The MA Winemaker at Aaronap Cellars

Help a future winemaker, get some wine

2012-01-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

I recently had an opportunity to donate to the American Wine Society Education Foundation to help fund a scholarship for a student in the oenology field. What sparked this occasion was that the AWS had a little wine left over that had been donated for the AWS 2011 Annual Conference that was held in Rochester, NY in early November. Enough wine for 35 cases--just a wee bit of left-over wine. We really must do a better job of drinking the place dry at the 2012 conference in Portland, OR! So they decided to offer a case of wine to whomever would donate $100 to build a $3500 scholarship.

Well, I'm a sucker for helping young students, so I dashed off a check. Couple of weeks later, the wine arrived today! And I'm tickled pink about the contents

Dessert Wines
Ochoa Moscatel 2010 (DO, Spain)

White Table Wines
Firehouse Cellars Riesling Lake Erie (Geneva-on-the-Lake, OH)
Sheldrake Point Dry Riesling 2010 (Finger Lakes, NY)
Chateau Ste Michelle Dry Reisling 2010 (Columbia Valley, WA)
Concannon Conservancy Chardonnay 2009 (Livermore Valley, CA)
Leonard Oakes Estate Winery Chardonnay 2009 (Lake Ontario, NY)
Rooster Hill Traminette 2008 (Finger Lakes, NY)
Isidoro Polencic Collio Friulano 2010 (DOC, Italy)
Hera Vinho Verde 2010 (Portugal)

Red Table Wines
Swedish Hill Optimus 2007 (Finger Lakes, NY)
Piera Martellozzo Tab Bor Rosso Friuli (DOC, Friuli Grave, Italy)
Crasto Douro 2009 (DOC, Portugal)

I think it's pretty clear that the conference attendees really went for the red wines and left the whites alone! These will really add to the tasting spreadsheet that I've been keeping of wines that I've recently tasting. Sweetest donation I've ever made.

Salute,
Noel

It's Mitt Romney Beer!

2012-01-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

This is only tangentially related to wine, but it was hilarious so I have to share!

A couple of weeks ago, I invited some old friends from my Ann Arbor, MI days over to watch the Detroit Lions vs New Orleans Saints play-off wildcard game. Even though I admittedly have a goodly stock of booze in the basement, I decided that wine just doesn't cut it for football watching so I stopped into a local package store to grab some beer. The place I went was next door to the grocery store so I wasn't expecting a big selection of craft beer but figured they'd at least have Sam Adams. To my surprise, the craft beer selection was actually pretty good and, low and behold, there on a shelf in the fridge aisle was a 6-pack of Stone Brewing Co.'s Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale shining like a beacon. My mouth started to water and I decided that I just had to buy it, especially (or ironically) as I was wearing my Arrogant Bastard Ale t-shirt that I had gotten while visiting Stone in 2010. I ignored the price tag (a gasp-inducing $18) and grabbed it along with a couple of other beers (a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA & a Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale for those keeping track of my beer tastes), since there was no way I was sharing the Stone with anyone. I may be a nice guy, but I'm not that nice, darn it!

Making my way to the cash register, I handed the beer over to the clerk who scanned the barcodes of my selections. "Oh my god," he exclaimed. "Didn't know we had a 6-pack so expensive. Hell, this is Mitt Romney beer!"

Salute,
Noel

P.S. Ironically, my friends wanted to sample my wine during the game, so we actually didn't touch the beer. And believe me, the Romney-ish Oaked Arrogant Bastard ale tastes extraordinarily good!

Football vs Wine Bottling---the bottling won!

2012-01-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

For those not following the news, or simply living on the planet Neptune, Tim Tebow (I believe some other members of the Denver Broncos also came) was in town yesterday for a play-off game with the New England Patriots. I think most of the northeastern US came to a grinding halt while everyone hunkered in front of their TVs for the evening to watch the battle of Tom Brady vs God.

But not at Aaronap Cellars! I had some wine to bottle and a lovely assistant to help, so to heck with the game. If you scroll down the blog, you'll notice that I mentioned some experiments with sparkling cranberry wine in my last post. The primary fermentation for the base wines were all completed, so it's time to filter, bottle, add the liqueur de tirage, and get the secondary fermentation underway.

Sounds simple, huh? Well, friends & acquaintances know that nothing is done simply at Aaronap Cellars and this was no different. I didn't have just one cranberry wine, but THREE!

1) Cranberry base made from cranberries and water (2 lbs cranberries/gallon)
2) Cranberry Cider made from cranberries and Carlson Orchards Premium Cider Blend (1 lb/gallon)
3) Cranberry-Niagra made from cranberries and Welch's White Grape Juice (1 lb/gallon)

All the wines were filtered in sequence through coarse, medium, and fine filters until they were polished & crystal clear. And then the fun began...

I had read about an innovative secondary fermentation method that avoids the laborious process of riddling & disgorging during sparkling wine production. To give proper credit, Zac Brown had posted this method on WinePress.US and I really wanted to give it a try. Essentially, I placed 1g of a QA-23 yeast that has been encapsulated in alginate beads (sold as Pro-Restart) in the hollow portion of a plastic champagne cork. A 3/4-inch disk of stainless steel screen (sold as faucet aerator or smoke pipe screens) was then wedged in the top of the cork to hold the yeast beads in place. This was actually harder than it sounds as the screens are pretty stiff, but after some flexing and slow pressure, it was actually possible to push the screens in.

For the liqueur de tirage, I used Coopers carbonation drops (made of ~3 g invert sugar) that are normally used to carbonate beer. I further complicated matters by splitting each batch of wine into half and adding 2 Coopers drops to one half and 4 drops to the other to give a frizzante-style lightly carbonated sparkler and a full-blown carbonated sparkling wine. After the drops were added, each bottle was capped with a yeast-filled cork and covered with wire hood, and then inverted to dissolve the sugar drops and place the wine in contact with the yeast. At the moment, the bottles are sitting in my guest bedroom closet hopefully beginning to undergo the secondary fermentation that produces those lovely "bubbles"

Salute,
Noel

p.s. And in case you're completely out of media touch: Tom Brady won. Actually, not so much as won, but crushed, obliterated, demolished, stunned, bowled over, etc. He even punted for pete's sakes!

2011 Crush Winding Down, Sort of

2011-11-27T17:51:00.001-08:00

After all the excitement this week, I'm feeling a little let down as the 2011 crush season is winding down. I'll admit that having M&M crush & destem for me robbed a little bit of the experience, but it did save me a lot of work (especially on clean-up). I didn't admit to it in the last post, but I actually left the carignane sitting on the loading dock at M&M when I picked up the rest of the grapes. Was in a hurry since I had gotten there a little late and they brought out a pallet of frozen buckets that was wrapped up so nice, and I completely forgot to count buckets. Got home and realized that the carignane was a separate pallet of buckets.

What do you do in this case? Thank your lucky stars that your girlfriend's parents lives just north of Hartford and happens to be coming to your house for Thanksgiving. Shawna's dad graciously agreed to stop at M&M on Wednesday and pick up the carignane for me. What a guy--I did send them home with 5 bottles of wine as a thank you!

The syrah and grenache are pretty much done with alcohol fermentation. I innoculated with MLB near the end to take advantage of the warm vat temperatures and big nutrient source in the grapeskins. Trying to extend a maceration until next weekend when I can press. The cab sauv is coming along a little slower--just about half done with alcohol fermentation. And the carignane just got innoculated this morning.

Of course, that makes it sound like things are starting to wind down for the year. Can't have that! So I got a bee in my bonnet about other sparkling wines I could make from MA produce and thought--sparkling cranberry apple! Can't get much more New England-y than that. Found some premium cider and loaded up on cranberries on the cheap this week and just started the base wine tonight.

Salute,
Noel

2011 Fermentation---at last!

2011-11-22T18:10:00.001-08:00

It's been a long, long, & difficult harvest season in California this year. Spring rains that knocked the pollen off the flowers and resulted in drastically reduced yields followed by cool summer temperatures that extended into fall. Many vineyards failed to reached maturity and the fruit was left to rot on the vine.

I've been patiently waiting for my grape order to arrive. Almost a month later than usual, the Koch Vineyard cabernet sauvignon reached maturity and was harvested. Of course--it arrived on the East Coast just in time for our Snowtober. Thankfully, the emergency back-up generators at M&M kept it cool. I was simply unable to receive the fruit after it arrived, so I had M&M crush/destem and freeze the must until I could get down to CT to pick it up. The Koch cab sauv was actually the ONLY thing in my order that arrived on the East Coast. Everything else either failed to mature or West Coast wineries snatched it all up. But, my broker Nick was able to find some replacements for the rest of what I had ordered. What a guy!

The line-up for 2011:

32 gallons of Koch Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Suisan Valley)
23 gallons of Lambert Ridge Syrah (Suisan Valley)
12 gallons of Paso Robles Grenache Noir
14 gallons of Lambert Ridge Carignane (Suisan Valley-a special fermentation treat for Shawna)

Now, this will be the absolute latest that I've ever fermented wine and is pushing the envelope of my creativity to get the frozen must thawed and warm enough for the yeast to be fruitful and multiply. Here's some pictures of what I've resorted to. The fermentors are clustered around a space heater and then covered with blankets to contain the heat as much as possible. So far, it's working. Must temperature after innoculation is ~70 °F and cap formation was evident within 18 hrs. I'd like to spike the temperature to at least 85 °F so will continue the heat tent treatment, especially as the temperature dips below 32 °F at night.

Salute!
Noel

2011 Medal Roll Call

2011-11-15T18:47:00.001-08:00

The end of 2011 is almost upon us and I've received the results from the last competition that I had entered. Hate to self-brag, but since this is my blog, I'll brag if I want to!! I took a step back from competitions and only entered wines in 3 this year, Winemaker Magazine, American Wine Society, & the Amenti del Vino Classic. This was mainly due to a little lull in my wine production as i wanted to let the reds age for longer than I have previously. I had intended to get wine submitted to the Indy International competition, but ran into scheduling difficulties and hot weather that was not conducive to shipping. But I believe that these competitions are some of the best for amateurs, and I'm pretty pleased with how my wines fared.

2011 Winemaker Magazine Competition
Silver:    2008 Northern CA Zinfandel
Bronze: 2009 MA Apple
Gold:     2010 VT Maple Syrup "Ice-Wine"

2011 American Wine Society Amateur Competition
Bronze: 2006 WA Chardonnay
Bronze: 2009 MA Apple
Bronze: 2009 Chilean Syrah
Bronze: 2010 VT Maple Syrup "Ice-wine"

2011 Amenti del Vino Classic
Bronze: 2010 Sparkling Concord
Gold:     2009 MA Apple
Gold:     2009 Chilean Syrah
Gold:     2010 VT Maple Syrup "Ice-wine"

Once again, I find the disparity between competitions to be rather interesting and humorous. The VT Maple Syrup "Ice-wine" was the most consistent & highest winner with 2 gold medals (perhaps the AWS judges just didn't know how to rank such a unique wine). And I finally took a gold medal with a dry red wine!

Competitions aren't the only way to get feedback on one's wines and I know all of these wines have been highly enjoyed by my friends and family (which means more to me than a medal). Perhaps the best affirmation I received was a comment from the recent American Wine Society Conference after the Friday night Amateur Wine Experience: "You made the Maple Syrup wine? That was simply awesome!"

Salute,
Noel

LLC Papers Filed

2011-11-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

Well folks, the journey to commercialization has begun. This evening Aaronap Cellars LLC filed for a Federal employer identification number and LLC incorporation with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This really is the "Republic of Taxachussetts" as the LLC filing fee was a whopping $500 (plus a $20 processing fee for on-line filing). I recall my ex-wife filing an LLC application with the state of Michigan for a whole $25. But, as many of you will undoubtedly point out--I live in MA now, not MI. Such is the cost of doing business here, I guess.

But--I am excited to start this brand new adventure! Really, I'm actually smiling as I type this entry, I swear. :) I'm sure there will be times of smooth sailing and times when I want to pull my hair out. Never fear--I'll keep you updated on each and every step along the way.

Cheers,
Noel

2011 Blueberry Port "Snowtober Blues"

2011-11-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Snowtober....who in New England will forget this great Halloween snowstorm? Could this go down in the history books like the Great Blizzard of '78? Probably not, since it really didn't affect Boston very much, and it seems like anything that doesn't happen in Boston doesn't really matter very much.

But it was quite the weekend at Aaronap Cellars. I started off Friday evening (Oct 28, 2011) by driving down to the Cape with Shawna to spend the night before running in the Cape Code Half-Marathon. Shortly before getting to Falmouth, we passed the recent remnants of a horrific car crash that killed one of the drivers. Not much we could do to help so we continued on our way. The next morning, it was a cloudy & chilly day for a race, but I had a very nice run and finished 560/732 finishers with a time of 2:17:16. Not too shabby for my first half-marathon if I do say so myself! And I absolutely loved rounding the corner towards the finish line accompanied by the cheers of a wonderfully supportive girlfriend! After a shower, a nap, and some lunch, we mosied our way back home, stopping off at a Halloween party at the home of one of Shawna's friends. By the time we got home, the rain that had started around noon had turned to slushy snow and the poor trees were already bowing. The rest of the night was spent listening to the sounds of "crack" as tree limbs gave up the ghost and snapped to the ground. We lost power at Aaronap Cellars around 1 AM on Sunday morning and it didn't come back on until Tuesday night.

So what does a winemaker do when the power goes out with no clear time of coming back & he has a freezer full of frozen blueberries? Makes wine, of course! The only problem was that the house was cold and I only had 19 lbs of blueberries. Not enough for one of my regular batches, so I decided to make a port-style wine as I was cleaning out the freezer.

The 19 lbs of wild blueberries (Maine & Canada) were still almost ice cold after 3 days of thawing in the fermenter in the cold house. Had to warm up in a water bath to get them up to room temperature once the power came back on. I'm really trying to boost the body of this wine, so generous doses of Scottzyme Color Pro, Opti-red, and FT Rouge tannins were added prior to yeast pitching. I'm planning on also adding Booster Rouge towards the end of fermentation to provide more body and smoothness. I adjusted the sugar to Brix = 22.0 (PA = 13% abv) to start and started fermentation with VP-15 Rockpile yeast. A little odd choice, but it was what I had on hand for my 2011 grape order.

The blues are off and bubbling as I type. I'm going to add some sugar charges towards the end of fermentation to bump the PA up to about 16% before adding the brandy to stop the fermentation & leave some residual sugar.

Salute,
Noel

Visit to some old Blues

2011-10-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

After a touch commute home, I decided to pop open a couple of old blueberry wines that have been in my library cellar. First up: 2006 Shelly's Blues. So named in honor of my good friend Shelly who gave me most of the blueberries for this batch as well as a collection of old blue riesling bottles that I used to bottle the wine, this was actually the very second batch of wine that I had ever made.

2006 Shelly's Blues
Color is pretty light--kind of an orange-ish rose color. But the nose is unmistakeable--acidified. Big whiff of acetic acid due to oxidation. Darn those artificial corks I used in the beginning because they were easier to sanitize prior to bottling! I've since switched to using premium natural cork because the artificial corks just don't age well and allow to much oxygen into the wine. Too bad--that was my last bottle.

2009 Wild Maine Dry Blueberry
Dark red color. Excellent, complex nose of blueberry (duh), vanilla, & leather. Fruit forward on the palatte with good tannins and smooth vanilla oak finish. The only drawback is the body is fairly light. Very good, decent wine that went great with the left-over Freschetta pizza I warmed up for dinner.

All in all, a good experiment. I was pretty confident that the Shelly's Blues was going to be acidified based on prior experience with those artificial corks. Fortunately, the 2009 saved the day (and I still have 3 bottles of that). It's a shame that my dry blueberry recipe is not well received at competitions because I like it! I've got a few tweaks in mind to pump up the body in future batches. Perhaps I'll start one soon...

Salute,

Noel

AWS Hudson Chapter October Tasting "Rioja"

2011-10-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

Ole! The Hudson (MA)Chapter of the AWS met on October 13 in the home of chapter president, Mike Blake. After a welcome period of socializing andgeneral merriment while enjoying Cortijo 2010, a viura based wine from Rioja ($15), the 16 members in attendancesampled a selection of wines from the Rioja region of Spain organizedby Dick Phillips. A special selection ofSpanish tapas, including Manchego cheese, Jamon Serrano ham, Spanish potatoomelet, & empanadas, were supplied by the members.

Cortijo 2010 DOC 100% Viura ($15, greeting wine)

Flight#1 explored the Rioga classification system basedon length of barrel age

Campo Viejo Crianza 2007 ($12) aged at least 24 months/6 inoak (13.8pts)

Campo Viejo Reserva 2006 ($15) aged at least 36 months/12 inoak (14.9 pts)

Campo Viejo Gran Reserva 2002 ($21) aged at least 60months/18 in oak (15.7 pts)

This was a very interesting flight as the wines darkened considerably and grew more complex with the longer barrel aging. My favorite was the Gran Reserva.

Flight#2 showcased 2 100% tempranillio wines

LAN Reserva2006 ($18) (16.5pts)

Finca Valpiedra Reserva 2001 ($40) (15.1pts)

Flight#3explored 2 blended wines

Conde deValdemar Reserva 2004 ($21) 85% Tempranillo/15% Mazuelo (15.1 pts)

PalaciosRemondo La Montesa Reserva 2007 ($26) 60% Tempranillo/40% Garnacha (16.2 pts)

Another interesting comparison as the Mazuelo (Carignane for us Americans) added a lot of tannin and acidity to the tempranillo while the garnacha (grenache) blend was much smoother. I could have drunk the La Montesa all night long! Dark color, chocolate, plum, blackberries in a soft pleasant nose. Smooth & mellow on tongue with moderate aftertaste

Flight #4 explored 2 wines by a modern producer whoforegoes the DO/DOC rules

Artadi Vinos de Gain 2005 ($32) bottleunfortunately corked

Artadi Pagos Viegos 2005 ($79) (17.4pts)
A spectacular 100% temperanillo with an earthy, complex nose with dark fruit predominating. Full-bodied. Very nice.

Following this wonderful line-up and tasting experience, thechapter celebrated their 4^th anniversary with a recap of memoriesand highlights over the past 4 years and cake!

Salute,

Noel

New Design Template

2011-10-15T08:50:00.001-07:00

While I'm making some changes, I noticed that Blogger is encouraging me to try their new design templates. So I thought I'd try a few more changes in the background, etc. Let me know if you like it!

Salute,
Noel

Still Alive, A 15 Year Anniversary, & New Course Addition

2011-10-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hello again world. It's been too long since I last posted an entry. Somehow, finding the time to write more than 50-75 words about my winemaking activities has been challenging so I've been doing most of my updates on Facebook. Find and follow Aaronap Cellars on Facebook for all of the last minute details on the fun that goes on in the cellar, especially as I start filling out paperwork for the commercial licenses in the coming couple of months.

But I'm celebrating a little anniversary this month. It's been 15 years since some good friends introduced me to wine in grad school (I'm looking at you Bruce, Randy, & Sonja). Hard to believe that just a short while ago, I was a wet-behind-the-ears country bumpkin that hated the only glass of wine I had ever tried. I still remember that very first chardonnay tasting at Bruce's apartment where I showed up with a beer mug when told to bring a glass! Boy, times, tastes, & glass collections have changed!

While thinking back over the past 15 years, I've been amazed at the sheer variety of wines that I've tasted along this adventure. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Greecian, South African, Chilean, Argentinean, Australian, New Zealand, and the myriad of US wine regions--whew! Makes my taste buds purr with pleasure just thinking about it. In recognition of the adventure that I've been on, I thought I would chronicle my tasting adventures over the next year and document all of the different wines that I taste (or at least as many as I can). I'll still keep writing updates on my winemaking, but will somehow figure out how to keep a rolling record of all the wines.

