Diluvio

Vinification Notes:

After our winery space flooded in the spring of 2019 and we were unable to enter the building to top our tank of rosato, we were left with a tank of wine that had gone sideways. In May of that year, we wheeled all 550 gallons of our ‘flawed’ Nero d’Avola Rosato across the parking lot to our neighbors at Spirit Works. Spirit Works used their beautiful copper alembic still and their short column to distill the wine into brandy which allowed us to dial in a clean, but not totally neutral tasting brandy. We split the distillate with Spirit Works and came out with 26 gallons for ourselves of 182.2 proof. We aged the brandy in stainless steel for 1 ½ years. We harvested Orange Muscat in August of 2020. The grapes were gently whole cluster pressed to avoid excessive bitterness, then cold settled and racked off lees. The sweet, unfermented juice was combined with our aged brandy, at a ratio of approximately 3:1, aged untopped in one neutral oak barrel for 3 months, then hand bottled. The addition of high proof brandy to juice immediately arrests the possibility of fermentation, negating the need to add sulfites or filtering.

Good to know: See small dark crystals or sediment at the bottom of your Diluvio bottling? Those are tartrates (when the tartaric acid and minerals in grapes bind together to form small crystal solids during aging and alcohol development). Pour that last glass in the bottle slowly or put it through a tea strainer so tartrates stay behind.

At Bottling:

(November 2020): 20% alcohol. SO₂ at bottling: none (0 mg/L free, 0 mg/L total). Residual sugar: 5.5 grams/fl.oz of natural residual sugar (glucose + fructose) or 184 g/L.

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