Day 1 - Rosella's

So the Rosella's grapes have been sitting in the cold room for 24 hours and it is time to "bleed" some juice which we then take to make rosé -- the proper french term is saignée. Those damn frogs, they always know how to make a simple process sound sexy!

Above you can see me siphoning off some juice from one of our Rosella's Pisoni Clone fermenting bins. Some calculations based on the flavor, sugar content, pH level etc of the juice allows us to determine how much juice we need to "bleed" off. The main consideration being to increase the skin to juice ratio, which concentrates the flavors, structure and color of the finished wine (and also to make a tasty summer rosé).

The Rosella's juice that we bled off was sweet and flavorsome and had some lovely feminine qualities. This stuff has some promise alright to make some killer Pinot!