To start, on Wednesday 10/12, I had the privilege to attend "The Brilliance of Burgundy Tasting" at Brix on Broad in Boston's Financial District. I was a little underdressed for my tasting peers, but we enjoyed a number of showcase wines from France's Burgundy region.

Whites (Chardonnay):
2009 Vocoret Chablis ($27): OK, this ain't from Burgundy, but was a great greeting wine to get people into the spirit. Crisp, fruity, & full bodied. Very nice Chablis.
2009 Domaine Andre Auvigue Pouilly-Fuisse ($33): Apricots, aged flowers, & almonds. Rich, round mouthfeel. No oak. AWS scores: 3/4/4/2/2 = 15 (out of 20)
2009 Domaine Matrot Meursault ($52): Dark straw yellow. Earthy nose, not as fruity. Round mouthfeel, some light vanilla, and actually some tannins provide structure with a crisp finish. AWS score: 3/3/4/2/2 = 14
2008 Bruno Colin Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Cru "Maltroie" ($72): Light straw yellow, fruit forward with some earthy notes for complexity, caramel & butter, huge mouthfeel. AWS score: 3/5/5/2/2 = 17

Reds (pinot noir):
2008 Domaine Tollot-Beaut Chorey-Cote-de-Beaune ($40): Light garnet, bright cherry aromas. Perhaps a little pencil lead. Tart, tight finish. A simple pinot noir. AWS score: 3/3/3/2/1 = 12
2008 Domaine Jean Grivot Vosne Romanee ($67): Light garnet with some bricking. Black cherry, smooth nose, a little earthiness. Smoother finish but a little more tannin. Short aftertaste with raspberries predominating. AWS score: 3/4/4/2/1 = 13
2008 Domaine Pierre Gelin Gevrey-Chambertin ($50): Dark cherries with a complex earthy nose. Good breadth of flavors with a rich mouthfeel and a lingering finish. AWS score: 3/4/5/3/2 = 17
2008 Domaine de Courcel Pommard Premier Cru "Epenots" ($102): Sharp menthol aroma, low fruitness. Cinnamon, pine, and green pepper on tongue. Very rough tannic & tart finish. AWS score: 3/3/3/2/1 = 12

And to top off the evening, they poured the best wine I've ever had to date. Completely blew my mind and set the bar for all future white Burgundies (and chardonnays everywhere).

2006 Philippe Colin Chevalier-Montrachet ($265): Smooth fruity nose with mellow caramel notes that just slides over the tongue. Silky smooth with a slightly "sweet"-tasting finish. Lingers long after the sip is gone. AWS score: 3/6/6/3/2 = 20.

Salute,
Noel

Sparkling Concord is sparkling!

2011-02-26T11:28:00.001-08:00

At our last stop in the continuing sage of the sparkling concord wine that I've mentioned before here and here, I had primed the dry base wine with additional sugar and yeast and set it aside to "sparkle" champenois style (in the bottle). After a couple of months in the cellar, I moved the bottles upstairs to my guest bedroom closet where they would be a little warmer. I've been wanting to check to see if the secondary fermentation had a) occurred and b) was complete. During one of my wine tasting group's meetings this past week, the crowd started to demand a taste of some of my "in progress" wines. Fortunately, I had a bottle of the concord in the refrigerator in preparation of testing later in the week. I rather nervously brought it out and popped the crown cap.....

A little wisp of vapor, and then a surge of bubbles! Yay! Fermentation in the bottle had occurred! The wine is definitely a work in progress because although it was dry, it was one tart-tasting wine. It will definitely need to be sweetened and served as a "demi-sec" or "sec" sparkling wine.

So...next step is to riddle the bottle to get the lees into the neck of the bottle so they can be disgorged. I don't have an official riddling board, so going to try this a cheap way. I've set the bottles on their heads in wine boxes and will rotate them every other day or so to dislodge the sediments. So far it seems to be working just fine.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in our sparkling concord saga!

Cheers,
Noel

Vermont Maple Ice is in the bottle!

2011-02-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

Faithful readers will recall that I had an idea for an "icewine"-style dessert wine made from Maple Syrup. Version 1 was started earlier this year and I finally got around to filtering and bottling so I could send a sample into the Winemaker Magazine competition. Of course, when you are done bottling, there's always a little left over in the filter, the tubing, and that not-quite-so-full bottle so that I could sit down after clean-up and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Gee shucks, such a tough hobby...

Vermont Maple "Ice"

Stats: 11.5% ABV, RS = 293 g/L, pH = 2.97, TA = 8.6 g/L

Appearance: Crystal clear, light golden brown, nice strong legs

Aroma: Maple syrup with some nutty & citrus notes

Taste: Bold maple syrup taste with a nice sweet finish that has some interesting pecan/walnut flavors and a citric kick. Thick body. Maple syrup on steroids. Yummm....

Overall Impression: I'm usually not a sweet wine fan, but this is pretty good stuff! Quite pleased with how this turned out. It's sweet, but smooth enough that the sweetness just kind of rolls off your tongue. I'm picturing this poured over some vanilla ice cream at night or even pancakes in the morning.

Cheers,
Noel

The Reserve Line is born....

2011-01-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

Bitterly cold temperatures conspired to keep me indoors on this Martin Luther King holiday so after a morning of errands and house/desk work, I turned to measuring the free SO2 levels in the 2010 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. This wine has been slowly and quietly getting ready to bottle in the background. I haven't blogged too much about it amidst all the over posts this past year. The last post had to do with stabilizing and preventing further MLF. After the lysozyme addition, it's been sitting in carboys during the fall 2010 harvest. I did a bentonite fining in November for protein stabilization and I finally got around to filtering in December after a few good weeks of cold stabilization. I intended to filter all 3 carboys with a 0.5 micron filter to remove as many residual yeast & bacteria cells, but only managed to filter the free run carboy before the filter media gummed up. The last 2 carboys got a 1 micron filter with the intention of passing through a 0.5 micron filter while bottling.

Now that's all been done, I really need to bottle so I can enter it in the Winemaker Magazine competition in March. That's been the goal, but I've been waffling a bit about entering it because I haven't been too overwhelmed by the aroma of the wine, which has been pretty muted. The classic grassy & grapefruit aromas are there, just not real strong. And without that nose, it's been tasting kind of boring. OK tasting, just not much "WOW" factor.

So what does a winemaker do when they produce a wine that's not quite as desirable as they'd like and there isn't much they can add or adjust to affect the aroma? They blend!

What this wine really needs is more aroma, so I went looking for a blending wine that would add some aroma punch. I settled on some 2009 Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand because:

a) NZ sauv blancs are known for their powerful aromas of grapefruit & grass,
b) Oyster Bay helped defined the NZ sauv blanc reputation and aroma profile, and
c) it was on sale at my local liquor store.

I bought enough to treat the free run carboy only because I really didn't want to spend as much on the blending wine as on the grapes originally. After some bench trials, I settled on a roughly 10% addition that would give an improved aroma profile. I made the blend right after Christmas, so I was eager to see how it was doing.

A long story short on the SO2 testing, but free SO2 levels look perfectly fine for bottling. AND, the aromas of the free run carboy are simply amazing. Big grapefruit & grassy nose with a nice crisp & tingling finish. And with that, the Aaronap Cellars Reserve line is born--this carboy is simply so much nicer than the other 2 that I cannot in good conscience blend it with the others.

I'll bottle the Sauv blanc sometime this week and then start working on the labels. Methinks a Reserve label should have some gold in it somehow. We'll see how creative I can get. Anyone know the labeling percentage guidelines to still be able to call a Chilean wine a Chilean wine? CA requires 85% of the grapes to be sourced from a particular appellation to label the wine as originating in that appellation. If applicable to Chile, that would mean I could still call this a "Chile Curico Valley" wine. Otherwise, I'm stuck with a "Southern Hemisphere" Reserve.

Maybe this will just be the "South Side of The Globe" Sauvignon Blance Reserve 2010....

Cheers,
Noel

Almost Everything Racked for Winter

2010-12-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

Well folks, it's been awhile since I've posted. My apologies--life just gets in the way at inconvenient times. The winemaking has kind of ground to a halt with the onset of winter. Grapes came in late this year and cold weather arrived early, so primary fermentation took awhile and now my basement is simply too cold for productive malolactic fermentation. The one wine that did strongly initiate was the zinfandel. It's been bubbling slowly the last several weeks, but really started to slow down as the basement temps kept dropping.

I'm not all that concerned about slow MLF during the winter as the basement is going to be too cold for much of anything else to grow. I've got several options--1) wait for spring and let the bacteria restart on their own (the easiest thing to do), 2) buy some heat pads to wrap around the tanks to warm them up, and 3) at least move the carboys upstairs.

In order to do any of those, I really need to get the wine off the gross lees. I've been slowly racking things off the gross lees and getting them ready for winter. The cabernet franc that was in my 150 L tank got racked to a 15 gal demijohn, a 5 gal carboy, and some assorted half-gallon jugs and bottles. The lemberger that was in carboys got racked back into the 150L tank (after cleaning of course). The zinfandel carboys got moved upstairs into the warm spare bedroom, where the bacteria really sprang back into life. I'm planning on racking that off the gross lees on Wednesday after the housekeeper has come.

Today was the day to rack the merlot into a new tank. Turned out that I really did a crappy job of cleaning the empty tank after it had held the petite sirah. Man, was that thing filthy. Fortunately, a little PBW and elbow grease took care of that. I pulled out my pump, got everything sanitized & rinsed, and started to pump the merlot into the fresh tank.

I'm not too happy with the performance of the pump.

Had a lot of cavitation in the output hose that mixed a lot of air into the wine. Got even worse as the pre-filter got clogged with solids, which happened just before I almost got completely done. Had to disassemble the filter, resanitize it, and try again. Got at least another gallon through before giving up. After tasting it, I think a little microoxidation could be a good thing as it's pretty tannic, but still I don't like that I was beating the wine up that much. I need a new & better, more gentle pump.... Santa, can you hear me?

So almost everything is ready to sit over the winter. I still need to rack the zinfandel off the gross lees and let the MLF finish. That's a job for this week or maybe Christmas Eve. I also brought the carboy of cab franc upstairs and the bacteria in that sprang into action. Perhaps I'll shuttle tank wine into carboys and bring them upstairs for MLF completion over the winter. It's a good thing that my spare bedroom is empty!

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Press Recap

2010-11-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

And finally....

After about 10 days, the musts were ready to press. I had added malolactic bacteria when the brix reached about 1.5-2 to try to take advantage of the residual warmth to help the bacteria get established and growing.

Took Friday, 11/5 off of work after a rather tumoltuous week of nearly losing my job during a surprise round of layoffs. After that scare and utter depression at losing both of my direct reports, I really needed a day to dive into wine and get my mind back into shape.

I don't know about my mind, but my body apparently wasn't quite up to the challenge.

It was a bit of work to press off the wine from the grapeskins and then transfer the buckets of wine down to the basement to pour into the stainless steel tanks. I really need to get a better system for this transfer instead of getting that much oxygen exposure. Future plans...

Here's the basic story in pictures for the cab franc:

Not quite sure how much merlot wine I ended up with--probably at least 40 g. Got a good 24 gallons of cabernet franc and 27 gallons of lemberger. Similar yield (~26 gallons) for the zinfandel. But the stuff has to sit there for a couple of days so I can rack off the gross lees, so I'll lose 1-2 gallons based on how fluffy the lees layer is.

My arms and back gave out around midnight when I was lugging the last few carboys down to the basement (merlot and cab franc in SS tanks, the zin and lemberger are in carboys). Guess all that weight lifting I had been doing in the preceding weeks only went so far! I was incredibly sore for about 3 days after that!

That's where things are sitting at the moment. Will rack off the gross lees this upcoming weekend, but this is where the wine will be for the winter. It's a little too cold for malolactic fermentation to really go strongly and it's just going to get colder. Fortunately, when the cellar is about 40 °F, I don't have to worry about bad microbes infecting the wine while I don't have it treated with sulfite. Things will be pretty much good until spring.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Fermentation Recap

2010-11-09T17:27:00.001-08:00

It's recap time tonight, so let's continue with the fermentation. When last we left, everything was crushed and chillin' overnight. On Tuesday night, I came home and got serious about must analysis and yeast innoculation. Numbers weren't all that bad

Merlot: brix = 21.0, PA = 11.6%, pH = 3.50, total acidity = 7.5 g/L
Cabernet franc: brix = 22.2, PA = 12.2%, pH = 3.42, total acidity = 7.1 g/L
Lemberger: brix = 21.6, PA = 11.9%, pH = 3.22, total acidity = 8.6 g/L
Zinfandel: brix = 28, PA = 15.4%, PA = 3.75, total acidity = 6.4 g/L

The WA grapes (merlot, cab franc, & lemberger) are a little lower brix & a little more acidic than I would have liked. On the other hand, the zin is a sugar powerhouse! I decided to leave the cab franc and the lemberger alone. The cab franc is in decent sugar space, while the lemberge is akin to a pinot noir so should be a little lower alcohol in my opinion. The merlot definitely needed some sugar, so I added sugar to reach brix = 23.0 (PA = 12.7%). The zinfandel definitely needs some amelioration to lower the sugar levels, so i added some acidulated water to lower the brix to about 25.6 (PA = 14%). That's a fancy way of saying that I added some tartaric acid to the water to make it about 6.5 g/L in total acidity so that we don't dilute the acid levels while fixing the sugar levels.

I'm going for a Right Bank Bordeaux blend with the merlot and cab franc so I chose to use Lalvin MT yeast strain that was isolated in Bordeaux and is supposed to emphasize the typical merlot flavors and aromas. I bought a big bag and used it for the merlot, cab franc, and lemberger (mainly because I had extra). For the zinfadel, I decided to use VQ-15 Rockpile yeast--a strain that was isolated from zinfandel fermentations in the dry Rockpile AVA. Since the zinfandel was dry-farmed in similar rocky conditions in the Sierra Foothills, I thought this yeast would be a good complement and really punch up those jammy zinfandel flavors.

After innoculation, the cooler temperatures kept things fairly slow. It took about 48 hrs before the skin cap started to form on the wines and after that it was a pretty slow, but steady fermentation. I added both DAP and Fermaid K after the lag phase and at 1/3 sugar depletion. Used a little extra than normal because the ferment was a bit stinky as a lot of darker thiol aromas were blown off during punch downs. The must temperatures never got above 65 °F or so due to the cold temps in my garage.

The merlot, cab franc, and lemberger finished fermentation after about 9 days, while the zinfandel was a little extra pokey. After 9 days, the zinfandel was still at brix = 6.4. But since I was getting all the gear out and cleaned, I decided to press everything on the same day and let the zinfandel finish in the carboy.

Next post please...

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Crush Recap

2010-11-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

Every year, I swear that I'm going to document the fermentation step by step. And every year, that goal eludes me. This year is no different, friends. The 2010 West Coast harvest was delayed for several weeks due to cold weather that prevented the grapes from ripening. The weather finally warmed up in early October only to result in 1-2 weeks of >100°F temperatures that resulted in flash ripening and grape dehydration. I lost a chance at making some Suisan Valley carignan because the abrupt heat wave rendered the crop unharvestable--turns out this is probably not a bad thing for the sanity of the winemaker at Aaronap Cellars. It also turned out that my splitting the harvest between California and Washington was probably the best darn thing that I could have done as WA was cool, but didn't experience the intense heat wave in early October.

While the grapes were riding the temperature swings on the West Coast, I was busy staying on top of my viticulture class and trying to survive the pressure pot at work. Sad to say, but there were times when I felt like the grapes were adding to the stress instead of being my salvation. But the day finally arrived when I got the notice that my WA grapes were arriving--at the same time as the Amador County Zinfandel. Woo hoo! One trip to M&M! On Friday, Oct 25, I headed south to pick up the grapes. Really enjoyed that trip because I was the only one on the dock that morning and got to meet and chat with Frank Musto, the man behind M&M Winegrape. Really nice guy--very glad I finally had a chance to meet him.

It took awhile to load 1500 lbs of grapes and frozen must. The only hiccup in the whole order was that M&M had inadvertently mixed my lemberger grapes in with the extras that were being crushed and frozen. Although I had wanted to make a white lemberger, no biggee. More red wine and less crushing work. Not a bad trade off. But back to the grapes--yeah, you read right. 1500 lbs in total.

540 lbs of Two Mountains Winery merlot, Yakima Valley, WA
324 lbs of Two Mountains Winery cabernet franc, Yakima Valley, WA
324 lbs of Amador County zinfandel
400 lbs (or so) of Two Mountains Winery lemberger, Yakima Valley, WA (7 5 gal buckets of frozen must which was a little more than the 324 lbs that I had ordered).

I celebrated continuously on the ride home that I own a pick-up truck with a full length bed--this is the reason why. Makes up for all those other days of 15-18 mpg commutes and finding a parking space! Here's what the load looked like when I got home:

That's my winemaking Joanne who was there to pick up her merlot grape order and help me crush. I was very thankful for her help because crushing 1200 lbs of grapes is a LOT of work. With her help, we were able to finish in about 3.5 hrs. That let me get most of the cleaning done before midnight.

Here's a couple of shots of me happy as a clam... "A crushing we shall go, a crushing we shall go!"

The grapes were really in quite nice condition. A little extra MOG (material other than grapes) that I would have liked in the WA grapes, but still very nice small berries. The zinfandel was pretty well raisined, but that's too be expected from zinfandel and what gives it the dark jammy notes. My only complaint was that the WA grape crates often had some dirt stuck in the crannies that fell into the crusher every so often as I was dumping--little extra terroir flavor, I guess.

Now the late harvest meant that it had turned a little cool in Massachusetts by the end of October. Given it was about 10:00 PM by the time I wrapped up cleaning and started to think about must analysis, I decided to just let the must sit overnight. The grapes were still cold from the cold storage facility at M&M and the garage was not going to get over 50 °F that night. Not an official cold soak, but a cool rehydration. At this point, it was almost midnight, so I headed off to the shower and a warm bed.

Cheers,
Noel

Busy Wine Weekend and Disappointed with the Blackelder

2010-10-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

My 2010 grape order is coming on Monday, so I've been quite fortunate in being able to spend a relatively quiet weekend at home getting caught up on a lot of wine stuff. Saturday was a day to catch up on my UC Davis viticulture class lectures and assignment. Took a a break in the evening and attended a vertical tasting of Brunello di Montalcinos from Canalicchio di Sopra and Valdicava at Gordon's Wine & Liquors in Waltham, MA. Absolutely amazing experience being able to sample wines spanning the past 16 years and culminating in 1995 and 1994 Canalicchio di Sopra Brunellos. Even though old wines such as this are not my thing (too raisiny and sweet tasting), I certainly enjoyed tasting a 16 year vertical! Excellent taste bud and aging expectation training.

Today has been catch up on wine tasks in the cellar. I racked the 2010 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc in preparation for bentonite fining tomorrow. This should protein stabilize the wine in preparation for bottling. I also did some taste tests on the Rhubarb and Blackelder wines to determine how much I wanted to sweeten this wines before bottling.

Have to admit to some math conversion problems (shades of NASA's metric-to-English conversion issues). After diligently screening for the best taste profile, I decided on 2% residual sugar for the rhubarb. Just enough to take the acidic edge off, while maintaining a crisp flavor profile. So I calculated the amount of sugar to add to the carboy, as well as the potassium sorbate for stabilization, mixed things together, and topped off the carboy. After I did the same thing with the Blackelder, I realized that I was coming up with the same quantities to add even though the Rhubarb was a 3 gal carboy and the Blackelder was a 5 gal carboy. My unconscious mind was hitting the 5 instead of the 3 button on the calculator! In the end, the rhubarb is going to be about 3.3% residual sugar with 25 g/hL potassium sorbate. A little more than I wanted, but let's see how this turns out.

