Back at the winery, Xiao Yifei immediately went into the fermentation room, where Martin and the others were busy.

"Yo, it's so warm here, I don't see the air conditioner."

"You know better when you're closer to the fermenter."

Xiao Yifei touched the fermentation tank of the stainless steel tube, this fermentation tank is not cold at all, it is quite warm.

"Of course, it's warm, and the post-fermentation has to be around 25 degrees. Without this temperature-controlled fermenter, we would have to wait until next spring for fermentation to start. ”

"Isn't that a wine going to stay in the jar for a few more months?"

"yes, so I think new equipment and new technology are really good for our industry. I don't know what those who stick to tradition think. ”

This proposition is too big, and Xiao Yifei decided to avoid it. Watching Casey in the lab running in and out with her bottles and cans, Xiao Yifei asked:

"How's the metrics Casey tested?"

"Really, that's great."

Once the wine is in the barrel, it means that the brewing is over, and the rest is the work of the cellar rats. Martin, the head of the rats, walked past with a couple of cups:

"Boss, we've all tasted it, you want to try it."

"Well, I haven't tasted the taste of a freshly fermented wine."

Xiao Yifei came to a can of Merlot, opened the valve, and took a small half cup. First of all, there is no deposit in the wine, the transparency is not bad, and the color looks very pure ruby red. After smelling it, there is a hint of mint in the fruity aroma, and after tasting it, the taste is much better than before. More silky. Not to mention that it is used to blend Cabernet Sauvignon, it is also a good wine on its own.

Merlot, which was described as a maiden before vinification, was described as a maiden under all the same conditions, and it could ripen a little earlier than other red grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, like a bouncing girl. Run fast. But once it was brewed, she immediately transformed into a gentle young woman, whether it was made alone or with Cabernet Sauvignon, it was so beautiful and silky.

"Yes, although I don't drink much, this should be around 95 points."

Xiao Yifei tasted those cans of Cabernet Sauvignon again, and the taste was okay, definitely above 92 points.

The next thing is important. Before the barrel is filled, there are several tastings with the participation of the winery's insiders.

Casey took her professional instrument, extracted the wine from the jars of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, blended them into bottles of wine according to a certain percentage, then marked the bottles with random numbers, and then folded a piece of paper with the number and ratio written on it and handed it to Xiao Yifei:

"Boss, you have this piece of paper. Don't show them if you're going to take part in a wine tasting. Don't look at it yourself. ”

"And when am I going to watch it?"

"If you look at it yourself, you can watch it after today's tasting, but don't tell anyone else. Be sure to wait until you've finalized which bottle tastes the best before telling them to put it in a barrel according to this ratio. ”

"Why?"

Martin interjected:

"Because we basically know the ratio of each wine in previous years, if you know the ratio of wine before you taste it. In my heart, I will feel that this ratio is definitely not good, or this ratio must be good, which affects our rating. The ratio that tastes like this is not necessarily the best. ”

Xiao Yifei understood that this was a preconceived score, so he hurriedly put the paper in his clothes pocket. Casey, who now knew the only way to match and number, left the pile of bottles on the table and left the room.

The entire winemaking team of seven people, plus Xiao Yifei, a person who made up the number, sat down around the table, and a bunch of wine glasses were placed in front of everyone.

Cameron stood up:

"The significance of this wine tasting, I am sure everyone knows, is the most important moment for our winemaking team, and I hope that everyone must be fair when grading. Let's start with this bottle of last year's Napa Cabernet Sauvignon as a benchmark. ”

Martin helped pour the wine into the glass. Everyone hurriedly wrote the number of the wine bottle on the score sheet in front of them and signed their names. These are all veterans, and the only newcomer to the team, Chelsea, has already followed her parents to many wine tastings, and everyone has started to watch, smell, shake, taste and other tasting steps, laying a benchmark score. Then pick up the purified water in front of you and start rinsing your mouth to avoid disturbing the tasting of the next bottle.

Next, everyone began to taste the new wine of various proportions one by one. Each bottle has to be scored from various aspects such as color, flavor, etc., and sometimes there is a whispered exchange, but everyone is very conscious of this kind of communication, and they do not directly say things like "this is good" and "this is very bad", nor do they ask for other people's scores.

In between tastings, Chelsea take away the rating sheet for this round and wait a minute or two for everyone's palate to recover before moving on to the next round.

It took us a morning to finish the dozen bottles of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon in different proportions, and then count the scores of each ratio to find the five wines with the highest scores.

