This year I wanted to have more security in the fermentation process. This requires cooling.

Good advice was expensive there. Professional wineries work with special tanks that are double-walled. Cool water is then passed through this layer and the wine is kept at the right temperature. Almost a clean thing. Control via a device that constantly takes the temperature via a probe and controls it accordingly.

Not quite, but close, was my solution. A similar type of device was probably necessary for the control. That was clear. So this year I went to a winery shop and got advice.

Since we don’t have double-walled tanks in our cellar and we don’t have the same quantities of wine as other large wineries, we decided on the variant that allows us maximum flexibility in the cellar.

In other words, a stainless steel hose that is inserted through the fermentation bung in the barrel, with a small fermentation pipe and two connections for normal water hoses, an inlet and an outlet.

There is also a control unit that measures the temperature in the wine using a probe and compares the actual temperature with the target temperature.

If necessary, and thus too high a downward deviation, the water supply can be opened or closed via a solenoid valve.

Time was a precious commodity. We do all this as a part-time job and somehow there was a marriage of work in our office.

Hardly an evening on which we were home before 7 p.m., appointments that lasted until late in the evening, left us standing in the basement at 11 p.m. in the evening to connect the cooling system to the water system and still tighten clamps and prepare hoses.

Because suddenly everything had to happen very quickly.

With the Muskateller, due to the frost and the resulting lack of harvest, we still had a relatively large amount of air and were able to put it outside the door at night. The low temperatures at night were enough to ensure that the must was cooled down well from just 65 liters.

I was even afraid that I had meant too well with the cooling, but more on that later.