Topping barrels

During ageing some wine is lost because of evaporation. If the room is very humid the alcohol content of the wine will actually go down while if the room is very dry the alcohol content will go up slightly.

To prevent the staves in the barrels from drying out we therefore have to top barrels once a month. This is quite a big task if you have 800 barrels and we use quite a bit of wine in the process. This is also the main time when the wine gets some air contrary to most peoples belief that air comes in through the staves.

So our main aim today is to top and replace the bit of wine comonly referd to as the angels share.

Roll up, roll up!

The 2007 Professor Black is out. We finished labelling the wine last week so get your orders in. The Trilogy 2005 is also labelled so you can get some of that at the same time.

This week we are moving the last of the 2007 red wines to barrel and then we will start racking the red wines from the 2006 vintage.

Barrels barrels barrels. I will be counting barrels in my sleep.