The Blackelder is another story. Frankly, I'm disappointed in this wine. I used Niagra grape juice as the base behind the blackberry and elderberry concentrates. But this has ended up with a very grapey nose that requires a lot of sugar to taste decently. I ended up choosing 3% residual sugar to give something reasonably balanced, but not cloyingly sweet. I'm honestly not looking forward drinking this wine at this sweetness level--and I have 5 gallons of the stuff! UGH!

Cheers,
Noel

Interim Profile Photo

2010-10-12T18:46:00.001-07:00

Friends of mine have informed me that my profile photo is simply awful. Yes, it's about 3 years out of date. I no longer have that scraggly facial hair. And I usually don't go around with my arms in buckets squishing blueberries (yes, those were blueberries).

So, the old photo is gone. History...

One little problem... I don't have any better photos of me making wine to put in it's place. So you get to gaze at my medal haul from a recent wine competition earlier this summer. Apparently I need to throw more crushing/racking/bottling soirees and have people over simply to take pictures of me in the midst of winemaking.

Volunteers?
Noel

Revised 2010 Fermentation Plan

2010-10-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

Twas a dark day yesterday in Westford when I learned that the Old Vine Carignan that I was expecting to be harvested last week and shipped to MA had been ruined by the recent heat wave in CA. After several weeks of cool and rain, the grapes got flash sunburned and dehydrated

No carignan for Aaronap Cellars....

Oh well, that's life when dealing with agricultural products. And let's be honest, I was probably attempting to do too many varietals and too much volume anyway. Sanity might actually have a chance of prevailing this vintage.

Still would have liked to have made a carignan, though...

Cheers,
Noel

2009 Lambert Ranch Petite Sirah in da barrel

2010-10-06T16:58:00.000-07:00

Remember, eager readers, about the tale of the petite sirah that I started from frozen must earlier this summer? Amidst all the home improvement projects, I've been letting that sit on the lees while it underwent MLF. I was really hoping that it would finish as quickly as the carmenere MLF this spring, but it seemed to slow down and stop at about 100 mg/L. Chromatography showed just a whisker of malic acid still remaining, but the stuff had been sitting on the gross lees for about 3.5 weeks and I was getting worried about possible reductive conditions setting in.

Just about when that I was trying to carve out some time in my schedule to rack off the lees into another tank, I had an opportunity to buy a new barrel. Andrew at Salmon Falls Winery in South Berwick, ME had an extra 25 gallon Kelvin Cooperage American oak barrel that he wasn't going to use, so I made a quick road trip to investigate his microwinery operation (very informative) and pick up the barrel. I figured that racking into the barrel could only help the MLF to finish as wood barrels often contain resident populations of malo-lactic bacteria. After making sure the barrel was hydrated, I was ready to go.

Ended up doing a gravity fill instead of pumping the wine into the barrel. Took awhile, but less stuff to sanitize and clean! I was quite pleased that I only needed about 200 mL of additional wine to completely top off the barrel (used some of the 2008 syrah).

So the petite sirah has been laid to rest while it finishes MLF. I'll check in a week or so. Isn't that color just absolutely amazing? Still very young, but full bodied aromas of dark cherries. This should be good!

Cheers,
Noel

Hiccup in bottling the sparkling concord

2010-10-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

This fall has been a series of procrastinations in the winery due to needing to focus on some of life's little chores. I swore to myself that I was going to charge and bottle the concord base wine this weekend and start the secondary fermentation to make this a sparkling wine. I intend to use the "methode champenoise" to produce the sparkler--basically that means doing the secondary fermentation in the bottle.

After a slow start on Saturday (due to a Friday night social hour at work), I finished practicing the pipe organ and getting ready for the service on Sunday and headed for my favorite local home brew store (Beer-Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA) to pick up a crown capper, caps, yeast, and some champagne bottles. Filled my arms and got to the county, only to discover that they only had 2 cases of champagne bottles and I needed 3.

Well, shucks... Not going to get that done after all.

Bought the 2 cases and headed home. Later that night, I realized that actually 2 cases would be perfect. I've got 6.5 gallons of base wine. 2 cases would allow me to bottle 5 gallons of wine. That would let me finish 1 gallon as a sweet still wine, and a couple of bottles as a dry wine just to see what happens. This stuff is tarter than crazy, but would be interesting to see how it ages and mellows.

Of course, by the time I thought of this, it's too late to bottle and I must wait until next weekend. I really, really, truely, double-dog swear that I'm going to get this stuff charged and bottled this weekend so that the secondary fermentation can get going before the basement gets cold. We'll see (even I have my doubts)...

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Harvest & Fermentation Plan

2010-10-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

Oh faithful readers, you've been patient. Took a little break from winemaking this fall to focus on completing my new entry sidewalk project. Doesn't it look fantastic?

Back to the wine...

While that was going on, I was planning my Fall 2010 Fermentation plan. As usual it started out reasonable, but has mushroomed with the passing weeks. Harvest on the West Coast has been delayed for 2-3 weeks this year due to the cooler summer. That's given me time to plan and get ready, but also time to think (bad combination).

The initial plan was a focus on a Right Bank Bourdeaux blend of merlot and cabernet franc using grapes from Two Mountain Vineyards in the Yakima Valley of Washington. Something akin to a fine claret from Pomerol. Don't I sound like the snooty wino... Seriously, I was really impressed with the wines and vineyards at Two Mountain after I visited and meet the very nice Rawn brothers this spring, so wanted to try making wine from their grapes.

Of course, I have to make a zinfandel ('cause that's just my favorite grape ever) and something completely different. After my trip to Washington this spring, I really wanted to try a unique varietal called Lemberger. It's a red grape that comes from Central Europe and also goes by such names as Blaufränkisch, modra frankinja, and blauer lemberger. For one special person who might read this blog, it's the dominate grape in Hungary's famous Bull's Blood wine! Tannic and typically spicy, I think it makes wines akin to a good Chianti. I ran into several folks on my trip that talked about crushing and pressing off the skins to make a white Lemberger. Another intriguing idea...

So here was the initial plan:

540 lbs of Two Mountains merlot
324 lbs of Two Mountains cabernet franc
288 lbs of Two Mountains lemberger
270 lbs of CA Amador County zinfandel

Looks pretty impressive, eh? I reserved my grapes with M&M Wine Grape in Hartford, CT and sat back to wait. In the meantime, I started to work on the business plan for Aaronap Cellars as a commercial operation and started thinking. I'll post more about that, but to make a long story short, I decided that if I wanted to focus on a particular mission, I needed to make wine from the grapes that define that mission.

You see where this is headed, don't ya...

Last week, I called M&M to see if they would have any extra Lanza Vineyards carignane when it came in. They did, so I ordered some.. another 324 lbs.

The schedule:

Lanza Vineyards Old Vine Carignane ETA 10/08
Amador County Zinfandel ETA 10/14
Two Mountains merlot, cab franc, & lemberger ETA 10/20

Going to be a little bit busy the rest of the month!

Ooh boy,
Noel

Sparkling Concord base wine racked

2010-09-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Real quick note tonight. Just got done racking the sparkling Concord base wine after primary alcoholic fermentation. I'm liking this a lot and maybe I'm on to something here. Granted, it's a very young wine, but it tastes like a spritzy bubbler with extremely little foxy flavor. Lovely dark pink color. Nose smells like a sparkling wine. It's definitely very tart and needs some sugar to balance the acid, but so far so good.

Is this what Concord wine was meant to be? For the non-wine historians, sparkling Catawba was the wine that first put America on the winemaking map back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Catawba is a cousin of Concord, so I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that they behave similarly enologically. Still got to get some Champagne bottles and start the secondary fermentation, but I'm actually liking this now.

Still have to do some more experimentation, but perhaps I've stumbled across a good use for Concord grapes!

Cheers,
Noel

Sparkling Concord Begun

2010-09-04T14:17:00.001-07:00

This fall, I got a special opportunity courtesy of my friends Matt and Catherine. They're in the process of moving and didn't have time to make jelly from the Concord grapes that grow in their backyard, so they asked if I would turn them into wine.

FRANK DISCLAIMER ALERT!

I really don't like Concord wine. To my nose, something that smells like grape jelly shouldn't give me a buzz. That foxy flavor and smell literally demands a sweet wine, especially with the usually incredibly high acid levels (and you all know my prejudice against sweet wines). So I've never bothered trying to make wine from Concord grapes even though they were developed just down the road from Westford in Concord, MA by Ephraim Wale Bull in 1849. Quick trivia factoid--did ya know that the original Concord grape vine is still growing?. You'd think that local history would be enough to make me investigate their wine potential, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it.

So there's time for a little soul searching and thought. Free grapes, it'd mean something to my friends... Maybe treat it like a rose, or crush & press immediately for a white Concord...

Then it hit me--Sparkling Concord! Something like a Spumanti or other demi-sec/sec sparkling white. Lots of fruity flavors with a clean, crisp bubbly finish. I think that'd work, and what better way to celebrate moving to a new house that creating a sparkling wine from the fruits of the old house. Plus, I've never made sparkling wine before. OK, that's the plan!

The weekend before Labor Day, I got up early, went for a run, and then headed over to pick grapes. Matt & Catherine have an interesting trellising technique for these grapes--something I'll call the rhododendren method. The vines are growing up over a big rhododendren bush. Odd, but rather effective (disclaimer--M&C didn't plant the vines, but found them growing there when they moved in). Matt & I picked the grapes and ended up with 2 large Rubbermaid bins full of the little purple things.

After helping move some furniture over to the new house (and sweating like a pig in the 90+ degree heat). I headed for home with my grapes. This is where the fun begins. I'm tired, my back is sore from moving furniture, it's late afternoon, and the last thing I want to do is pull out the big crusher/destemmer to process what looks like a pretty small amount of grapes. My big idea? I'll just pull a chair up in front of the basement TV and hand destem and crush these little babies. Looks like only 50 lbs or so, so shouldn't take that long.

6 hours later...

The grapes are destemmed and crushed, I've watched 3 movies on TV, it's midnight, my butt is killing me, and I can barely stand up straight, let alone squeeze my hand. Yeah, that was a great idea, Noel!

I added some pectinase and 50 ppm SO2 (based on the expected 3 gallon yield) and let it sit until Monday night. I decided to add a gallon of Niagra grape juice since I was only expecting 3 gallons and this should help dilute the dark red color I was expecting. As expected, sugar levels were pretty low and acid was pretty high with Brix = 10.8 and pH = 2.88. I added 45 g K2CO3 to lower the acidity and 2.9 lbs sugar. Hmm, that only raised the sugar to Brix = 14.6, but pH = 3.28 was pretty good. I added another 2 lbs sugar to get Brix = 17. For a sparkling wine base, that's pretty good as the potential alcohol should be about 10.8% and more sugar is added to make the bubbles, so the final alcohol levels should be around 11.5-12%. Let's ferment.

I hydrated a packet of Cotes de Blanc yeast (been sitting in my fridge for awhile, so let's get rid of it) with some Go-Ferm and added it to the must. The next day, there wasn't much sign of fermentation (maybe I really should have paid attention to the yeast packet expiration date of 2008). Following day, I think I smell fermentation, so I added some Fermaid K nutrient and crossed my fingers. Thursday morning--definite fermentation!

On Saturday, I decided that I had extracted enough color and pressed the fermenting wine off the skins. This should also limit the over-cloying foxy taste extraction and give a softer wine. Was a little surprised when my 5 gal bucket under the press filled to the brim. Thought I was only going to get about 3-4 gallons? What the.... Ended up with almost 8.5-9 gallons of pressed juice. That's a little more that I expected, although it does explain why I needed to add almost 5 lbs of sugar. At the moment, the wine is sitting under airlock in a couple of carboys while it finishes fermentation. I'm quite pleased with the light salmon-pink color that I obtained--should look great as a sparkling "rose".

I'll keep you informed, but for now, it's up to the yeast to finish the job. Once the base wine has been racked off the gross lees, it will be time to bottle in Champagne bottles and start the secondary fermentation.

Cheers,
Noel

2009 Lambert Ranch Petite Sirah

2010-08-31T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's becoming a common theme, but things have been a little hectic lately and just haven't had time to tell the world about the petite sirah that I started from frozen must last month. Faithful readers will remember the whole discussion about making the trip to CT for the Brehm frozen chardonnay juice and my decision to make the trip a little more worthwhile by stopping at M&M Wine Grape in Hartford on my way home to pick up some frozen red must. Well, it was WELL worth the stop.

I had purchased 6 5 gal buckets of frozen crushed grapes that had been grown by the Lanza family at their Lambert Ranch Vineyard Block 29 in the Suisan Valley of California. That's just to the southeast of Napa Valley and is becoming known as a very Napa-like climatic region, but much less expensive. I stored the buckets in my basement while they warmed up, which only took about 48 hours. Processing went like a breeze--since everything was already crushed, I just poured the thawed buckets into a couple of fermenters (3 buckets each).

Harvest stats:
Brix = 25.4 (PA = 14%), pH = 3.69, and total acid = 5.1 g/L

Since the acid and pH are a little low and high, respectively, I added 30 g of tartaric acid (1 g/L dose) to each fermenter to nudge those numbers up and down a little. Each fermenter also got a dose of Scottzyme Color Pro to help stabilize the wonderful dark color of the must and break down the grape solids during fermentation. Fermenter 1 was innoculated with 8 g of L2056 yeast while Fermenter 2 received 8g of D254 yeast. My intent is for the D254 yeast to help enhance the fruity aromas while the L2056 emphasizes the spicy notes.

Fermentation was visible within 24 hours and it proceeded rapidly. I was fermenting in my basement, so I was pretty pleased that I got a nice temperature spike up to 78 °F to help set the color. Interestingly, the ferment finished at about observed Brix = 9 in both fermenters, which indicates some residual sugar, but my Accuvin tests say that there is <100 mg/L and it tastes dry, so I believe that fermentation was complete. Both fermenters got a little extended maceration under Saran wrap because I had to wait until the weekend to press. After one messy press job (see picture below), I combined all of the press fractions into my new 39 gal variable capacity tank and innoculated with CH35 malolactic bacteria. It's been kind of hard to determine if the MLF has commenced since the wine is encased in stainless steel. However, when I press my ear against the tank, I hear the faint sound of popcorn rustling and a metallic clank ever once in awhile that I believe is the marble in the airlock letting CO2 gas escape. So, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that MLF is in progress. I'll take a chromatography reading this weekend to confirm, but so far looks good!

I've been pretty pleased with this experiment in frozen grape must. The color of the pressed wine is out of this world, and the taste is full of big cherry notes with a firm tannic backbone.

Here's what my hands looked like when I was done pressing.

Now I just need another barrel for aging...

Salute,
Noel

Maple "Icewine" Racked

2010-08-24T20:04:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting here tonight immediately after racking the Maple "Icewine" that I started a couple of months ago. I haven't seen any activity in the airlock for at least a week or so, the foam at the top of the carboy has dispersed, and the lees are collecting in a nice thick layer at the bottom of the carboy while the wine is beginning to clear, so I'm thinking the yeast has given up the ghost. My hydrometer says that in the past 3 weeks, the specific gravity has only dropped by 0.5 Brix. After considerable thought over a glass of David Coffaro 2007 Carignan, I decided to rack and sulfite.

I ended up with a 3 gal carboy, a 1/2 gal jug, a 750 mL wine bottle, and a 375 mL wine bottle full of these thick, golden yellow liquid. Before I finished cleaning the carboy, I sat down with a small little tipple to examine the product in motion. The aroma is enticing--maple syrup, pineapple, and raisins. The golden yellow color is fetching. All in all, looks & smells pretty darn good. Big, round, lucious mouthfeel with a zing of a finish. I personally think this is calling for a big bowl of ice cream to drizzle over.

Wow, I think this is pretty good stuff. Alcohol is still a little low, but pretty nice balance of sweet, alcohol, and taste. Perhaps a little tart, but I think that will age out. Perhaps next time, I'll aim for a slightly lower acid level.

The wine is in the carboy. After it sits for a few days, I'll start the filtering process to remove the residual yeast cells. In the meantime....

Salute,
Noel

2006 White Salmon Chardonnay

2010-08-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't discovered the secret to time travel--just the next best thing in winemaking. A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I was heading for New Haven, CT to pick up some frozen grape juice from Brehm Vineyards east coast freezer. Between the fermentations, running, and attacking my front sidewalk replacement project, I just haven't found much time for blogging. Since it's sprinkling in Boston this morning, I'm going to sneak onto the computer for awhile before I head into the city for the American Chemical Society National Meeting this afternoon.

After I got home, the chardonnay was still pretty frozen, so I left it in the basement to finish thawing. A couple of days later, I had 3 buckets of juice with pretty decent numbers

Brix = 22.8, pH = 3.59, total acid = 5.8 g/L

Brehm recommended adding 1 g/L tartaric acid prior to fermentation to bring the acid levels down a little. Since I'm planning on aiming for a full-bodied, Burgundian style chard with full malolactic fermentation, I agreed with him and added 20 g of tartaric acid to each 5 gal bucket along with Opti-White to improve the mouthfeel. For added complexity, I decided to use 3 different yeasts and blend before bottling.

ICVD254 to emphasize fruit aromas and nutty flavors.
CY3079 for mouthfeel and buttery goodness
T306 for exotic fruit and pineapple flavors (new yeast from Australia that I decided to try)

I started the fermentations in the buckets. After the bugs started working, I cooled the buckets in a water bath to keep the temperature at 68 °C or below (my current basement temperature). The ICVD254 was a strong fermenter and dropped below 1/3 sugar depletion within 3 days, so I transferred that to a carboy and airlock and continued cooling it in the water bath. The other 2 were a little slower, but were transferred a day or two later.

A week later, I checked the Brix levels and things were almost done. Still have 1-2% sugar left, so I took the carboys out of the water baths for a couple of days to help encourage the yeast to finish. I racked off the major gross lees and innocculated with CH35 malolactic bacteria. I love that bacteria strain because you just add the freeze-dried bacteria directly to the wine instead of rehydrating (one less thing to do). As far as I can tell, MLF took off very quickly because I've got a steady production of tiny gas bubbles in all three carboys at the moment.

So it's a waiting game now until the MLF is complete. I'm pretty pleased so far. Lots of nutty, pineapple, and peach aromas. Color looks good.

Salute,
Noel

2010 Indy International Wine Competition Results!

2010-08-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

Guess what?

The results of the 2010 Indy International Wine Competition have been posted. Indy is tagged as the world's largest scientific wine competition (for whatever that's worth).

Aaronap Cellars received 3 medals for 3 entries!!! I entered the 2009 Chilean Chablis Chardonnay, the 2008 Chilean Malbec, and the 2008 Northern CA Zinfandel. All three wines received bronze medals!!!

Haven't got the judges comments yet, but I'm pretty darn pleased with myself!

Cheers,
Noel

Road Trip for Frozen Grapes

2010-08-07T06:09:00.001-07:00

Last month I got a notice that Brehm Vineyards was having an inventory reduction sale. I've been intrigued by the frozen juice & must products that Brehm sells because he sources grapes from some of the most premium vineyards on the West Coast, including his own White Salmon Vineyard in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington. However, because the grapes are premium and he's got some pretty high overhead costs (with the freezing and storage and all), he charges a pretty premium price. So when the sale notice came out, I took notice and got a little excited when I saw that he had frozen White Salmon chardonnay juice at his New Haven, CT distribution center on sale for $50/5.25 gal bucket (almost a 1/2 price reduction). Granted, it was from the 2006 vintage, but it's been in deep freeze ever since and should still be good.

So I bought 3 buckets.

Now, faithful readers will recognize that I can't do anything without making it as complicated as possible, so you have an idea where this is going. I started thinking...

If I have to drive to New Haven to pick up the chardonnay, I drive right past M&M Wine Grape in Hartford and they've got a wide selection of frozen juices/musts as well. If I were to stop and get a red wine, I could get it fermented before the 2010 grapes come in October. That would make the fall harvest time a little easier for me.

