Wild Fermentation & Foot Stomping Whole Bunches – The Bathtub Winemaking Project Day 3


It’s school holidays and that can mean only one thing, time to put the kids to work stomping grapes!

Tracking the progression of our ferments. Things are smelling. We’re running wild fermentations again this year. Our aim, to achieve greater complexity from the diversity of different yeast present, compared to inoculating with a pure culture of just one yeast.

Wild ferments also tend to run a little bit slower allowing us to gently progress fermentation. Historically, slower ferments seem to result in a little more depth in the mid-palate. Why? I don’t really know.

Our whole bunch ferment is just starting to kick off. Our second fermenter has yet to start fermenting.

Later in the day we had another look at the ferments and decided it was time to give the whole bunch ferment a gentle stomp. This will help extract a bit more juice into the tub, popping a few more berries and filling any remaining air gaps in between the grapes with juice. It’ll also result in a gentle bit of colour and flavour extraction from the fruit.

 

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