For this tasting, I had the help of my lovely assistant, Sara. She was gracious enough to man the wine thief, while I cleaned the airlocks. The extra labor makes the whole process go a little more smoothly. She was rewarded for this task with a tasting of each of the carboys.
The wine thief is a cool device that allows a vintner to take a sample out of the narrow neck of a carboy. Carboy's small necks are great for keeping air and contaminants away from the wine, but they also prove very effective at keeping the wine out of reach of the winemaker. Short of a siphon, a wine thief is the easiest way to bridge that gap. A wine thief is basically a large volume pipette. Ideal for taking a small sample for tests or tastings. Just be sure not to be too enthusiastic with it, it fills slowly and can sometimes displace enough wine to overflow the carboy.
Once you have your wine samples, the fun starts. All the samples showed some development of flavor over the previous tasting during the racking. Though a few of the batches of wine with heavy toast oak showed more flavor development than the medium toast batches. Sara and I were in agreement that all the batches need more time on oak, but some may need more time than others. We'll see how things look after the next tasting in another few weeks.
Here's Sara enduring the difficult labors of wine making. It's a pity her husband doesn't give her any leisure time with what little time she gets away from the office. 
The other issue that cropped up during this tasting was the fill levels of the carboys. We had some of the batches full well into their necks. Some of the warm weather we've been having in Sacramento these past few weeks resulted in volume expansion in the wine and this caused some of the wine to flow into the airlocks of three of the carboys. Since the airlocks were filled with sanitizer, there shouldn't be any problems and a little wine vented out shouldn't be an issue. We cleaned the wine out and refilled the airlocks. The mounting warm weather could become a concern, since heat is one of the major concerns for breaking down flavors in storing wine. Good thing we'll be moving the wine in the next few weeks, hopefully we'll find a dark cool spot to allow the aging to reach its natural conclusion.