See, it's really all about making things easier... :)

After a little research, I decided to try the 2009 Lanza Vineyards Suisun Valley Petite Sirah. Folks on Winepress raved about it, and the price was reasonable, so I bought 6 buckets.

I took Monday, August 2 off of work, hopped in my truck, and headed south. Trip was just peachy until I hit the I-91/I-95 intersection and ran into a 2 mile backup at 12 noon. Arrgh. I'm flipping through my Garmin turn instructions and realize that I don't have to get onto I-95 like it's telling me to, so I swerved into the exit ramp and bypassed the whole mess. Get to the freezer facility just shortly after noon, only to find that the shipping & receiving office is closed from 12:00-12:30 for lunch. Would have been nice if they had mentioned that on the phone when I asked when I could stop in! Fortunately, an IKEA store was just next door, so I walked over and got myself a frozen yogurt cone. Pretty "cool" way to kill half an hour. 12:31 on the dot, I'm back at the freezer and the shipping clerk pauses his lunch to go grab my 3 buckets. He couldn't have done that 30 minutes ago before he started eating?

Back on the road heading north, I make a pitstop at M&M to grab the petite sirah. Had a nice conversation with Tom who convinced me to try a different yeast. And then it was homeward bound. Got home about 4:00 and moved the buckets into the basement to finish thawing. Here's some pictures of the bounty.

Cheers,
Noel

Maple "Icewine" Started

2010-07-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

Earlier this spring, I've been contemplating niche market wines. These are wines generally made on small scale because, while they have a following, they serve a smaller market base. Dessert wines are a good example. How many folks have a wine cellar full of sweet dessert wines? I have a few, but it's definitely not my first choice to sit down and drink. But there is a definite market for them--Sauternes, sherries, ports, and ice wines. I started thinking of what kind of niche market dessert wine could be made from New England fruits. Blueberry, cranberry, and apples come to mind, but there are already wines on the market made from those fruits (for a great apple ice wine, see Still River Winery in Harvard, MA).

Hmmm, what's another quintessential New England food product containing sugar...

What about maple syrup? Classic New England flavor that's loaded with sugar and can already be found in flavored liquors. I found tons of examples of maple mead recipes on the internet, but I'm not a fan of mead. I also found a few examples of maple syrup wine, but generally that's made by greatly diluting the maple syrup and finishing it slightly sweet. I'm thinking of a big rich, indulgently sweet dessert wine made from maple syrup. Something made like an icewine starting with high Brix must so that even at 12-14% alcohol, it's sinfully rich and sweet.

First things first, get some maple syrup. I got on the trusty internet and found a Vermont family maple house that had syrup still available. Pretty soon, 4 gallons of syrup from Branon Family Maple Orchards of Bakersfield, VT arrived at my doorstep. I ordered 2 gallons each of Grade A Dark Amber and Grade B syrup to see how different the flavors are.

Second, start the wine. I started with the Grade A Dark Amber syrup so I didn't have 2 batches of wine to struggle with initially. I won't divulge all the details, but will just share some generalities:
1) Maple syrup is some high Brix stuff! I was measuring almost 75% sugar in the pure syrup
2) I diluted with H2O to get into more of a usable range
3) Maple syrup has literally no acid. The diluted must had a pH = ~7.
4) Maple syrup flavor changes dramatically when acidified with tartaric acid. Takes on some brighter citrusy flavors.
5) Fermenting with a yeast recommended for late harvest or ice wines.

It's been very slowly bubbling away in my basement for the past 4 months. I'm down to about 10% abv so it's still got a ways to go although it looks like the yeast is slowly shutting down. I have to admit that I'm really liking the result so far. Dark, lots of maple flavor, but strong hints of vanilla and citrus. Could fool me for a sweet sherry.

Stay tuned because this will be interesting.
Noel

Homemade Wine Tasting Blow-out!

2010-07-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

I spent an amazing afternoon yesterday sharing my wines and sampling the wines of Jason & Joanne, two home winemakers that I met at the 2010 Winemaker Magazine Conference in Stevensen, WA back in May. Jason invited us up to his and his wife Margot's house for a wine tasting extravaganza. I was really impressed with all of their wines--even Joanne's mystery red! Lot of people were in attendance--friends & other wine lovers.

I took up a broad sampling of wines. All of the current stock of 2008 grape wines (malbec, syrah, zinfandel), and both styles of 2009 chardonnay. I also pulled out the cranberry-banana and Craniagranoles just for fun. And at the last moment, I stuck in a bottle of the 2006 Seyval Blanc that has been aging in the basement. Really glad I did, because that wine was a hit! It was pretty tart when I bottled it back in 2007, so I've just let the last 3-4 bottles sit down in the basement. 3 years later, it's mellowed into a nice, crisp wine. Hard to believe that it's a 4 year old white wine.

And the best part of the day was meeting a wide variety of folks, including Chris & Nancy Obert, the authors of The Next Harvest... Vineyards & Wineries of New England. Very nice folks who had some great stories of tasting wines around New England. Also met Geno, the unofficial grape buyer of a home winemaking coop down along the South Shore that I've been toying with joining.

All in all, a very good way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Cheers,
Noel

2009 Dry Blueberry Bottled

2010-07-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

Continuing my theme of indoor projects during this New England heat wave, I decided to bottle the 2009 Blueberry last night. The wine has been crystal clear ever since I racked it off the oak cubes back in December and with a pH = 3.13 and free SO2 = 54 ppm back in March, it should have plenty of antimicrobial/oxidation protection. I really should have measured the free SO2 again, but I only need about 18 ppm at that pH and I highly doubt that the levels have dropped that much in 3 months. Plus, I figure there will be a little SO2 bump from the residual sanitizer solution in the bottles.

So I broke out my Enolmatic bottler, sanitized some bottles, and got to work. I'm still having issues with the vacuum level on the Enolmatic. It's either too low and has trouble sucking the wine out of the carboy, or it's too high and wine gets sucked into the reservoir while the bottle is filling. I finally found a relatively happy medium and got all 4 gallons bottled. I used Amalgo Deluxe corks for the closure. Chose those for a couple of reasons: 1) they just need a quick dip in sanitizer instead of extending soaking, and 2) I want a slow amount of O2 ingress to help the wine age a little faster. Not a lot, just a little to add some aged characteristics and aromas since I wasn't able to barrel age this wine.

I'm pretty pleased with the end result. After I cleaned up I was able to relax and watch my favorite "Pirates of the Carribean" movie while enjoying the couple of glasses-worth of wine that got sucked into the reservoir.

Color: Dark, deep garnet (awesome color extraction)
Aroma: Fresh blueberries, vanilla, citrus finish
Flavor: Good body, fruit forward with slight cocoa notes, and a lingering after taste. Good tannin strength on the tongue with a silky smooth finish. Dark fruits & vanilla.

I do think this is my best dry blueberry wine yet and the closest approximation to a red grape wine that I've come up with. The American Wine Society competition is coming up this fall, and I do think this will be a worthy entry!

Cheers,
Noel

Hopefully stabilized the sauvignon blanc

2010-07-05T14:41:00.001-07:00

It's a scorcher of a day in MA, so I decided not to sweat to death while ripping out some sod for my sidewalk project and spend the day dealing with wine because it's cooler in the basement. The sauvignon blanc has been chilling in an ice bath since Saturday morning, so it really needed to be racked anyway. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

It looks like the MLB activity has subsided upon cooling, so I racked off the lees into newly sanitized carboys. With a pH = 3.2 and free SO2 levels around 35-40 ppm, I'm frankly a little flummoxed why the bacteria was active. Those free SO2 levels should give >1 ppm molecular SO2 at that pH and that's way more that the 0.8 ppm that's generally recommended to suppress microbial activity. Generous SO2, low pH, and lysozymes should be more than enough to keep the MLB in check. I added another 25 ppm SO2 for good measure and now I'm going to let the wine warm up. I need to bentonite fine this wine in a few weeks, so I don't want to add more lysozymes now as the bentonite will strip the lysozymes out of the wine along with any other proteins. Going to give the SO2 a chance to work while I'm getting ready to fine. Let's keep those fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Noel

More Wine Medal Photos

2010-07-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to post a shot of the medals that I've won this spring, but time just kept slipping away. Finally, today was a gorgeously sunny summer day, so after mowing the yard and wrapping up a home repair project, I gathered up my trove and headed for the deck with my camera. Gotta take time to pat yourself on the back every once in awhile, ya know!

The first two are the medals from the 2010 Winemaker Magazine International Wine Competition. Silver for 2009 Chilean Chardonnay--Chablis Style and Bronze for 2008 Chilean Malbec.

The next bunch are from the 2010 Amateur Winemakers of Central Illinois competition. Silver medals for 2008 Chilean Syrah and 2008 Chilean Malbec and bronze medals for 2008 Northern CA Zinfandel (Revenge of the Zin!), 2009 Chilean Chardonnay--Chablis Style, and 2009 Chilean Chardonnay--Burgundian Style.

Do have to say that I think those are awfully pretty pictures. I'm going to be shipping 3 of the wines to the Indy International Wine Competition later this week. Will definitely go with the 2009 Chilean Chardonnay--Chablis Style and the 2008 Chilean Malbec, but I'm having difficulties selecting between the syrah and the zinfandel. Neither one got extremely flattering comments at the Winemaker competition, and I think that competition's a pretty good example of what to expect from the Indy competition. Maybe I'll only send 2 wines...

Stay tuned--I'll make a decision yet.

Cheers,
Noel

Sauvignon blanc & MLF--a no no

2010-07-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well, finally had a chance to do a chromatography test on the '10 Chilean Sauvignon blanc that's been every so slowly bubbling away after racking off the gross lees. Yep, there's a bit of lactic acid present which means that my sulfite & lysozyme regime did not prevent a malo-lactic fermentation from starting. Guess the grapes had more mold/bacteria on them than I suspected.

A question for the ages--why does an advantageous MLF occur so readily in spite of your best efforts to prevent it and why is it so darn hard to get one to occur when you want it to happen?

Darn bugs...

Back to the wine--I decided to chill the carboys as best I could to encourage the bacteria to go dormant and then rack into new carboys with a hefty dose of lysozymes to prevent the MLF from restarting. Dashed off to the grocery store this morning for ice and the carboys are currently sitting in an ice/water bath. I don't see any more bubble production, so I think it's working, but want to get these things as cold as possible. My basement has warmed up to a whopping 70 °F this summer so I'm having a little challenge in getting this babies below 60 °F.

Need more ice...

Cheers,
Noel

Wines are at rest (almost)

2010-06-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

One of these winemaking seasons, I'm going to meet my goal of blogging through the production steps in real time. Until then, you'll just have to live with my summary blogs. :)

I'm happy to report that the Chilean Carmenere and Sauvignon Blanc wines are finally racked into carboys and sulfited. Both of them have been giving me some anxiety...

The Carmenere has been sitting on the gross lees in my stainless steel tank for several weeks. I would like to say that this has been a stylistic decision to let the wine undergo malolactic fermentation on the lees to provide nutrients for the bacteria and give the wine more complexity as the yeast cells undergo autolysis and spill their cellular proteins & contents into the wine.

I could say that...but it would be a lie.

The truth is that I just haven't had the time to rack the wine while I was finishing up my winemaking class and dealing with personal life & work stuff. So, the carmenere been sitting there while the bacteria do their thing. I've been most worried about it taking on a rotten egg smell since the Chilean grapes are rumored to do that if left sitting on the gross lees for too long, so I've been giving it a stir about twice week to keep the gross lees from compacting and diligently sniffing.

Fortunately, MLF completed by last weekend and I finally had a couple of nights free this past week. I hadn't boughten a pump yet, so I ended up draining the tank into a bucket and pouring the wine into carboys. Not the best procedure, but I figured it would give the wine a nice splash rack to let any objectionable volatile aromas to escape and be a nice little microoxidation to speed up the aging process. I do believe it worked, because the aroma & taste of the carmenere is AWESOME! Very fruit, tannic, and some interesting chocolate flavors already. I got about 21.8 gallons out of the 270 lbs of grapes, which is actually a really generous yield (was expecting closer to 15-17 gallons. I ended up topping off the last carboy with 1.5 bottles of 2008 malbec to make a full 22 gallons.

The sauvignon blanc has also been giving me a headache. Fermentation was pretty seamless, but I also ended up letting it sit on the leese for a couple of weeks until I had time to deal with it. The free press and first press fraction carboys kept bubbling frequently. Hydrometer & refractometer indicated the wine was completely dry, so what gives? I finally got the wine racked and sulfited about 1.5 weeks ago, only to watch the bubbling continue unabated. I'd like to believe that the wine was giving up dissolved CO2 as the basement has warmed up. However, I think it's more likely that the wine is undergoing an undesired malolactic fermentation. A lactic acid analysis test will confirm that this week, but I think that's the most likely explanation.

If that's the case, I'm a little confused because I added a nice large dose of lysozymes to the must prior to fermentation to prevent MLF, but perhaps I didn't add enough. If MLF is going on then I'm probably going to have to adjust the acid to get a crisp finish again, and perhaps add some oak to make a "Fume blanc" style. Stay tuned!

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc

2010-06-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

The carmenere got its own post, so I think the sauvignon blanc deserves the same! We left the juice chilling in an ice bath in the basement while it clarified. That sounds fancy but it really means that I was cooling the juice to keep a wild fermentation or bacterial growth from starting while the solid gunk settled out. 24 hrs later, and it is amazing how clear the juice became. I would really like to improve my cold-settling capabilities because I can only chill to about 45 °F and that's not long enough to really get a good compact layer of solids. When I rack into a new vessel, I lose quite a bit of wine because the solid layer is still pretty fluffy. But in the end I ended up with about 12 gallons of clarified juice.

The juice ended up with a Brix = 20.1 (11% potential alcohol) and pH = 3.25. I was actually a little surprised at the Brix & pH levels because the bunches had quite brown stems & seeds and looked like they had hung on the vine a little longer than normal so I was expecting a higher sugar and pH. But those numbers are out of the desired range, so I forged ahead (if anything the low pH will help prevent bacterial growth.

I let the juice warm up to about 55 °F and inoculated with R-2 yeast strain. This is a strain that was isolated in the Sauternes region of Bourdeaux. That area grows a LOT of sauvignon blanc and this strain is tolerant to cold fermentation temps and is supposed to produce very fruity sauvignon blanc wines. It also can produce a bit of volatile acidity without proper nutrients, so I made sure that the rehydration medium had plenty of Go-Ferm and that I followed the normal Fermaid K addition program during fermentation. Fermentation took a couple of days to commence, but it slowly started after about 36 hr. I had the buckets simply sitting on the basement floor, so fermentation temps stayed below 65°F to retain aromatics.

I had 2 6 gal carboys (one with free run juice & the other with a mix of free run and press fraction) and a 3 gal carboy with just press fraction. The wine in the 3 gal carboy took off like a shot and finished fermentation in about 10 days. I racked that into a 1 gal carboy and then topped off the free run/press carboy with about half a gallon. I was going to rack both of the remaining carboys yesterday, but they are still producing significant gas bubbles. My refractometer says that they are dry as a bone, but there must be some sugar left in the bottom. So both carboys are patiently sitting in the basement while the fermentation completes.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Carmenere

2010-06-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

My previous post talked about both the Carmenere & Sauvignon blanc wines that I'm making from Chilean grapes this spring, but I thought I would split them apart since they are two totally different wines.

When last we left, the carmenere was macerating prior to yeast inoculation. I neglected to mention that in addition to the 50 ppm SO2 treatment, I had added Scottzyme Color Pro pectinase & VR Supra tannin. The Color Pro is to help break down the cell walls of the grape solids & release tannins, anthocyanins (color molecules), and sugars. The tannin addition is a little counter intuitive, but a pre-fermentation addition of tannins helps to fix the color.

The next evening, Brix = 22.2 (12.4% potential alcohol) & pH = 3.58 so I'm reasonably happy with those numbers and didn't make any adjustments. I re-hydrated a yeast called Bourdeaux Red and inoculated the must. I selected this yeast because it was isolated from the Bourdeaux region of France (where carmenere originated). Plus, it's a low producer of H2S and volatile acidity and requires moderate levels of Nitrogen. I've read several on-line reviews of this yeast that extolled it's virtues, especially for Bourdeaux varietals, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It's a little after the fact, but the fermentation took off within 24 hrs of inoculation and went fairly quickly. We had a week of warm weather during the fermentation, so I was able to get a heat spike in the fermenters to at least 85 °F to help set the color. While normally I'm worried about being able to achieve that temperature, this year I was actually worrying whether I needed to cool the fermentation! Fortunately, a cold front came through at just the right time and the garage cooled back down to normal New England spring temperatures.

Fermentation actually completed by Memorial Day, but I was really trying to get some yardwork done and I wanted to wait on the pressing. I inoculated with VP-41 malolactic bacteria and covered the must with a double layer of Saran wrap. The skin cap stayed very buoyant and I did one punchdown a day until Saturday when I pressed the wine off the skins. I pulled out my old press for this big job!

I transferred all press fractions to Bertha (one of my 80 gal variable capacity stainless steel tanks) and sealed the cover while the MLF completed. I was intending to rack off the gross lees after one week, but couldn't get the job done today due to the weather & other commitments. I'm trying to alleviate the risk of the gross less compacting and releasing off-flavors by stirring the lees every 2-3 days until MLF is complete. My analysis indicates that should only be another 1-2 weeks as long as the weather stays seasonably warm.

And that's where the wine is at--sitting in my stainless steel tank under an airlock while the bacteria do their thing. So far, I'm very impressed with the taste. Bright cherry and raspberry flavors with a peppery, long lasting finish. It needs some aging, probably in my Hungarian oak barrel, but this may be my best red wine to date if I don't screw it up.

Cheers,
Noel

2010 Chilean Wine Season is here!

2010-06-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Trying to get caught up on posts on this rainy afternoon. After I got home from the WineMaker Conference, I hopped in the truck and took off to Hartford, CT to pick up my 2010 Chilean grape order. You'll remember that I was a little concerned about whether we'd be able to access Chilean grapes this year due to their devasting earthquake earlier this spring. But, the ports seem to be working and grapes got to get picked, so although they were delayed a week or two, the grapes did finally arrive.

This year, I purchased Sauvignon blanc and carmenere grapes. After the fiasco with the protein stability of the 2008 Sauvignon blanc, I'm on a mission to produce a wine that doesn't get cloudy during the summer months. And you can't get a varietal more associated with Chile than carmenere, which used to be a French Bourdeaux varietal largely used for blending. The French trans-planted it in South America in the early 1800s where it became confused with merlot since they have similar looking grape bunches. Poor carmenere has fallen out of favor in France and plantings have dropped tremendously such that now Chile & Argentina are the last remaining carmenere producers.

As before, the grapes are coming from the Curico Valley and were in really good condition considering their >4 week boat ride and CT storage for 7 days while I was in WA. After I got home and got the equipment cleaned, I crushed the 216 lbs of sauvignon blanc, treated it with 50 ppm of SO2 and pectic enzyme, and set it aside in the shade to macerate briefly while I dealt with the carmenere. The 270 lbs of carmenere got a little extra grapeskins from the SB that was sticking to the press, but that's all good! After crushing, the carmenere got a 50 ppm SO2 treatment and set aside overnight before yeast inoculation.

I had to quickly clean up and get over to my friend Rich's house to pick up my guinea pig from my excellent pet sitters. It was rather late when I got home, but I had to press the sauvignon blanc off the skins and get it chilled down to clarify the juice. For this little task, I brought out another new toy--a bladder press! The wood slats on my regular press are pretty stained from previous red wines and I was worrying about unintentionally making a rose from my white grapes. Plus, I was wanting something easier to clean and somewhat sanitize when making white wines. And I had a little money from Uncle Sam burning a hole in my pocket, so I purchased an all aluminum bladder press. Instead of pressing the pomace from the top with a couple of wood blocks, the bladder press has a central rubber balloon in the middle of the press that is inflated with water pressure to press the pomace against the metal exterior. This is supposed to result in a gentler pressing and not release harsh tannins due to over bruising or crushing of the skins & seeds. So I pulled it out and gave it a whirl for the first time.

