Measuring Brix

Measuring Sugar Content

As I said before we measure the sugar content in Brix. This is done with a sample of grapes taken from various rows and various places in the vineyard. The samples are collected into a clean beaker.

 After the sample is collected the grapes are crushed and mixed together. By doing this we get an average sugar content representative of what the winemaker will see when he/she takes the harvest and turns it into grape juice.

 Some of the juice is taken out of the sample and placed on the refractometer. The Refractometer is an optical device that uses the refraction of light in the juice to compute a sugar content (Brix)

 Here you can see what I see when looking through the refractometer. In this case we are averaging 18 Brix. We will do an initial harvest of grapes around 20-21Brix for Rose. Then the main harvest at 24-25 for the Syrah.