Traveling through 70's wine

Chapter 274 Exam

Xiao Mingyi stayed in Shenyang for a week. Her parents were indeed old, and the children could not be separated from them for a long time, so she brought her son and daughter to Beijing, preparing to go to the United States together.

Wen Qing cleaned up two rooms in the east wing of the courtyard in Huashuijing Lane for them to live in. The son was the eldest and lived in one room by himself, and the daughter was the youngest and lived with her.

During the day, Wen Qing goes to work in several companies, and Xiao Mingyi stays at home with the children and Shanshan. This time she will also take the children to the United States. Her husband decided to stay in the United States after obtaining his doctorate degree, and found a job in the emerging Silicon Valley, so the children's visas were processed smoothly. During this time, the two children studied English intensively at home.

After Wen Qing arranged her work in China, she returned to the University of Davis to continue her studies in mid-May. After she came back, Xiao Mingyi's husband had gone to Silicon Valley after obtaining his doctorate. Although she was willing to continue to help Wen Qing take care of the children, Wen Qing did not want the couple to be separated, especially since the two children had just arrived in the United States, one was in junior high school and the other in elementary school, and they really needed their parents' company. Under Wen Qing's persuasion, Xiao Mingyi took the children to Silicon Valley to go to school there.

Shanshan is only one year old now and can eat complementary food. Wen Qing found a nursery in the small town of Davis. She sends the child to the nursery during the day and picks him up after school in the afternoon. This is the case for almost all working families here, and she cannot be an exception.

After Wen Qing's investigation, she found out that this nursery has nurses who specialize in taking care of children between one and three years old who cannot take care of themselves, and the children can go to kindergarten when they are three or four years old.

Wen Qing is now in her sophomore year. She has been delayed for a year and wants to make good use of her time in these two years to complete the three-year course and prepare to graduate on time. Fortunately, they are on a credit system and she can graduate as long as she completes the credits.

Wen Qing added laboratory work, which could also be counted as credits, so her daily schedule was very tight. Sometimes she had to work overtime, so she took the time to pick up Shanshan from the nursery and put him in the space. She allocated a bit of her mental power to watch over him. Fortunately, there was no danger in the space, so she put Shanshan in an open space she had specially enclosed, covered it with a carpet, and let the child play by himself. Once when Wen Qing entered the space to pick him up, Shanshan had fallen asleep on the carpet.

Time quickly came to her senior year of college. Wen Qing reduced her internship time and took summer semester courses for two consecutive years. She completed all courses on time, obtained enough credits, and submitted her graduation application.

In this final semester, in addition to normal classes, they also have an important task, which is to complete the entire process from grape planting to winemaking. The school will score them based on the wine they produce, and this is their graduation exam.

The grapevines are the grapevines on the farm. Each student is assigned a plot of about three acres of land. Starting from spring, they spend a lot of time in the vineyard. The professor explained: "No score is more convincing than a bottle of wine."

Pruning, soiling, sun protection, watering, insect prevention, in addition to classes and discussions, Wen Qing spent most of her time in the vineyard. She chose a piece of Cabernet Sauvignon. She had some experience in growing Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cabernet Sauvignon in the space had grown very tall. While cultivating the vines in the vineyard, she pruned the Cabernet Sauvignon in the space. Now she is very familiar with managing grapevines and her movements are very skillful. Looking at the neat grapevines in the space, Wen Qing feels a sense of accomplishment.

In summer, Cabernet Sauvignon begins to bear fruit. Wen Qing calculates the amount of water to be used and also maintains ventilation between the plants to ensure that the maturity of the entire grape plant remains consistent.

Pests and diseases are inevitable. Wen Qing listened to Nelson of Camus Winery and did not dare to use pesticides. She collected some effective Chinese herbal medicines from the space, such as Xanthium sibiricum and Stevia, and boiled them in water to kill insects. However, at the end of the Cabernet Sauvignon's ripening period, she was worried that the ingredients of these Chinese medicines would enter the grapes, so she did not dare to use this method. Fortunately, the herbal pesticides used in the early stage were very useful. To target soil pests and diseases, she burned the leaves of a neem tree into ashes and scattered them in the vineyard to prevent insects from growing in the soil.

In autumn, the grapes of Cabernet Sauvignon in Wen Qing's small plot were particularly good, large and numerous. She picked a grape from time to time to taste it, estimating its maturity and feeling that the sourness and sweetness of the grapes were suitable for making wine. She started picking grapes in early October, and other students in the class also began to pick grapes and make wine one after another.

In the end, the land produced hundreds of kilograms of grapes. Wen Qing did not use any machinery, but picked them by hand, carefully removing the bad grapes and grape stems. After washing and drying the grapes, she crushed them in a stainless steel container, added fruit wine yeast, and sealed them for fermentation.

The fruit wine yeast used this time was distributed by the school. Wen Qing has made apple sparkling wine and wild wine, and has rich experience in winemaking. During the fermentation period, Wen Qing paid attention to keeping the environment low to prevent excessive fermentation, but the temperature should not be too low to prevent the sugar from being completely converted into alcohol.

Wen Qing followed the winery workers' example and put her ears against the stainless steel fermentation tanks to listen to the sounds of fermentation. Every one or two days, she would open the containers and press the skins to further extract the tannins and color from the skins. After the first fermentation was completed, Wen Qing filtered out the residue for a second fermentation to convert the malic acid in the wine into soft lactic acid.

Due to their limited time, the fermented wine was only stored in oak barrels for three months. The wines made by the students were all single varieties. In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon, there were also common varieties such as Syrah, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay.

In March, when spring returned to the earth, Davis' wine major held a graduation wine tasting. Students brought out their own wines to participate in the tasting and accepted their scores from professors and judges.

As usual, there were barbecue, salads, snacks, and fruits at the wine tasting party. Various foods were placed on the snow-white tablecloth, the wine glasses sparkled in the sunlight, and wine bottles marked with the students' names were placed aside for everyone to use.

Wen Qing first tasted the white wines made by her classmates. Most of them were okay, but the acidity of a few wines was too high. Then, she tasted the red wines. She felt that a few bottles were good, but the balance between tannins and body of most wines was not good. They were either too sour or too astringent.

Joey, a classmate from the same discussion group, came over with a glass and greeted me: "Wan, I've tasted your wine. It's really good. It's a pity that it has only been aged in the oak barrel for three months. It would taste better if it was stored longer."

Wen Qing smiled and said, "Joey, I haven't seen your wine yet, where is it?"

Joey took her to the wine table and pointed to a few bottles of Merlot and said, "This is what I made."