I'm in love with this press. Relatively lightweight & portable, very gentle pressing, and it's essentially automatic! Once you've got it loaded and turn the water on, the bladder fills by itself and presses until it reaches >3 atmospheres of pressure and then the cut-off valve switches on. Here's a picture of Lil' Kim in action.

I learned that as the pressure rises, juice starts squirting through the cylinder mesh with quite a bit of force & distance! Fortunately, the press manufacturer supplies a plastic bag to put over the outside and direct the squirts down to the collection vessel (blue thing in the next picture). I ended up with ~15 gallons of juice (~10 gallons of free run and ~5 gallons of press fraction).

It's a little disconcerting to be able to turn on the water and go do something else, but the automation is highly appreciated in this one-man winery. All of that made for a very long night (got to bed around 2:30 AM), but the carmenere was macerating, and the sauvignon blanc was in the basement in an ice bath to while the juice clarified.

Cheers,
Noel

WineMaker Magazine 2010 Conference Recap

2010-06-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

It has been over a month since my last post--wow! Life has snuck up and kicked me in the knickers this past month and between work-related crud, traveling, my UC Davis winemaking class, & personal winemaking (more on that later), I just haven't found time to write much. But enough about me--let's get back to the wine.

Faithful (and patient) readers will recall that I was gearing up to go to the WineMaker Magazine 2010 Conference in Stevenson WA to see if my wines were received (and learn some other stuff too). At the end of May, I hopped on a plane for the West Coast. I thought I was lucky to get a direct flight from Boston Logan to Portland, OR, but I got a seat about 2 rows in front of a very small child who proceeded to scream her head off for the ENTIRE 5.5 hr flight. That was officially the longest flight I have ever been on in my life & I may have bulled over some folks making a dash for the exit door. I was wearing soft shoes, but I still apologize to anyone who has my footprints on their backs!

Fortunately, the drive up the Columbia River gorge on my way to the WA wine areas put me back in a better move. Unbelievable scenery! And such a dramatic change from the wet west side of the Cascade Mts to the dry eastern side. I had gone out a couple of days before the conference to spend some time in the WA wine growing areas which I haven't had a chance to visit until now (more on that later, too). Let's just paraphrase and say that I thoroughly enjoyed my wine tasting (my wallet didn't) and eventually ended up back in Stevenson for the conference, which was held at the Skamania Lodge overlooking the Columbia River. Gorgeous scenery--here's a picture of the view from the lodge. Nice, huh?

Of course, this was a serious conference so I spent the next 2 days inside at seminars on various winemaking topics like sanitation, proper yeast nutrient regimes, crafting award-winning wines, yeast biochemistry, growing grapes in the Pacific NW, etc. It was a good thing that the weather was cool and rainy because otherwise it would have been difficult staying inside during the packed schedule. Also had the opportunity to meet a lot of fellow winemakers from across the USA & Canada, including some fellow New Englanders (Jason Phelps of Ancient Fire Wines in Londonderry, NH & Joanne Crawford of Crawford Estate Winery in Georgetown, MA). Who'd have thought I had to travel across the country to meet folks who live just a few miles from my house?

The kicker of the conference was the Awards Dinner on Saturday night. I had submitted a few wines and was nervously awaiting the results of how they fared. The awards were announced by varietal class, so I had to wait awhile to get to a category that I had entered. Chardonnay finally came along, and the words "Silver Medal to Noel Powell of Westford, MA" was music to my ears! I was a little dazed as I walked up to get my medal amongst thunderous applause (remember, it's my blog and I'll tell it like I recall it). A little while later in the Misc Red Vinifera category, I heard "Bronze Medal to Noel Powell of Westford MA for 2009 Chilean Malbec"! A second trip down the red carpet (OK, it was more of a orangey-brown color)!!!

Our table did quite well. Jason Phelps took home 9 (yes, count 'em-9) medals and Robbie Rogers also got a medal). We was happy campers!

I think the final picture says it all--talk about a kid in a candy store! Pretty darn pleased with how the wines were received (more on that later, too). Next year's conference is in Santa Barbara, CA, but I honestly haven't decided whether to attend or not. Going to have to weigh the cost, travel expenses, and what new info I'll get out of the seminars.

Salute,
Noel

2010 AWCI Wine Competition Results Posted!

2010-05-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

Had a little shot in the arm tonight when I got home and opened my email inbox to find that I had a message that the results of the Amateur Winemakers of Central Illinois 2010 Wine Competition had been posted. I was a little nervous as I opened the link to the results and scrolled down the list to find my name.

And there it was..... drumroll...... Jackpot!

Silver Medal -- 2008 Chilean Malbec
Silver Medal -- 2008 Chilean Syrah
Bronze Medal -- 2008 Northern CA Zinfandel
Bronze Medal -- 2009 Chilean Chardonnay v1 (my Chablis style chard)
Bronze Medal -- 2009 Chilean Chardonnay v2 (my Burgundian style chard)

I received medals on 5/6 wines that I entered! Interestingly the only wine that did not receive a medal was the 2008 Apple Wine that won a Gold Medal & Best of Show White at the 2009 Winepress.US competition. :) I think that just goes to show that not all judges taste the same so there is variability between competitions with the same wine.

Needless to say, I'm pleased as punch tonight! All 6 of these wines were also sent to the 2010 Winemaker Magazine Competition where the results will be released in 2 weeks at the upcoming Winemaker Conference that I will be attending. Gives me pretty high hopes that they will be received equally well.

In the meantime, I'm going to relax with a nice Italian white on this warm, humid evening and get caught up on some household chores that have been piling up. So goes the life of a home winemaker--always cleaning up after myself.

Cheers,
Noel

p.s. I'm well aware that this post probably serves as self-advertising and bragging. But hey--it's my blog & I'll brag if I wanna!

Aaronap Cellars Grand Release Party

2010-04-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

While I'm waiting for the competition results to be announced and for my 2010 Chilean grape order to arrive, I decided to try to empty a little wine out of the cellar and throw my first Aaronap Cellars Grand Release Party this weekend. Spent yesterday grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning before the guests arrived but I do believe a fun time was had by all!

Initially, I had 5 wines open for tasting:

2009 Chilean Chardonnay V1 -- A snappy French Chablis style with a fruity nose and crisp finish (no oak or malolactic fermentation.

2009 Chilean Chardonnay V2 -- My version of a Burgundian chardonnay. Fruit forward with notes of French oak and a big buttery finish.

2008 Chilean Malbec -- Restrained dark fruit flavors aged in a new American oak barrel.

2008 Chilean Syrah -- Big cherry and vanilla flavors with a slightly herbaceous finish. Aged in a new French oak barrel.

2008 Northern CA Zinfandel -- Big fruit bomb with tons of jammy fruit. Aged in an American oak barrel.

If that wasn't enough, I also popped open one of my last 2008 Dry Blueberry bottles & the award winning 2008 Apple.

Based on the feedback from attendees, I do have to pat myself on the back and say that most wines were very well received. The Zinfandel was the biggest hit of the evening (managed to unload about a case of that!). We even ventured down to the cellar for some barrel tasting of the 2009 Chilean Syrah and another batch of the 2008 zinfandel. People are really looking forward to those wines, too!

So it was a very happy weekend at Aaronap Cellars. Now to go for a run and work off the junk food calories!

Salute,
Noel

Another competition--2010 AWCI Wine Competition

2010-04-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through the Winepress.US winemaker discussion forum last night and came across a new notice that entries for the 2010 AWCI Wine Competition were due by April 15. I was intrigued so I did a little more digging. AWCI is the Amateur Winemakers of Central Illinois, a group of amateur winemakers that got together in 2004 for collective buying power to purchase premium grapes. They've started a wine competition limited strictly to the amateur winemaker that is the 2nd largest wine competition in the state of Illinois.

Since the wines were due soon, I made a snap decision to send in some of my recent vintages and see how they score. At $10/wine, that's a bargain entry fee! Boxed them and shipped them off this morning, so everyone keep those fingers crossed!

Wines entered:
2008 Chilean Malbec
2008 Chilean Syrah
2008 Northern CA Zinfadel
2009 Chilean Chardonnay, no-oak style
2009 Chilean Chardonnay, Burgundian style
2009 Apple Wine

Salute,
Noel

Say Hello to My Little Friends...

2010-03-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

For those of you who think I'm completely obsessed with winemaking, well, you're right! And to prove it, I'd like to introduce you to my latest winemaking toys. I call them Bertha and Greta, and they are two of the loveliest 80-gallon (290-liter) stainless steel variable capacity tanks. Bertha is on the right and Greta is on the left in the picture.

I ran into a fellow winemaker & wine distributor a couple of weeks ago while he was pouring wine one Saturday afternoon at a local wine store. He's in the process of starting a licensed/bonded winery in his basement and was needing to increase his capacity. So he was looking to unload his used 80-gallons tanks and buy some larger ones before the Chilean grapes arrive next month. I had some tax refund money burning a hole in my pocket and had been thinking about upgrading from carboys to tanks, so I went out and took a look at them. I wasn't originally thinking of 80-gal tanks (more like 30-40 gal), but decided that this would be a relatively cheap investment for the future. These tanks would give me the option to ferment enough wine to fill a full-size oak barrel and the ability to do an extended maceration without much fear of oxidation. Plus, they are large enough to be of use for fermenting smaller batches when I make the jump to commercial production. I may not want to make several hundred gallons of a particular varietal if I intend to use it as a blending wine. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

As you can see, Bertha and Greta are lovingly ensconced in a cubbyhole nook in my basement, awaiting their first vintage at Aaronap Cellars!

Salute,
Noel

BlackElder/Elderblack Quick Update

2010-03-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

As of 11:00 PM this evening, the Elderblack is safely in a carboy and in the basement to starting clearing. This wine fermented in crazy style. Not sure I've ever seen such a vigorous fermentation! Which is kind of good because it had to take care of itself. My schedule got crazy busy and I was forced to leave it sit by self for days at a time. Fortunately, the little yeastie buggers found enough food to keep themselves busy and now I have 5 gallons of a gorgeous reddish-black wine!

Salute,
Noel

Blackberry/Elderberry or BlackElder/Elderblack?

2010-03-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

As many of you are well aware, MA had a bit of rain this weekend. If you call 10 inches of rain a "bit" of rain! While I was in the basement anxiously checking to see if I still had a dry basement, I noticed for the billionth time that I had some cans of blackberry & elderberry puree that I had purchased over two years ago. Well, it's raining cats & dogs, what's a winemaker to do? You guessed it, he makes wine! Decided to finally go after the bold, dry fruit red wine that I've been contemplating for a couple of years. I had to go play for church on Sunday morning, so I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to get a few more ingredients and then started mixing things together while doing laundry & cooking my annual St. Patty's Day dinner of corned beef & cabbage.

Now, I'm a little perplexed of what to call this wine. It's about 50/50 elderberry & blackberry based, so could call it Blackberry/Elderberry or Edlerberry/Blackberry.... Or how about just plain simple BlackElder or Elderblack? The BlackElder could lead to interesting label designs with take-offs from the cult classic TV series "Black Adder". Maybe I can get Rowan Atkinson to do celibrity endorsements. Hmmm.... Going to have to think about this one for awhile, so let's move on to the wine.

BlackElder/Elderblack Recipe
2 49 oz cans of Oregon Fruit Products Blackberry Puree
1 96 oz can of Vintner's Harvest Elderberry wine base
4 gallons 100% Niagra grape juice
1 tsp Scottzyme Color Pro Enzyme
6.5 g Laffort Tannin VR Supra

I mixed all of the above ingredients together to make about 5.5 gallons of must. OB = 14.2
Added 5.4 lbs sugar to reach OB = 22.0 (PA = 12.5%)
At this point, I took a pH reading. pH = 3.27. That's pretty much in the optimal range (perhaps a little low for a red wine) so I chose to make no further acid adjustments.

Have to say that the must tastes yummy. Lots of blackberry flavor with a husky undertone from the elderberry! I let the must sit overnight to allow for the SO2 in the grape juice to dissipate. The next evening I hydrated a packet of Llavin BM45 yeast (8g) in ~175 mL of distilled H2O with 10.5 g of Go-Ferm nutrient. After about 4 hrs, there was a good amount of bubbling and burbing in the starter so I added it to the must. Within 24 hrs, I'm observing visible signs of fermentation.

At this point, all systems are go! BM45 is a nitrogen hog, so I'll need to add a couple of good doses of FermAid K as the fermentation progresses. Will keep you updated!

Salute,
Noel

Chilian Earthquake Aftershocks Reach Massachusetts

2010-02-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

It's not often that you're personally affected by a massive earthquake in another hemisphere, but today's magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile has resonated as far north as Massachusetts. I was amazed by the initial news of the earthquake, but was even more startled when I learned that the epicenter was near the town of Talca. For those of you not intimately familiar with the geography of Chile, Talca lies in the Curico Valley in central Chile south of the capitol city of Santiago. You should be able to manipulate the map to zoom in and out for more detail.

View Larger Map

How does this affect me way up in Northern Hemisphere? Well, the Chilian grapes that I order each spring come from near the town of Sagrada Familia, a mere 70 km north of Talca. Those grapevines were definitely swinging in the air earlier today. Harvest is still a couple of months away, but who knows how this event will affect the harvest & shipping of the crop. Ironically, I had just placed my order for some carmenere & sauvignon blanc grapes on Thursday.

Of course, here I am worrying up my upcoming grape shipment... My heart goes out to everyone in central Chile. Reports are still spotty, but there has to have been massive damage to the infrastructure and residents in the region. Aid organizations like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders are already responding to the Haiti earthquake, so they will undoubtedly need new donations to respond to another tragedy. Please, folks, if you are able, consider a donation to help our southern friends in their time of need.

Salute,
Noel

An Old Zin vs a New Zin

2010-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

Quick post before I head to bed tonight. I've had a case of the zinfandel wine that I made as my very first wine from grapes way back in 2006. The grapes came from the CA Central Valley and I've never been happy with this wine (quite a blow to my winemaking ego that the first wine I make from grapes stunk). Very light in color, not all that flavorful, and there was this harsh phenolic taste in the finish. In a word--blech!

I ended up bottling this stuff in 2007 before I was forced to move to MA and I've had a case of the bottles sitting in the basement ever since. Frankly, I've been wanting to free up some storage space, so I decided to open a bottle of the 2006 tonight.

Pause...

In it's defense, the fruitiness is finally beginning to emerge. The phenolic taste is greatly diminished. But, it's still a very light color, light tasting wine with a fairly disagreeable finish. I forced myself to finish the glass and then poured the rest down the drain. I've made a decision--I'm dumping the remaining wine and reclaiming the bottles. The storage space & bottles are worth more to me than the wine.

To please my palate after that experience, I popped open a bottle of the 2008 Zinfandel. This was made from supposedly premium northern CA grapes. I do have to admit to liking this wine--a LOT! Aged in an American oak barrel for 9 months, this wine is dark, heavy, fruity, rich, pure heaven!

Probably not a fair comparison. I've had some practice making wine from grapes since 2006 and used some additional techniques to extract both color & tannins, so shouldn't be a surprise that a later vintage is better. The grape source for the 2008 Zin was much higher in quality. And I barrel aged vs adding oak flavors with oak cubes or spirals. But, darn it! I like the 2008 Zinfandel!

A picture is better than words, so here's a couple to illustrate the difference in color between the 2006 & 2008. In both pictures the 2006 is on the left and the 2008 is on the right. Isn't the difference in color between the two wines amazing?

I've come a long way, baby!

Salute,
Noel

Bottling, bottling, bottling, and more bottling...

2010-02-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

I realize that I've been kind of lax in posting recently. Lots of reasons for the absence, but one big one is that I have been on a bottling frenzy. Followed closely by the capsuling frenzy. And then followed by the labeling frenzy. Seems like my dining room has been cluttered with cases of bottles for

The recent bottling run-down has been:

11 Gallons of 2008 Zinfandel
14 Gallons of 2008 Syrah
15 Gallons of 2009 Chardonnay

Whew! I'm exhausted just typing all of that. One good thing about all this bottling activity is that I finally figured out how to control the speed and ullage levels of my Enolmatic bottling system. Faithful readers will recall that I was complaining about this during my debute bottling with the Enolmatic. Well, turns out that there's this little knob on the side that controls the vacuum level. What I thought was the low setting was actually the high setting. If you keep cranking the knob to the left, you actually lower the vacuum level and bottles fill slower. Man, what a difference that makes! Now my ullage levels are more consistent, less wine gets sucked into the overflow containor, and I can cork the previous bottle and still have time to swig a drink of wine before the new bottle is full. Much better!

Salute,
Noel (yeah I'm giving up the pseudonym)

Another day of filtering & bottling

2010-02-15T16:39:00.000-08:00

I had President's Day off today, so I decided to filter and bottle the last of the chardonnay that had been sitting on oak since early January. Taste tests indicated that the oak level was just about perfect so it was time for action. The filtering actually went quite easily. I used 0.5 micron filter pads in my Buon vino minijet to remove as much sludge as possible and the wine came out crystal clear. I bottled within a couple of hours and got 25 bottles from 5 gallons of wine. The bottles were sealed with 1.5 inch natural corks.

I think I'm pretty much done with filtering & bottling for awhile and should be all set to send off a load of wine for judging in the 2010 Winemaker Magazine Amateur Wine Competition. At the moment, I'm planning on sending at least 8 bottles, possibly 9 if tomorrow night's taste test works out.

Salute,
a MA Winemaker.

Rhubarb Progress

2010-02-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

Very brief post here to catch up on the rhubarb wine progress. After a couple of days in the bucket, I poured into carboy to allow the fermentation to finish under an airlock. I added a strong dose of FermaidK to try to overcome the very strong smell of H2S that this wine is kicking off. Here's the result in living color.

Interestingly, this wine is a strong pink color. Will be interesting to see how long this color persists or if it gets bleached out after fermentation is over.

Stay tuned!
a MA Winemaker

Topping, Tastings, and Tossing

2010-02-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

I went down into the winery/cellar this afternoon to top off the zinfandel & syrah barrels and pull some wine from the apple and oaking chardonnay to taste their progress. First off, both batches of the apple wine are tasting great! There isn't a lot of obvious difference between the two at the moment (only change was the yeast strain in the fermentation). The second batch that was fermented with 71B-1122 yeast seems a little rounder & fuller in the mouthfeel, which is what I'm wanting since 71B is known to metabolize some of the malic acid to lactic acid.

The chardonnay is also tasting very nice. I racked it off the bentonite treatment on Jan 10 and added a couple sticks of French oak medium toast spirals for some added complexity from the oak. Not as vanilla, buttery, & soft as I'd like so I'll leave it on the spirals for a couple more weeks.

Now this is where I started to get exasperated. I needed to top off the chardonnay & apple carboys to prevent air oxidation of the wine. However, I discovered that my current stock of chardonnay is extremely low! Only 4 bottles of commercial chard in my entire cellar! So I decided to grab the 2007 Sandhill Crane Vineyards Chard for topping off, only to discover that it smells like massive brett invasion. Disappointing--that went down the drain. I next grabbed a 2005 Firelands Isle St. George Barrel Select chard. To my dismay, that bottle was noticeably brown and smelled like sherry. Also went down the drain. Two for two! I've never experienced this rate of bottle failure before!

I really don't want to break into my other two bottles for topping wine since they're rather expensive. So, I'll head out to the liquor store before dinner tonight and grab a bottle or two of inexpensive oaked chardonnay for topping off.

