Past weekend I did few things. First, I racked two of my 5-gallon carboys, removed a lot of dead yeast from their bottoms. I’ve read on internet that these bottom wastes may give wine the yeast smell, exactly what I ended up with last year, so I decided to do not take risk and dumped it with some bottom juice as well. So instead of having 1 extra gallon of juice now I had -1 gallon of juice, means of the carboys didn’t have enough juice to fill it up.

Then I drove to Zillah, WA again and picked about 6 buckets of Cabernet Sauvignon from same Chapman Vineyard. I will weight all what I’ve got tomorrow and start processing right away.

I got 2 gallons of Syrah juice, again from same Chapman Vineyard, but professionally fermented at Knight Hill Winery in industrial half-ton bin. I filled up one of my 5-gallon carboys with it. The result was fascinating: it started bubbling up very actively and continues to do it till now, about 24 hours later.

I racked another carboy again, added the rest of this very active juice to it, got 1 gallon of leftovers for the future needs.

Up next: wait for bubbling up to slow down, measure specific gravity, maybe rack again.