When I was in high school, I loved science. So I took chemistry. I lasted 2 days. I didn't see the point of memorizing the periodic table and I zoned out for the first 4 minutes of class and the rest of the class totally didn't make sense then, kinda like a Seinfield episode. I dropped it and promptly picked up earth science. Rocks seemed a bit less confusing to me and more tangible than elements.

I think application of knowledge is very important. I used to be one of those kids that would say 'why do I need to learn -blank- I'm never going to use that.' Now I know why.
I use all those facts I glossed over in geometry for area and volume and everything I learned science classes I halfway slept through.
I use the difference between acids and bases and how to neutralize them when I grow things. The most basic things in life, planting seeds and growing food still relies on soil chemistry and at the very least, elemental math. I calculate the ratio of organic matter if I add how many pounds of compost and the amount of sulfur and pine needles I need to decrease the pH for my blueberries. Even grapevine pruning has calculations such as weight of cut off prunings in relation to how many grape clusters that plant will consequently support. And now the chemistry of wine making peers at me through wine samples and fining agents. Oh frustrated teachers of my past, I thank you.

So now as I sit with a mini-chemistry lab in front of me, trying to stretch my brain in ways I haven't stretched it since that 8am neuroscience lab I tackled in '04, I'm wondering how I would be different if I would have just buckled down in that chemistry class.

Right now, we're working through what's called fining. I had no idea how many steps were in wine making!

So after a wine is pressed, it goes through primary fermentation where the sugars become alcohol. That's done. Check.
Then the whites stay in stainless steel (or sometimes a Chardonnay will be oak aged) and the reds go into oak barrels. The settle out their sediment and need racked a few times, which means getting pumped out into a new tank or barrel, leaving the sediment in the bottom which I then clean out and get rid of, leaving only the good wine behind. This improves the flavor and clarifies the wine naturally.

Sometimes the wine needs a little bit of extra help to settle out some of the off flavors or just to aid in clarifying through what's called fining. It's kinda like filtering the wine by adding something that pulls out certain particles. An example of a fining agent would be gelatin, which is added to a tank in the correct ratio and then racked off after a day or so, pulling out some of the particles that stuck to the gelatin.

I'm still so new at this, but I've got all these samples of different ratios of fining agents before I add them to the entire tank. It involves a lot of taste testing, which is always fun and simple additions and pH tests.

The warm weather has now quite officially conceeded to the unavoidable cold of winter. Construction is underway on the tasting room so hopefully we'll be cuddled around a warm fire, sipping our delicious 2009 Frontenac