Who'd a thunk?
a MA Winemaker

p.s. Completely forgot about the reds! The syrah is just like ink with big notes of pepper & bright fruit. The zinfandel is also yummy. Big, opulent dark fruit flavors & high alcohol! Both of these have only been the barrel for about a month so there's a long way to go. Stay tuned for further updates.

Rhubarb!

2010-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

I've had about 9 lbs of rhubarb sitting in my chest freezer since the spring of 2008, but just haven't had the time to get it into a fermenter. This fall, the chest freezer left the house and my kitchen freezer became stuffed to the gills, so the time had come to free up some space. I made a rhubarb wine previously back in 2006 and wasn't all that happy with the results. I went for a strong rhubarb flavor and used 4.5 lbs/gallon. There was also a slight sugar miscalculation and the wine ended up about 14.5% alcohol--aka, rhubarb flavored rocket fuel!

To gain some new inspiration, I popped open one of my last bottles while I contemplated my goals for this wine...

Ewww, YUCK! Holy oxidation, Batman! Tasted like rhubarb flavored sherry--and that's not a good flavor. Apparently the synthetic cork had slowly allowed O2 into the bottle and turned this stuff absolutely rancid.

Back to the drawing board for a wine destined to be a light summer sipper (dry, of course).

There's been a discussion on the Winepress.US forum for a rhubarb wine with some added pineapple juice for complexity (see this link), so I thought I would give it a shot. One of my concerns about fruit wine is that they are very uni-dimensional, i.e. an apple wine tastes like apple, and a raspberry wine tastes like raspberries. Not a lot of other flavors to add complexity. So I was intrigued by adding some citrus notes to the rhubarb. I also thought about fermenting as a normal white wine after "pressing" the juice from the pulp.

With thought whirling through me head, I rolled up my sleeves, pulled the rhubarb out of the freezer and set to work:
1) Placed the frozen chopped rhubarb in a 5 gallon bucket and let thaw a little overnight.
2) Added 4.5 lbs of sugar, Scottzyme Cinn-Free Enzyme, 1/8 tsp potassium metabisulfite, & 0.4 oz calcium carbonate and mixed well (good thing I've been working out this past year--my arm muscles got some exercise mixing all that together)
3) Let stand in the garage to sugar extract & thaw. The cold garage allowed me to let this sit for 7 days without spoilage.
4) Brought back inside to warm up. There was a LOT of liquid extracted from the rhubarb! I "pressed" the pulp by straining through a mesh strainer to obtain about 0.75 gallons of rhubarby goodness.
5) I added 92 oz Dole pineapple juice & 2 gallons distilled water.
6) The must was adjusted to Brix = 19.0 (10.5% potential alcohol) and pH = 3.22 by addition of sugar and tartaric acid. Interestingly the acid addition made the must turn a lovely rosy-salmon color.
7) Hydrated a packet of Lalvin D-47 yeast with Go-Ferm nutrients and added to the must.

I observed a strong fermentation with 18 hrs. It's sitting in the coldest corner of my kitchen at the moment fermenting away. Gone through 1/3 sugar depletion within 48 hours! Lot of foam, but that rosy salmon color is still gorgeous (I'm betting it won't last past the first K-meta addition, but we'll see).

I'll probably pour into a fermenter in a couple of days to ferment under an airlock, but it's certainly going like gang busters!

Cheers,
a MA Winemaker

14 Gallons of Syrah and a new toy

2009-12-24T12:16:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write about my new winemaking toy for a few weeks, but have been struggling to find the time. It's the day before Christmas, my suitcase is packed, and I finally have some free time before I head over to a friend's house for Christmas Eve so here goes (hold your horses)...

I've mentioned the 2008 Chilian Syrah in the past (see post1, post2, & post3). It's been sitting in a Hungarian oak barrel for the past 9 months or so and is now ready for bottling. Now, I'll admit to dreading bottling this wine because it's a 14 gallon barrel. Bottling would mean pumping the wine out of the barrel into carboys so that I could bottle using the gravity siphon that I've been using for the past 3 years. That's a lot of stuff that needs cleaning when I'm done--groan......

What to do, what to do... Fortunately, modern technology has provided an answer in the Enolmatic! This a vacuum powered bottling device that gently sucks the wine into the bottle and then automatically stops when the bottle is full. Up to this point, I haven't been working on the scale that justified purchasing one of these units. But now that I'm facing a 14 gallon barrel, I took the plunge and bought one as an early birthday present to me.

After it arrived a couple of weeks ago, I sanitized 8 cases of bottles and got to work. In a little more than 30 minutes, I had 7.5 cases bottled, corked, and boxed. And all I had to clean up was the Enolmatic (I'm leaving out the 3 carboys of 2009 Syrah that I put into the now empty barrel, but that would have happened anyway). The Enolmatic truly rocks!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so hopefully these will fill the bill. It's a single bottle unit, but that allows me to turn around and cork a filled bottle while the next bottle is being filled. The close-up of the Enolmatic doesn't do it justice, but there is a vacuum trap chamber on back of the machine that captures excess wine once the bottle is filled. This chamber needs emptying back into the barrel now and then, which provides a little break time every so often. The one complaint I have is that setting the proper fill level is tricky. I had some challenge setting the level too low and having too much ullage or taking the bottle off the machine too slowly and over-filling. Spent a good deal of time pouring a little out of the bottle into a too-low ullage bottle. Still, even with that issue (which I should be able to fix with practice), I finished bottling, corking, and boxing 7.5 cases of wine in just 1-2 hours. And had very little clean up afterwards.

Get yourself an Enolmatic and you'll not regret it!

Salute,
a MA winemaker

Protein--be stabilized!

2009-12-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

Last year, I had a stability issue with my 2008 Northern CA sauvignon blanc. It was crystal clear when I bottled (I swear--even filtered with a 0.5 micron filter), but as the summer progressed and temps in the basement cellar rose, some slight sediment fell out. Didn't affect the amazing taste or aroma, but the slight haze resulted in poor marks in the Winepress.US competition. The judges uniformly stated that without the haze, it would have been the Best of White by a long shot. Oh well, that's my bad. BUT--how to prevent this from happening again in the future???

The most likely conclusion that I've come to is a protein haze. My research tells me that Sauvignon blanc is notorious for protein hazes that form upon warming. These proteins are soluble at lower temperatures, but start to denature and precipitate as the temperature increases. A common preventative is to fine the wine with bentonite. The bentonite clay absorbs the soluble proteins and fall to the bottom of the carboy.

The main reason I've been looking into this is because I've got 15 gallons of 2009 Chilian chardonnay that I'd like to bottle soon. I had split the chard into 3 different 5 gallon batches to experiment with different yeasts, MLF, and oakings. Two carboys are crystal clear while the third is still a little hazy. I decided to do a light dose bentonite fining on the clear carboys for protein stabilization and a heavy dose on the hazy carboy for clearing & protein stabilization. Gets a little more complicated when one of the clear carboys has some lees at the bottom, so I have only had time to bentonite fine the other clear carboy. The other two will have to wait until after Christmas when I can rack them off the lees deposits.

That all said and done, I hydrated a 1.5 g/gallon dose of bentonite in 3/4 c of warm water--swirling like crazy and then letting the mixture sit for 24 hr. Only then did I pull some wine out and dump in the bentonite suspension and top off the carboy. After giving a good swirl to mix, the suspension has been slowly falling out over the past couple of days. I may have to bring the carboy upstairs to warm to room temperature before racking and bottling, but will see after Christmas.

By the way--the left over wine that I had to taste was AMAZING! Clean & crisp, with bright green apple & citrus flavors. Ooh, boy! Can't wait for this one!

Salute,
a MA Winemaker

Wine, wine, everywhere...

2009-12-13T16:13:00.000-08:00

I played "holy hookey" from church today. That's becoming a theme while God and I work some things out between us, but the main reason I stayed home was so that I could get some exercise in this weekend and bottle the 2008 syrah. I gave myself an early birthday present and bought myself an Enolmatic bottler so that I could bottle straight out of the barrel instead of pumping into carboys and then gravity bottling. The syrah has been needing to be bottled so today was the day (especially since it's raining and cold and just plain yucky outside.

I peeled myself off the exercise bike around 12:30, cleaned up, and got some lunch. Then it was down to the cellar to sanitize some bottles. Three hours later, I had 6.5 cases of syrah bottled, corked, and boxed. With the barrel empty, I racked in the 2009 syrah, and then had to clean up.

Needless to say, I'm a little tired at the moment and need to get some dinner. I'll upload a picture of my one-man bottling set up in a little bit.

Cheers,
a MA Winemaker

Got My Medals!

2009-12-13T07:57:00.001-08:00

Faithful readers will remember that my 2008 Apple wine received some very high honors at the 2009 Winepress.US wine competition this fall. Gold medal & Best of Show White! Well, I recently received the actual medals & wanted to share. Don't they look very pretty in the early morning winter sunlight?

:)

The judges awarded it 17-19 points (out of 20). Some of their comments:

Good fruit in nose
Good acid balance
Fruit up front in mouth
Lingers well in mouth
Intense apple flavor
Fruit carries through all the way. Good job on a difficult wine! (OK, that's my favorite!)
Crab apple nose (gonna have to find some crab apples at some point)

I'm still grinning about the results!

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

It was good the first time, let's do it again!

2009-11-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

I wasn't planning on doing any fermentations this fall due to an overseas vacation right smack dab in the middle of the harvest season. Trust me, you have no idea how hard it was to willingly bow out of the fall grape harvest! But, faithful readers will recall the previous post about winning an award for my 2008 apple wine, and the cider I used isn't produced until the first week of November... You see where this is going, don't you?

You're right--I caved and bought some cider. Last year I made 4 gallons using Cotes de Blanc yeast, so of course I decided to make things a little complicated this year. Why try one different yeast strain when you can try two?

The plan:
I bought 8 gallons of premium cider from Carlson Orchards. Due to all the cool, rainy summer & fall, the sugar level was a little low (only about 9-10 Brix, or 4-5% potential alcohol) and acid levels were a little higher than normal. I added cane sugar to get to 20 Brix (12% PA), but did not adjust the acid. The pH levels were just about perfect for a white wine, so I decided to leave that alone. I'm trying to prevent malo-lactic fermentation altogether, so I added lysozymes pre-fermentation. Four gallons are currently being fermented cool using D47 yeast (my basement is a perfect 55-58 °F right now). The other 4 gallons are fermenting upstairs at room temperature using 71B-1122 yeast. I'm going for a clean, crisp white with the D47 yeast. The 71B-1122 yeast will convert about 30% of the malic acid to lactic acid, so I'm wanting to see if that results in a slightly more complex wine.

Things are in mid-ferment right now. I fermented in buckets for a few days to get things going, and then poured into carboys with air-locks. Both carboys are still bubbling away, and smelling heavenly!

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

2008 Apple, An Award-winning wine!

2009-10-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I received some fantastic news earlier this week. I learned that I had received several awards at the 2009 Winepress.US Winefest Competition! Three of my wines received honorable mention awards (2008 Sauvignon Blanc, 2008 Zinfandel Rose, and 2008 Blueberry), and, more exciting, the 2008 Apple was awarded a Gold Medal and chosen as Best of Show White!

Wow! I was walking on air!

I haven't gotten the judges' notes yet, so I don't know what their comments were yet. But if I needed a shot in the arm that perhaps I do know what I'm doing, this was it! I still have 7 bottles of the 2008 Apple, so I'm going to save 3-4 and enter them in a couple of other competitions next spring. Stay tuned for those results!

I thought I had written a post about the 2008 Apple, but going back through my archive tells me that I apparently have not. Well, let's just rectify that briefly. The wine was made from a premium blend of cider from Carlson Orchards in Harvard, MA that I purchased from Beer & Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA. I don't know the exact apple varieties that went into the cider, but the cider is supposed to be specifically designed for making premium hard cider. I do recall that it was tasty cider!

I won't bore you with all the fermentation details, but my goal for this wine was to produce a clean, crisp, dry wine akin to a sauvignon blanc or pinot gris. I added lysozymes to prevent malo-lactic fermentation and maintain the crisp taste & finish. Fermentation was done with Red Star Cote des Blanc yeast over a 2 month period at low temperature in the basement. This was during November & December in Massachusetts, so my basement air temperature was about 58-59 °F. After fermentation to complete dryness, the wine was allowed to clear naturally over 3 months with 2 rackings, and three gallons were bottled in May. I will have to admit that I haven't tasted this wine in a couple of months, but my tasting notes shortly after bottling are below.

Appearance: Crystal clear, light straw yellow
Aroma: Crisp green apple, like sniffing a Granny Smith fresh from the tree.
Taste: Crisp, mild apple flavor with a slight tingle on the tongue. Light body.

I will have to taste it again soon and update my tasting notes. I also made another gallon that was lightly oaked with medium toast French oak cubes for about 2 months. When I bottled that, I actually liked it even more than the unoaked version. I haven't cracked a bottle of that open yet, but will do so soon! Too bad I only have 4 bottles of that left.

I was waffling about making this wine again, but winning that award changed my mind. I just placed an order for 8 gallons a couple of days ago. I'm thinking of making 2 separate 4 gal batches using different yeasts and then blend them together to add some complexity. When I receive the medal and award, I'll take a picture with the bottle and post it to the blog for posterity.

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

A Little Barrel Tasting

2009-09-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of a frenzy of packing to get ready for a big trip, but I took a few moments tonight to do a little barrel tasting. Had to make sure the barrels were topped off since I don't think I'll be able to attend to them for about a month. So, I'm sitting in front of the computer with a couple of tasting glasses of 2008 Chilean Syrah and 2008 Northern CA Zinfandel. And, I'm impressed...

The Chilean Syrah is really beginning to bring the fruit forward. The caramel and vanilla tones of the Hungarian oak are providing broad strokes in the background, while the cherries & stone fruit are starting to muscle their way to the front of the palette. A little more black pepper and spice would be nice, but let's wait and see.

The Zinfandel continues to be a massive dried fruit bomb. Strong aromas of cassis and dried cherries. The American oak is still very subtle with some interesting vanilla counterpoints and accents around the main aromas and tastes, so I'm thinking of keeping this in the barrel for another 3-6 months.

Since I'm waxing poetic about the wine, I think that means I've had a little bit too much to drink. Must get to bed so I can go make a living in the morning.

Salute,
a MA Winemaker

Class is over...for now

2009-09-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well, most of the nation is just starting the new school year, but I have officially completed the first course in the UC Davis Winemaking Certificate program. Took the final this morning on a dreary & rainy New England fall day. Pretty perfect setting for a final exam! I really must thank the staff at the Westford Library for serving as my proctor for this class and making sure that I didn't cheat. Can't be too careful with us winemakers, you know!

I'm glad the final and course are done. Pretty sure that I did OK on the final. But they weren't kidding when they said they were going to make the final harder after the class showing on the midterm. They pulled out some really obscure details and focused on what I would have termed as the less important sections. Oh well, I wasn't the instructor so I really shouldn't complain too much. Otherwise people will think I'm pre-med major! Did good enough to pass and that's all that matters.

So, now I wait for an opening in the second course. Probably sometime next fall.

Back to my winemaking...
MA Winemaker

One malbec, two malbecs, three malbecs--Ah, ah, ah!

2009-08-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you're probably scratching your head wondering where the summer has gone this year. Seems like it was just a few weeks ago that the daffodils were poking their blooms up and now it's after Labor Day. Although my absence on the web has gone on for longer than I wanted, my winemaking efforts have not stopped. So I'll try to recoup the summer and catch everyone up to speed.

One of my biggest achievements was getting the 19 gallons of 2008 Chilean Malbec out of the barrel and bottled. When last I posted on the Malbec in April, I was facing a rather bitter taste that seemed to be fading with barrel age. At the time, I had 10 gallons that have been in a new American oak barrel for about 6 months and 9 gallons that had been in the same barrel for 1 month as it was breaking in. The later batch was split between a 6 gal and 3 gal carboy and I had treated the 3 gal carboy with 0.08 oz/gal of Biolees for 4 months to see if that would soften the bitter taste. In July, I was finally happy with the taste. All of the carboys had a much smoother taste so I decided to bottle in 3 separate versions.

Ver1: 1 month barrel age and 4 month Biolees treatment, pH = 3.49, free SO2 = 108 ppm, natural cork closure, 15 bottles
Ver2: 1 month barrel age, pH = 3.51, free SO2 = 84 ppm, natural cork closure, 30 bottles
Ver3: 6 month barrel age, pH = 3.48, free SO2 = 72 ppm, amalgamated cork closure, 49 bottles

I'm going to do some tasting samples this week and edit the post with my notes and pictures, so stay tuned.

Chilean Syrah MLF

2009-07-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers will recall that I've been working on a batch of Chilean Syrah this spring. Primary fermentation was complete on schedule, and other than getting a wine bath when I pressed, no big issues arose. We last left the wine after innoculation with malo-lactic bacteria and it's been doing it's thing ever since.

Interestingly, the two different batches of wine behaved quite differently after innoculation. The batch fermented with D80 yeast displayed the characteristic shower of tiny bubbles once the MLF (stands for malo-lactic fermentation, not the other thing, you perve) commenced. On the other hand, the batch fermented with D254 yeast displayed no bubble formation or any other sign that the MLF was in progress.

After about two weeks, I transferred about 2 cups of wine between the batches to try to get things going. The D254 batch finally started to display some bubble formation, but nothing to really brag about. Since then I've just let it sit while I tried to figure out what to do. After another couple of weeks (had other errands to take care of in the meantime), I ran a chromatography test and amazingly, both batches exhibited <100 ug/L malic acid. I was out of the Accuvin test strips that I prefer to use to monitor MLF, so it took another couple of weeks to finally order some test strips and receive them. Last night, the D80 yeast is at around 50 ug/L malic acid while the D254 yeast is around 75 ug/L. MLF is considered done when the level is less than or equal to 30 ug/L so both batches are slowly getting there. Very interestingly, the D80 batch is still producing a fairly steady stream of tiny bubbles, while the D254 batch only emits an occasional bubble. I'm going to let both batches keep going and will check on the progress in another 2-3 weeks.

Salute,
MA Winemaker

p.s. Update on 7/19/2008: I was considering racking the D80 batch and stopping the MLF with a SO2 addition. In preparation, I brought the carboys into the kitchen from the garage on 7/16. As soon as I did that, the MLF seems to have kicked into high gear and almost started bubbling out of the carboy. Had to remove a little wine to prevent overflow! The kitchen is cooler than the garage, so I'm assuming that the motion of carrying the carboys inside helped to mix the wine in the carboy and brought the residual malic acid in contact with the bacteria for easier metabolism. Bubble formation seems to have stopped or greatly slowed this morning, so I'll test tonight and see if MLF is complete.

2008 Cranberry-Banana Tasting

2009-07-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

I've had a bottle of the 2008 Cranberry-Banana in the fridge for the past 2-3 weeks ever since I shipped a half case of wine off to the Winepress.us Wine Competition last month (I'll post about that tomorrow). Finally popped it open last night, and I'm polishing off the rest tonight while I rest my aching legs after a 3.5 mile run.

Some people exercise to live, others live to exercise. Me...I exercise to drink! Gotta work off those calories somehow!

Anyway, back to the wine...

Faithful readers will recall that I was running an experiment last year to determine the best way to add body to fruit wines. There is one faction that prefers to use grape juice (Niagra or Concord) as a base to provide the body and structure to lighter fruit wines. Another recommendation is to add bananas. Presumably the glycerin concentration in bananas helps to round out the mouthfeel. A side benefit is that mashed bananas are a magic bullet for inducing rapid fermentations. I believe that's a result of the vitamins and nutrients in bananas as well as the simple carbohydrates are easy for yeast to digest.