"Well, these 5 bottles are our top five Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. Let's rest, and in the afternoon we will continue to taste the estate Cabernet Sauvignon. ”

At noon, Xiao Yifei returned to the bee hill, and the black nose heard the voice of the navigator, and immediately ran over with a scream. As soon as Xiao Yifei got out of the car, he immediately pounced, holding Xiao Yifei's legs, and his tail was about to break.

Xiao Yifei squatted down and touched its head:

"Blacknose, did you miss me?"

Blacknose immediately put his two front paws on his knees, sticking out his tongue to lick him. Xiao Yifei hugged its head and didn't let it succeed. After playing with it for a while, Xiao Yifei went to make lunch, and the black nose stood guard at the kitchen door, staring at Xiao Yifei all the time, as if he was afraid that he would leave again.

After lunch, Xiao Yifei planned to continue to taste wine, and the black nose wanted to follow, it seemed that he was really afraid that Xiao Yifei would abandon it. There was no way, Xiao Yifei could only receive it into the Isis space and let it play in it.

In the afternoon, everyone continued to work hard and rated 5 more estate Cabernet Sauvignon. For Zinfandelle, everyone was relatively casual, and only 3 bottles were selected. After everyone left the room, Xiao Yifei put the rest of the other proportions into a storage cabinet. Then, together with Casey, I made a few more bottles of the wine selected for today in the same proportion. After Casey left, Xiao Yifei wrote the random numbers on the wine bottles according to Martin's instructions and recorded them. Then put the wines away, which will be tested tomorrow at a larger tasting.

After dinner, Xiao Yifei, accompanied by David, checked the progress of the installation of winter shearing and drip irrigation equipment in the lower vineyard.

"Now I'm letting them practice winter shrunping, and Ivy's 50 acres have been mowed, and tomorrow we can start pruning another 100 acres or so. They installed the drip irrigation equipment, and the branch pipe to cross the river, so that tomorrow they can go into the 50 acres and install drip irrigation. ”

Xiao Yifei took a look, the main pipe was a thick water pipe coming down from the top of Yuanbao Hill, and the height difference of dozens of meters now looked really high, no wonder they tossed for so long. Xiao Yifei pointed to a pile of valves and equipment between the main pipe and the branch pipe and asked:

"What's that pile?"

"That's a pressure regulator. With this product, we can adjust the pressure of each branch pipe to resist the water pressure up to 70 meters without adding additional indicators for the branch pipe and drip irrigation pipe. There are also filtration devices to prevent clogging of the branches. ”

Xiao Yifei nodded.

Back at Bee Hill, Xiao Yifei picked up the phone and called Bo, inviting him to a wine tasting tomorrow afternoon, Bo

The next day, more than 20 people were crammed into the conference room, including the tasting room team, the club team and other staff who have studied red wines, and they will choose 3 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, 3 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2 Zinfandel from the 13 wines selected yesterday.

Some people think that the tasting room team only needs to be handsome and eloquent, but in fact, this is not the case, and there are gray-haired old men among them, who can not see anywhere. The members of the tasting room team have to deal with wine on a daily basis, and the first requirement is to understand wine, in addition to the public tasting room, the person in charge of the tasting room of several clubs must also have a sommelier qualification. Similarly, some members of the club team have to come into contact with the members, and it is certainly not possible to understand alcohol.

This wine tasting was much more relaxed, everyone got together, talked and laughed and tasted the 13 wines, and it only took one morning to select 8 wines.

The afternoon tasting was very small, with CEO Greg, head of winemaking Cameron, his assistant Martin, and one of the oldest senior sommelier in the tasting room, Eric, who was old after all, and Greg intended to make him manager of the winery. The four of them plus Xiao Yifei are the partner, and the last 3 wines are selected from these 8 wines, and finally this year's red wines will be blended according to the final selected ratio, and then aged in barrels.

Everyone knew the responsibility on their shoulders and knew that this tasting was very important, it would determine the harvest of the year, so they tasted it very slowly, and from time to time they went back to compare it with other wines, and deliberated it repeatedly, and finally counted the bottle with the highest score.

After everyone had chosen, Beau finally arrived, he tasted the final selection, tasted the other wines, and nodded to confirm that the wine everyone finally chose was indeed the best quality that could be achieved this year.

Xiao Yifei took out Casey's paper at this time, found this year's allocation ratio, and mentally calculated, after the blending, Merlot had a little more. The leftover wines are either sold to other wineries or aged separately to make special wines to taste for themselves or as a small gift for premium members.

Xiao Yifei didn't have much to do in the fermentation room, that is, under Cameron's supervision, Martin took a group of rats to mix and barrel according to the determined ratio. (To be continued......)