Racking

Both our wines were racked today to get it off any remaining lees and oak chips. MLF was started but we think there is a possibility that it did not take or has not stalled. Why do we think this? We are not seeing much in the way of oxygen bubbles passing through the airlocks on the carboys. Testing for MLF completion is an arduous task and we aren’t bottling so it’s not imperative that we know where it stands of the percentage of completion right now.

We did read about a new procedure today we hadn’t seen before; Purging the air from a new carboy vs filling with wine and just adding inert gas on top. It’s incredible to see how sticking a flame into the gas immediately extinguishes the flame.