Appearance: Light pinkish orange. Clear. Nice leg structure (12% aBV)
Aroma: Nice light whiff of cranberries (what a surprise), with some hints of rhubarb in the background.
Taste: Again with the cranberries! It's a nice, pleasant summer squaffer with a light, crisp cranberry finish. A just slightly sweet finish at 2% RS. Good overall mouthfeel that lingers on the tongue.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this wine. One would be surprised that there is not an overwhelming banana flavor. There's a little white fruitiness that surrounds the cranberry flavor, but nothing that is distinctly banana. Do I think the bananas really made a difference in the body? I think there is a contribution and an underlying silkiness, but not as much as I was hoping for. Perhaps I need more bananas?

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

p.s. As I was publishing this post, I realized that I haven't described the final results of either batch from the cranberry body experiment. Stay tuned--I will correct that and give details on the Cranberry-Niagra blend as soon as I can.

Previous Cranberry Wine posts:
Starting the Body Experiment
Fermentation Almost Done
Racked the Cranberry-Grape
Racked the Cranberry-Banana
Racking off the Gross Lees
Cranberry Clearing

Accepted!

2009-06-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

A very quick post tonight... I received notice this afternoon that I have been accepted in the UC-Davis Extension Winemaking Certificate program. Just in time to sign up for the first course "Intro to Winemaking" that starts June 30. After that, there is a 10 month waiting list for the 2nd course, so I must be patient!

I'm not expecting the course list to be a walk in the park and will undoubtedly eat into my limited spare time, but I'm convinced this is the path to take.

Cheers,
a MA Winemaker

UC Davis Winemaking Certificate Application Submitted

2009-06-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

I took the plunge tonight and submitted my application for the UC Davis Winemaking for Distance Learners Certificate program. Feeling a little nervous at the moment (just like sending out college applications!), but I think this is an important step for me. If I'm accepted, completing the coursework will require a lot of evening homework and polishing off those rusty General Chemistry & Analytical Chemistry skills!

Cheers,
A MA Winemaker

Chilean Syrah--Catching Up!

2009-06-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

I believe that I mentioned in an earlier post that I was expecting a shipment of Syrah grapes in addition to the Chardonnay from Chile this spring. They were in the last shipment that M&M Wine Grape received this year, but I finally got them! If you thought my fermentation plans for the Chardonnay was complicated, just wait until you hear the plan for the Syrah!

My goal for the syrah was to produce a big, bold, heavily colored wine with a lot of body and concentrated complex flavors. I bought 270 lbs of grapes that were grown in the Sagrada Familia Township of the Curico Province in Chile and picked on April 7, 2009. I'm still in awe that the little buggers have been in transit over the big wide ocean for a month before I picked them up on May 16 with nary a speck of mold. When I crushed and destemmed, I split the must into 2 portions of 126 lbs and 144 lbs. The split was simply based on 7 cases in one and 8 cases in another--not some arcane winemaking blend portion goal. The specs on the must was pretty decent: Brix = 24.6 (PA = 14.1%), TA = 3.5 mg/mL, and pH = 4.03 (needed some adjustment there).

Fermenter #1 with 126 lbs of crushed/destemmed grape must received 50 ppm SO2/gallon and was treated with Lallzyme EX and Opti-Red enzymes for color extraction & stability. I also added 0.26 oz of VR Supra tannin (I'll explain in another post). Also added 73.4 g tartaric acid to reach pH = 3.60.

Fermenter #2 with 144 lbs of grape must also received 50 ppm SO2/gallon and 0.29 ox of VR Supra tannin, but I used Scottzyme Color Pro and Booster Rouge for color extraction & stability. Added 83.2 g tartaric acid to reach pH = 3.63.

I wrapped each fermenter with insulation and added frozen ice jugs intending for a 24 hr cold soak. However, the insulation worked so well that the must stayed around 43-45 °F for 2 days! A convenient cold spell helped, but that's the coldest I've ever been able to achieve. Even after removing the ice jugs (still half frozen after 2 days), the must took another 48 hrs to reach 60 °F. I innoculated each fermenter with a different yeast: #1 with ICV254 for fruit emphasis and spicy finish, #2 with ICV80 for tannin intensity and dark fruit flavors. Both of these strains were isolated from the Rhone valley, work well with syrah, and blend together well.

I warned you about the complicated fermentation plan, right!

Fermentation commenced fairly quickly (as soon as the must warmed up and with the help of an aggressive Ferm-aid K nutrient addition program!), and the insulation help me to reach >80 °F for 2 days! Again, the warmest I've achieved yet in a fermentation--this insulation wrapping is da bomb!

Fermentation was almost complete (Brix = -1.0) after 12 days so I sealed the must with saran wrap and let it macerate for 24 hrs until I could press it. Last Sunday afternoon, I pressed. The color verdict is in--these are the darkest colored wines that I've achieved to date! Both are an amazingly dark, dark black purple that stains everything it splashes on. The Color Pro/Booster Rouge combo is slightly lighter, but we're talking about deciding between shades of black, here. I strongly encouraged all of you winemakers out there to consider these color enhancing enzymes--and get your fermentation temps above 80 °F!

I ended up with 10 gallons of wine from Fermenter #1 and 11 gallons from Fermenter #2 (after topping off with a couple bottles of the 2008 Syrah). I innoculated everything with Enoform Beta MLB (along with Acti-ML and Microessentials Oenos MLB nutrients) after racking off the gross lees on Monday, 6/1. After 24 hours, I've got an active MLF in 1 carboy and the others look like the MLF should take off soon (keep those fingers crossed).

That brings us up to date. I'll get some pictures posted tomorrow--getting late tonight.

Cheers,
a MA Winemaker

Some Chards settling, another still bubbling...

2009-06-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the chardonnay. The free run and 3rd press fractions finished fermentation after about 36 days of bubbling away in the basement. It's been a cool spring here in MA and my basement has refused to warm above 60 °F. Which has meant that the chardonnays have undergone a nice loooong and cool ferment without me having to chill them in an ice bath! Thank you Mother Nature!

Anyway, free run and 3rd press fractions finally reached Brix = -2.6 on May 23 and had started to drop the gross lees. I racked both into new carboys with 75 ppm SO2/gallon. It's been almost 2 weeks, and I have to say that both of these wines have almost cleared already. I'm very hopeful for both of these because the flavors so far are awesome. The free run fraction fermented with ICV-D47 yeast is very light in color, good body, and a tremendous load of citrus aromas & flavors. The 3rd press fraction (Cote des Blanc yeast) is a much darker yellow with a more pronounced apricot aroma & flavor. I added lysozymes to both of these to prevent MLF.

The 2nd press fraction is my late-bloomer at the moment. The CY3079 yeast has lagged behind the others and only reached Brix = -1.8 on May 30. I decided to go ahead, rack off the gross lees layer, and add the MLB. I figured bringing the carboy upstairs to complete the MLF would let the yeast finish their job at the same time. I used a new MLB that I haven't used before--Viniflora CH35, which is supposed to have been selected specifically for MLB in white wines with a clean and fruity profile. True to the hype, MLF commenced within 23 hours. The carboy is currently sitting in my guest bathroom bubbling merrily away!

Cheers!
A MA Winemaker

A Bottling Frenzy...

2009-05-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, I've let some cellar work go undone this winter and early spring while I've been dealing with some divorce-related crap. But the weather is warmer, my Chilean grape orders have started to arrive and I need to free up some cellar and carboy space!

The 3 carboys of chardonnay are happily fermenting away in the basement. Since the past couple of weeks have been fairly cool outside, I haven't needed to use water baths to keep the fermentation temperatures at or below 60 °F. I need to check the brix level in a day or two because I've noticed that the gas evolution is starting to slow down. So far, the aromas emanating from the airlocks are simply divine!

While the yeast are having a party on one side of the basement, I've been busy on the other side bottling some wine. Two weeks ago, I filtered and bottled the 2008 California Sauvignon Blanc (23 bottles) and this past weekend I bottled the dry Massachusetts Apple (15 bottles) and the dry CA Zinfandel Rose (20 bottles) wines. Still got 1 gal of the apple to bottle after the oak cubes do their thing. Check out the picture of the end results! Absolutely lovely clarity if I do say so myself. The Sauvignon Blanc needed to be filtered (I used a 0.5 micron filter) to remove some biolees that I added for a little more body, but the apple and rose wines cleared naturally with no fining or filtering. As an aside, the apple was the fastest clearing wine I've ever had.

The next step is to label and share my tasting notes, so stay tuned!

Salute,
MA Winemaker

2009 Chilean Chardonnay--Spring Fermentation Season Is Here!

2009-04-25T10:20:00.001-07:00

I have three ways that I know spring has finally shoved aside Old Man Winter here in balmy Massachusetts. One: I haven't pulled the snow blower out of the garage in at least 3 weeks. Two: the azaellas along my driveway start to bloom. And three: I get a call from M&M Wine Grape that my Chilean grape order has started to arrive!

I ordered two grape varietals from Chile this year, Chardonnay and Syrah. The chardonnay grapes were the first to arrive, so I took a couple of days off of work (a man must have his priorities straight) and drove down to Hartford to pick them up. I was fortunate to arrive at a fairly non-busy time, so I got a tour of the cold storage facility and the revamped winemaking store. In addition to the grapes, 4 boxes of bottles and a stainless-steel must plunger followed me home!

These grapes came from the Curico Valley in central Chile and were picked on March 18, 2009. Given that these little beauties have been on a boat for almost 1 month, they arrived in fantastic condition. Each 18 lb crate wrapped in tissue paper with a grape-keeper sheet (filled with K-meta) on top. Very little MOG (material other than grapes), no bruising, no mold, and a mix of green/browned bunches

I spent Thursday afternoon crushing and destemming, which went like a breeze thanks to Vinia! The must received a treatment of pectic enzyme and Scottzyme Cinn-Free Enzyme (to enhance varietal fruit flavors) and soaked on the skins for 2 hrs. Then the juice was pressed off the skins in three fractions. I obtained 6 gal of essentially free-run juice that was very light in color. Then 6 gals of moderate pressing juice, and then 4 gal of moderate-to-heavy pressing juice that was darker in color. Each fraction received 50 ppm SO2 per gallon and was cooled in my basement overnight at 45-50 °F (I use water baths and ice jugs to keep things cool).

On Friday, I racked the clarified juice in each bucket off of the settled solids and measured the Brix (sugar level) = 24.8-25, total acid = 3.2-3.3 mg/mL, and pH = 3.70! At those levels, I'd be making bland rocket fuel since that Brix level would give a potential alcohol = 15%! I added water and tartaric acid to reach Brix = 22 (PA = 12.5-13%), total acid = 5.4 mg/mL, and pH = 3.21. The acid levels are still a little low, but I'm going to complete fermentation and then make final adjustments while it is aging. Each bucket received a dose of OptiWhite^® for color preservation & freshness, and to help round out the mouthfeel and enhance the aromatic complexity.

This is where things get a little complicated. I'm going to ferment each pressing fraction separately with a different style goal. Once the wines are complete and cleared, I'll bottle some separately, but will also look at blending to try for a more complex wine. My fermentation plans are listed below.

Fraction 1: Free-run juice
Goal: Crisp, light, & fruity style that emphasizes varietal flavors with little to no oak. No MLF.
Actions: Treated with lysozymes to prevent MLF and used ICV-D47 yeast for emphasis on the tropical & citrus flavors and polysaccharide production.

Fraction 2: Moderate pressing juice
Goal: Big, full-bodied, buttery chardonnay
Actions: Fermented with CY3079 yeast for bigger mouthfeel and buttery citrus flavors. Added oak shavings to simulate a barrel fermentation. Will do a MLF and sur lies aging after alcohol fermentation.

Fraction 3: Last pressing juice
Goal: Middle of the road no MLF chardonnay useful for blending
Actions: Added lysozymes to prevent MLF and fermented with Cote des Blancs yeast.

Once fermentation is in full force, I will cool each bucket in a water bath and maintain a temperature of <65 °F. It's still early, but I did observe evidence of fermentation in each bucket as of this morning. The 80 °F temperatures for the next couple of days should really jumpstart things as the juice warms up. The basement is a little too chilly this early in the spring, so I may have to keep my water baths in the kitchen for at least a couple of days.

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

2008 Chilean Malbec Update

2009-04-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've alluded to the 2008 Chilean Malbec in a few older posts, but I need to give a full update on the progress of that wine. Until today, I was not all that pleased with it. Every time that I've been tasting it over the winter, I was getting a big mouthful of a rather unpleasent harsh sour & bitter taste. A little hard to explain, but definitely not the bitterness of a high acid wine, or wine stilled filled with residual CO2, but almost a chemical harshness that overwhelmed the subtle fruit flavors. The samples from the barrel have been getting a little better with time, but I've been worried that it would get overoaked by the time the taste faded away. Still not really sure what this taste is, but it appeared after fermentation was complete and I had press the wine off the pomace. Conversations with my fellow winemakers at Winepress.us indicated that it might have stemmed from the fact the grapes were a little underripe when picked. This was identified by a very sharp-eyed reader of this blog who noted the greenish grape innards in my malbec fermentation post. If you look closely at the picture of the crushed/destemmed must in the fermenter, you'll see bits of green. Kudos to the sharp eyes of the Winepress.us winemakers because I was looking at it in person and didn't think much of it! The general consensus was that I had extracted some undesirable phenolics or vegetative flavors from the underripe grapes/seeds during the fermentation.

With that suggestion in mind, I decided to try an experiment with the 3 gal carboy and added a high dose of Biolees. Sur lies aging of red wines is known to help reduce the perception of bitterness. Scientists at Laffort have isolated the peptide that is released into a wine during lees aging and sell it as Biolees. The wine has been sitting on the Biolees for about 3.5 weeks at this point, so I tried a sample today. Very nice! Fuller body and a better mouthfeel, and the bitter taste has almost completely disappeared.

I'm also pleased to report that a sample of the barrelled wine also forecasts some good results! Once again, that bitter taste is almost gone, and the color and body are definitely deeper and fuller, respectively. The tannins released from an oak barrel help to bind up and precipitate polyphenolics (which are often associated with bitter or underripe, vegatative flavors, and they have done their thing! I wish I could have left the wine in the barrel for another 6 months, but the oak flavors were beginning to be too pronounced, so I pulled the wine out of the barrel on Sunday, 4/19.

At the moment, everything is sitting in carboys for some additional aging. I'm contemplating bottling the barrel sample and letting it age for another 6-9 months in the bottle. That leaves a 6 gal carboy of wine that was barrel aged for about 3 months and the 3 gal of Biolees-treated wine. I think I'm going to do another experiment and bottle everything separately. I'd like to see how each one progresses as it ages and compare the results in 6-9 months. That means next weekend will likely be a bottling weekend while making sure the chardonnay starts to ferment. A winemaker's work is never done...

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

A weekend of winemaking and tree hacking...

2009-04-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've been procrastinating in the cellar and things have begun to pile up. Imagine my sense of urgency when I got a call earlier this week that my order of Chilean Chardonnay grapes is due to arrive on April 20. Which means the Chilean Syrah grapes will arrive in another few weeks, which means I'm screwed unless I get some work done in the cellar to free up space. To top everything off, I've also been procrastinating about cleaning up the tree damage from the big ice storm back in early January. Folks, procrastinating is bad--don't do it!

However, I found a solution to my procrastination. Friday was forecast to be an absolutely gorgeous day in Boston, so I decided late Thursday afternoon to take a vacation day and spend the weekend and winin' and a whackin'. I won't bore you with the details about the brush hauling and tree surgery--needless to say my biceps are measurably larger (at least in my imagination). However, I did get some wine work done as well.

Saturday found me filling the Hungarian oak barrel with the 2008 Chilean Syrah. Contrary to advertised statements, it turned out to actually hold just shy of 14 gallons, or almost 3 of the 4 5 gal carboys. Which meant, I had enough syrah left fill 6 bottles (I'll use those for topping off the barrel) and have a good taste. Folks, I'm pretty pleased with this wine. Big burst of black cherries and vanilla in the nose and on the tongue with maybe a little rhubarb in the finish. It's of medium body and light tannins, so it will definitely benefit from a little concentrating during the barrel aging. Keeping those fingers crossed...

The carboy of Syrah left over needed racking off the precipitated tartrate crystals and fine lees, so I did that on Sunday. I also decided to try an experiment and added 1.5 g of Laffort TanCor tannins to see if I could add a little body and bite. We'll see in a few months.

Also on Sunday, I pulled the 2008 Malbec out of the barrel and filled it with the 2008 Zinfandel. At that point, I had a lot of carboy scrubbing to do and it was late in the afternoon, so I quite. A little tired tonight. I'll write an update on the Malbec tomorrow.

Cheers,
MA Winemaker

A new Hungarian Oak Barrel Purchased!

2009-03-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

To my faithful readers, my apologies for my absence. The Massachuesetts Winemaker's life has been rather crazy the past 9 months while I've been having to deal with some unfortunate personal crap. My winemaking activities have largely been relegated to a mere maintenance level during that time, although there are some good stories to share now that I'm getting back into action.

One action I just took was to order a new 50L Hungarian Oak barrel from Vadai World Trade. This is a new barrel source for me. I've heard nothing but good things about Sandor Vadai's products and his customer service from my fellow winemakers on the Winepress.US discussion forum. So far, the customer service has been excellent. Within 24 hrs of placing my order on-line, I received a call from Sandor's daughter to confirm my order and to let me know that Sandor was on his way to his barrel warehouse to check availability. Within another couple of days, Sandor himself was on the phone to update the prices and shipping (lower than the original quote!) and to finalize the order. Next Friday, I should be the proud owner of a Hungarian Oak barrel.

Why Hungarian oak? Well, I have an American oak barrel that my 2008 Malbec is currently inhabitating and the 2008 Zinfandel is destined to enter in another month. I've got 20 gal of 2008 Syrah that I want to aim for more of an Old World style. A French oak barrel would have been my first choice, but have you seen the prices of French oak barrels? Merci! Hungarian oak barrels have a similar taste profile to French oak that lends a caramel and vanilla finish, but at the fraction of the price. It only took a little shopping to convince myself that Hungarian was the way to go.

Stay tuned for an update on the 2008 Malbec.

cheers,
a MA Winemaker

p.s. Sorry, folks. I'm going to hijack this post instead of writing a new one. The barrel has arrived! It spent about a week in my bathtub full of water while the wood expanded to ensure the staves were nice and tight. As you can read above, I filled it with the 2008 Syrah on April 19. Here's a couple of pictures to show off my proud new family addition! I've got a couple of very slight leaks, but I'm confident that they will patch themselves in short order after the staves get fully conditioned. The big spot around the bung is due to me filling a little too full and making the wine overflow when I inserted the bung. Don't worry, I quickly got out the sanitizer and gave it a good rub down.

2006 Sour Cherry, aka "The Shy Bride"

2008-12-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Came home tonight to a dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers--turkey, roasted potatoes, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. While that was warming up, I went down into the cellar for a bottle and decided to pull out one of my library wines. I settled on my dry 2006 Sour Cherry because it's been over a year since I've tried a bottle and I only had 2 left!

2006 Sour Cherry, aka "The Shy Bride"

Specs: 11% ABV, 100% montmorency cherries from Friske Orchard, MI
Appearance: Clear, light orange-pink
Aroma: Light and fruity with a citrus & lightly floral finish. Light cherry aroma (gee, what a surprise!).
Taste: Smooth, light cherry fruit foretaste. There's those cherries again! Light body and a bright, mildly acidic finish that lingers on the tongue.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with this wine, which was officially the 7th wine I made (third whole fruit wine from scratch). Was the first wine where I attempted to control the fermentation temperature by moving to the basement where the ambient temperature was ~60 °F. Don't know how much that actually helped. I fermented on the fruit skins for 4 days and then pressed and completed fermentation in a glass carboy. Ended up with what I would call a cherry rose.

