Long day.

Just got done working and it's 7:45. The last hour and a half was mostly waiting though. We tasted through tanks with Alain again this morning, and made some more blending decisions. These decisions basically led us to moving around what seemed like all of the wine in the winery. All the pumps were active, and several moves were in the queue. Jordan, Nicholas, and I have been waiting for the last hour and a half for the last cuve of press wine to finish pumping onto the Mourvedre skins. Since it was the last to finish fermenting, and since the Mourvedre generally has the most punch to it, and since the press juice seems to far like it's good enough to maybe end up in the final blend, we're adding all the press juice to the Mourvedre skins to try and get them a little more complexity.
With all the wine moving around there was a lot of sanitizing to be done too. Normally the pumps and hoses are just rinsed with water, but at this point we're dealing with some wines that are going through, or have finished malo, and some that aren't done with primary fermentation yet. As we've learned previously, the bacteria responsible for malolactic fermentation can go after the sugars in the wine and raise volatile acidity, so it's very important to make sure the wines are completely finished with sugar fermentation before they're exposed to the malo bacteria. I also learned that there's a visual test for malo; wines that haven't gone through malo have a very purple color to their foam, while wines that have gone through malo have a white foam. This distinction of course applies only to red wines, and it also explains why most sparkling red wines, such as Australian sparkling Shiraz, and Italian Lambrusco have such intensely purple foam.
Also, the mosquitoes seem to be back in force today. Dammit.