, they then go into a de-stemmer to get them into pure grape form ready to crush.

After that we were taken in at even smaller groups to actually do the laboratory analysis of the must with the winemaker, Kirsty Harmon. We did the above by testing the Brix, PH, and such. The staff was very helpful and full of knowledge and the experience was quite enjoyable.

To be continued…

~ Justin