At this point, our wine was actually wine, and although a bit acidic, it was starting to resemble something that might be drinkable.

Racking is the process of moving the wine from one container to the next, with the primary result being to lift the wine off of the lees (all the dead yeast and gunk that has settled at the bottom).  Racking the wine off the lees helps with flavor and ultimate wine clarity.

Easier said than done, unfortunately.  We learned some lessons about suction, and tubes, and gravity, and the three of us spent about an hour in the bathroom moving the wine from two 6 gallon carboys to 1 six gallon carboy and a 3 litre jug that was once home to carlos rossi.

The hardest part was moving the wine from our half full carboy, as we just didn’t have enough gravity to get it started.  I ended up drinking a few cups of wine through the process of sucking on the tube to try to create enough movement to get the wine to funnel upward about two feet and then back down into the clean carboy.  Check out the pictures for evidence of a wine stained bathtub. 

At this point, our oak master decided it was time to add a sack of french oak chips to our little science project in hopes of adding some complexity and smoothness to the finished product. It turns out that new oak barrels are quite expensive, and even a small 5 gallon barrel would have run a few hundred dollars….  Maybe next vintage.

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