The "Shy Bride" nom de plume was a joke. I had overshot the acid level a bit due to a low-titrant NaOH standard and the wine ended up a bit acidic when I bottle it (TA = 0.8%). At the time it had quite a bite to it, so I had an inspiration for a cute label and dashed off the following:

Like a shy bride, this light blush starts

with gentle hints of cherry in the nose,

but ends with a tart finish on the tongue.
Served Chilled

I could make all kinds of ironic remarks about how prophetic, appropriate, and applicable that passage has proven to be in my former marriage, but I will hold my tongue... On the other hand, the wine has mellowed quite a bit. That original tart flavor has died to a nice, bright finish that is quite nice on this rose-style wine. Just a reminder that when all else fails, just let the wine sit.

This wine also formed the basis for a Cherry Cordial by blending with amaretto. I'm going to keep the exact blend ratio and other details of the Cordial secret as it was a big hit and frankly I've never seen a similar offering elsewhere. I don't believe that any of those bottles are still in existence as the folks that I gave some to as gifts have sucked 'em down!

Cheers,
a MA Winemaker

Another Summer Santa Treat!

2008-11-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, it has been awhile since my last post. Been dealing with some personal upheaval in my life that occurred this summer that drained a lot of energy and time. Now that part of my life is over and closed, time to get back to some drinkin' and bloggin'! Don't worry, faithful readers, I've been saving tasting notes and stories in a big stack that I will slowly recapitulate over the next few weeks.

Starting where I left off in June, I wanted to relate some information on another bottle of wine I received during the Winepress.us Summer Santa Swap. This little gem came from Mr. Hart of Hart's Wine Cellars in western NY. Mr. Hart is an extremely knowledgeable (and quite skilled) winemaker who specializes in making wine from hybrid and vinifera grapes grown in western NY. I feel privileged to be the recipient of two of his wines and wanted to share my tasting report on his 2006 Dry White.

Hart's Wine Cellars 2006 Dry White

Specs: 40% vidal, 35% vignoles, 25% cayuga

Appearance: Clear, light straw yellow, good legs!

Aroma: Light and fruity with a bright acidic finish. Citrus and floral aromas dominate with the aromas of vignoles shining through.

Taste: Smooth, light fruit foretaste. Good mid-pallette body (there's the vidal standing up) and a slightly buttery finish.

All in all a very nice wine from a talented wine maker. The blend of grapes was very nice and balanced and produced a wine that was perfect for summer sipping.

Santa Claus came early this year from Paradoxx Winery

2008-07-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate to be a member of the on-line home winemaking forum Winepress.US. Last December, a great tradition of Secret Santa wine swapping was started. I wasn't able to participate because I was in the midst of moving and unpacking, but I jumped at the chance when the suggestion was made to repeat the swap in July as an Early Secret Santa. All participants are put through a highly specialized and technical system to match swapping partners (OK, we draw names out of a hat!), and then we send 1-2 wines to each of our partners.

I recently received a package from KC from Texas, proprietor of Paradoxx Winery, and decided to try a bottle of Russo Fortissimo (Bin #807) tonight. Folks, this is a very good wine. Deep and dark in color, the nose begins with dark cherry and vanilla and ends with a hint of oak and leather. A well integrated taste profile of fruit and mild tannins. A very good drinking wine. I wish I had a big old italian sausage pizza to go with it! Great, now my mouth is watering...

Thank you for sharing, KC!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Chilean Syrah

2008-06-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

I've alluded to also getting Chilean Syrah grapes this spring, but have been too busy to actually describe the fermentation! Will have to recap in 1 post.

Grapes were picked-up from M&M Produce on May 31 and crushed within 3 hours of pick-up while still cool. I was a little disappointed that these grapes actually had moldy clusters in just about crate. Not as bad as I've seen before, and I probably shouldn't complain too much given that they were picked on April 16 and have traveled about 3000 miles!

Sugar levels were pretty good (Brix = 23.8), but acid levels were a tad low (pH = 3.67 and TA = 4.8 mg/mL). I'm going to wait to adjust until after fermentation is over.

I innoculated with RC-212 yeast about 6 hours after crush and fermentation had started by the next morning. The syrah fermented slower than the malbec and had only fallen to Brix = 1.1 by Friday, June 6. My darling wife had a triathalon race in New Hampshire that weekend and I was strongly urged to attend to maintain marital harmony. I took Friday morning off from work and pressed must and let the fermentation continue in carboys under an airlock. This should give a smoother, more fruity wine that will be ready to drink earlier. I got 3 6-gal and 1 3-gal carboys and a 1-gal jug full of wine. By Sunday afternoon, when we returned, it still wasn't done (Brix = -1.3). I didn't have time to rack on Monday night, so I finally was able to rack off the gross lees on Tuesday, 6/10. I ended up with 4 5-gal carboys, and 3/4-gal amongt some smaller jugs. I innoculated with Lalvin VP-41 ML bacteria and MLF has noisely commenced within 24 hrs. I'm a little concerned because I think I detect a bit of H2S aroma. Can't do much about it at this point. I'm off the gross lees and MLF is in progress. Hopefully, that will blow off most of the H2S and I can splash rack to my heart's content to get rid of any residual.

The past couple of days have been HOT in Boston! I've discovered that my garage is wonderfully insulated and only reached >80 °F after 2 days of 90+ °F temperatures. After racking of the gross lees, I brought both the syrah and the malbec inside (76 °F A/C!) and have them lined up in the spare bathroom. I'll have to post a picture because it's rather hilarious to see a bathroom FULL of wine!.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Chilean Malbec In Carboy and MLF!

2008-06-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

I did end up pressing the malbec on Sunday, 6/1. One of the Brutes had fermented dry by Friday night, so I covered with Saran Wrap and got an extra day of extended maceration while I was waiting for free time. Very easy pressing once I got going. Having sat unused for 18 months and moved from Michigan to Massachusetts, my press required a bit of scrubbing to get the cobwebs off. I ended up filling 3 6-gal and 1 5-gal carboys, as well as a 750-ml and 375-ml bottles, which sat for 24 hrs to settle the gross lees. I then racked off the gross lees into 3 6-gal carboys, 2 1-gal jugs, a 1/2-gal jug, and a 375-mL bottle. I hydrated a packet of Enoferm-beta malo-lactic bacteria and dispensed amongst the 'boys to initiate malo-lactic fermentation. And that's pretty much were things sit. The ML fermentation is going strongly, although my chromatography test still shows significant malic acid present after 1 week.

Why the ML fermentation, you ask? Well, this is commonly done on red wines to help soften the acid profile and give a little more roundness. Lactic acid has a low pKa than malic acid, so it reduces the acidic taste. Lactic acid is perhaps most famous for giving that round, buttery taste to California chardonnay, but it does the same thing in red wines. If you don't purposefully initiate MLF, you run the risk of having it start on its own by naturally occurring ML bacteria after you've bottled it. That can lead to exploding bottles due to the CO2 released, and the native ML bacterial strain may give off-flavors that you don't like.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush
Malbec Fermentation Has Commenced!
Malbec Mid-fermentation Update

Malbec Mid-Fermentation Update

2008-05-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Seems like just a few days ago that I had added the yeast culture starter to the malbec fermenters and was anxiously awaiting the first signs of fermentation--oh, wait a moment, it was! The yeast took about 18 hrs to get going, and they haven't looked back since! Each fermenter has warmed up to about 76 °F just from the fermentation activity. The rise in temperature is good for color extraction and setting. I honestly was hoping for a little higher temperature, but that's the best I could do without external heating. After only 3 days of fermentation, the Brix sugar levels have dropped by more than half. I'm hoping to pick up my syrah grape order this weekend, but I think I will also be pressing the malbec wine off the skins on Saturday or Sunday if this fermentation rate keeps up. So far, I'm very pleased with the result. Very, very dark color--looks like ink when I'm punching down the cap. And no sign of H2S formation thus far.

Salute,
a Wine Student.

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush
Malbec Fermentation Has Commenced!

Malbec Fermentation has commenced!

2008-05-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note--malbec fermentation has commenced in good form! Woke up this morning to find a very thick cap of grape skins that had been pushed up by the CO2 gas produced during the yeast fermentation. Gave each fermenter a good punch down and checked for sugar levels (Brix = 21-21.8) and temperature (66.7-68 °F). Juice looks incredibly dark!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Chilean Malbec 2008 posts:
Chilean Malbec Grape Crush

Chilean Malbec is here!

2008-05-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend has turned out to be far more exciting that I would have thought! My Chilean grape order from M&M Produce finally arrived--or at least the malbec part of it! Silly me wanted to make a syrah (because I love a big, rich syrah). However, due to weather conditions in the Curico Valley this year, the syrah harvest was delayed past the 2nd week in May ETA. The very nice folks at M&M tried to combine a person's order into one shipment so you wouldn't have to make multiple trips. Last week, I got the notification that the malbec grapes would be here on Tuesday, May 20, but the syrah was stilled delayed until May 27. I decided to screw the gas prices and go get the malbec and at least get that fermentation going.

I took Friday, May 23 off from work and drove down the Hartford, CT and finally located M&M Produce. Having never been there, I didn't know what to expect, so I was a little surprised to find that M&M is located in the Regional Produce Market alongside several other produce wholesalers (wonder if they'd help me obtain some Montmorency cherries?). Very nice folks--they quickly loaded me up with 270 lbs of malbec grapes and sent me on my way. The trip back was uneventful besides some brief rain showers a few miles from home that made me glad I had bundled my 15 cases of grapes under a tarp.

I had brought everything I needed up into the garage the night before so all I had to do was to give Vinia (my crusher/destemmer) a good cleaning! The crushed grapes fall into the two Tupperware bins located underneath a good cleaning and sanitize my other equipment before I started crushing grapes. The grapes were actually picked on April 2, but they looked to be in pristine condition with very few leaves. Tasted like plum jam, with greenish-brown seeds. They had been packed with a pad of sodium metabisulfite packets on top of the grapes. You can see my crusher/destemmer setup in the picture. The grapes fall into the Tupperware bins underneath, while the stems fall out into the bin at the rear. I quickly found that lifting a bin of 36 lbs of crushed grape must was about all I could handle without making a mess as I poured into my Brute trashcans that I use as fermenters. I also found that I couldn't simply lift the crate and dump in the grapes because the tissue paper that they were wrapped in would fall into the auger in the receiving bin and go through the crusher! I ended up scooping up handfuls of grapes and tossing them in. One other discovery--I had to elevate the must receiving bins to right underneath the crusher. Otherwise, the must would get sprayed all over place!

Took me about 2.5 hours to get everything crushed. I ended up splitting the must between two Brute fermenters (8 cases in one, 7 cases in the other) to allow for expansion of the must during fermentation. Sugar levels of the must was decent (Brix = 22- 22.5, PA = 12-12.5%). I treated each fermenter with Lallzyme EX, Opti-Red, and pectic enzyme to aid in color & juice extraction. I opted not to add sulfites to suppress wild yeast growth at this point and instead added 4 gallon jugs of ice to do a 12 hr cold-soak. The biggest pain of the whole operation was the clean-up!

The next morning on Saturday I removed the ice jugs and did my pH and acid tests. The pH was a little high (3.56) and total acid was a little low (4.5 mg/mL) so I added tartaric acid to raise the pH = 3.30-3.49 and TA = 5.9-6.6 mg/mL (the range is for the two Brutes and will be averaged out when everything is blended together). I made some yeast starters with RC-212 yeast and added to the Brutes after a couple hours of vigorous starter growth.

Sunday update--beginning to see some signs of yeast activity. The must was a little cool when I added the yeast and the garage didn't get much over 60 °F on Saturday. It's much warmer out today and I left the garage door open to get things warmed up a bit.

Looking good so far...
a Wine Student

Hidden Lake Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 2006

2008-05-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

It accorded to me earlier this week that I haven't spent a lot of time describing the results of my previous winemaking trials in this blog. Allow me to correct that deficiency with a review of one of my favorite white wines that I made in 2006 during my Hidden Lake Cellars days.

Hidden Lake Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 2006
Country of origin: USA
Region: California
Appellation: Central Valley
Stats: 11.5% ABV, dry (RS = 500 ppm), pH = 3.56, TA = 0.85%, 75 ppm malic acid

Appearance: Light clear yellow
Aroma: Pineapple, pears, honeysuckle (I can recognize that aroma having grown up with a honeysuckle vine outside my window), and a hint of green asparagus.
Taste: This wine starts with a smooth fruity & floral burst with good body and a lightly buttery, tart finish.

This wine was made from CA Central Valley grape juice that I purchased from Home Winemaking in Dundee, MI. The juice was fermented with Cotes de Blanc (Epernay 2) yeast over 13 days. After clearing for 3 months, I had to add some chitosan to help clarify the wine. I did not add anything to expressly prevent malolactic fermentation from happening after bottling other potassium metabisulfite. A year later, I think the wine is beginning to undergo spontaneous ML fermentation in the bottle, resulting in a slight effervescence and light buttery taste. Fortunately, I only have 5 bottles left. If my faithful readers have a bottle on hand, I'd suggest drinking within the next 3-6 months. Spring is a perfect time to enjoy this wine!

Salute!
a Wine Student

p.s. I took this wine to a Christmas Party that we were invited to shortly after moving into our new house in Westford, MA. Big hit!! And my wife likes it, so I think this was a winner!

Pressure, Pressure.. oh, the relief!

2008-04-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung in eastern Massachusetts over the past few weeks. The birds are singing and gettin' busy--last week I backed out of the garage in the morning to find two pairs of wild turkeys in my yard with the males in full courtship display. The snow is gone, and it's been shorts weather a couple of days. What I've found interesting is how the weather has affected my cranberry-niagra grape wine. A couple of posts ago, I mentioned how stubborn this wine has been in clearing. In contrast to the cranberry-banana that was started and fermented at the same time, the cran-niagra has very, very, very slowly clearing. A couple of weeks after the first racking in February, there was a definite strata in the wine with the bottom 2/3 cloudy while the top 1/3 began to clear. And this strata stayed there through the month of March and first week of April. But rather interestingly, the high pressure system that moved into New England and stayed over the past 2 weeks with 60-70° temperatures suddenly caused the wine to drop all of its sediment. The carboy is clear from top to bottom with a good layer of lees on the bottom. It's still not as translucent as the cranberry-banana, but I would call it clear.

I believe this atmospheric pressure-initiated clearing may be a result of degassing as the wine has risen in temperature about 10 °F. My basement has gone from about 45 °F this winter to about 55 °F this month. Cold wine dissolves more residual CO2 from the fermentation. The warmer temperatures brought by the high pressure system may have let the wine warm up to get enough CO2 to degas and let the small protein particles fall out of the suspension. The warmer temperatures have also caused the wine to expand as it warms, as I've had to suck a little out of each carboy to keep it from expanding into the airlock.

Not only is wine all about the chemistry, but it's also all about the physics! If only I had been told that in high school physics!

Salute,
a Wine Student

A Blending Experiment

2008-04-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Had some free time on Sunday afternoon, so I decided to get drunk. Oops, I mean I decided to take a stab at blending some of my 2006 red wines!

I've been thinking about this for some time because I'm just not all that happy with the zinfandel that I made from grapes shipped from the Central Valley in California. I bought them from a winemaking store in southeast Michigan that was sourcing grapes for the first time. I don't think they had a very good grape source because the grapes just didn't taste all that good when I picked them up. Hard to explain, but they just weren't very flavorful and had a rather chalky aftertaste. That lack of flavor and chalky taste persisted through the fermentation and aging. I also didn't get a lot of color and tannin extraction, so I ended up with a pretty light colored and bland, chalky wine. I may be overstated things, but the wine is not something I look forward to drinking or giving away, which is not good because I've got 4 cases of the stuff!

I've also been tasting some of the red wines that I made from grapes purchased in the Finger Lakes of New York and have been much more impressed with the flavors, colors, and tannin profiles. After some mulling, I decided to see what I could achieve by blending the CA zinfandel with some NY cabernet franc and noiret wines. Of course, blending requires multiple bench tests of different blend ratios to determine the optimal ratios, so I was in for an afternoon of drinking! I will admit that I had to take a break for a couple of hours to sober up and continue. I have not mastered the art of sipping and spitting!

I started with blending the zinfandel with noiret because the noiret came out with strong cherry and pepper flavors/aromas, heavy tannins, and just black as night, and I thought it would add a lot that the zin was missing. I was very pleased to see that I was correct. Adding the noiret really perked up the zin! I started with a 90/10 zinfanel/noiret ratio and worked my way up to a 50/50 blend. After tasting through the panel several times, both my wife and I agreed that we liked the 50/50 and 60/40 zin/noiret blends the best.

I was pleased with the zin/noiret blend, but wanted to try a tertiary blend by adding some NY cabernet franc as it has a lot of the same cherry & pepper flavors as the noiret, but also some interesting creamy vanilla notes that I thought might help round the aroma and taste. I didn't do a complete investigation because I was getting a little loopy by now and simply couldn't last through a 3-dimensional blending test. I decided to take the 60/40 zin/noiret blend and see what would happen if I added a little cab franc in increments for 60/40/10 to 60/40/50. Interestingly, the vanilla came through even at the 60/40/10 ratio, but was soon overpowered by some emerging tartness. In the end, I felt that a 60/40/25 zin/noiret/cab franc blend was the absolute best of the evening. And guess what--my wife agreed!

My plan for the coming weekend is to pop open some bottles and make 3 gal of this 60/40/25 zinfandel/noiret/cabernet franc blend. Going to have to brush up on my fraction math so I get the right amount of the different varietals into the carboy! It will be interesting to see how the wine chemistry works after blending. I'm anticipating that I might see some additional sedimentation after everything is mixed and the wine pH stabilizes. I may even decided to do some additional oaking on the blend--we'll see.

It took quite a bit of additional wine to make this zinfandel more palatable, since I'm diluting it at almost a 1:1 ratio with the other wines. However, I'm pretty pleased with the result. I'm going to give it about a month or two to meld together before rebottling and reporting on the results. Stay tuned!

Salute,
a Wine Student

p.s. Someone once told me that all blends were crap wine. In some respects, I am trying to pass a substandard wine off as something drinkable. On the other hand, I'm doing what I need to do to produce a wine that I'll drink!

p.s. #2 Just to be clear, I strongly disagree with the notion that only single varietal wines are "good". Look at the Bourdeaux blends! Winemakers have been blending wines for years to make an improved product.

Silcone--Better Wine through Chemistry!

2008-04-03T18:08:00.001-07:00

I've been intrigued with breathable silicone bungs for quite some time. They (upper picture) are supposed to allow dissolved CO2 and other gases slowly escape from the wine, while not allowing air (and dreaded O2) back in. Now, the water-filled airlocks (lower picture) do the same thing, although if there is a change in the barometric pressure when a storm comes through or winter slowly turns to spring, the wine can shrink in volume and suck water back into the wine risking bacterial contamination. Plus, you do have to keep an eye on the water level in the airlock to make sure that it doesn't evaporate below the entrance and let O2 into the carboy.

I've heard good things from folks who have used the breathable silicone bungs, so I've been wanting to purchase some. Only problem has been that every time I got serious about placing an order, Valley Vintner was out of stock and back-ordered. My luck changed a few weeks ago and they were in stock when I needed to purchase supplies for the upcoming Chilian grape season. So I bought some!

I decided to give one a try last weekend when I racked the 2008 blueberry off the lees layer. Instead of an airlock, I rammed in a fancy new breathable silicon bung into the carboy. So far, so good. A warm front came through last night and the the pressure differential in the carboy and the atmosphere pushed the bung slightly out. Not enough to break the seal fortunately, so I pushed it back in and adjusted the moveable flap to allow less pressure to move it.

This is something that's going to take a long time to evaluate whether I want to completely switch from the airlocks to the breathable silicon bung. In the meantime, I certainly do enjoy some new toys and feel like I'm living up to my chemistry background by utilizing products that could only be produced by a chemist. OK, I suppose a chemical engineer could come up with this as well, but it would have been a stretch!

Apologies to all you chemical engineers that just so happen to read this blog....

Salute,
a Wine Student.

p.s. You know, the pictures looked just fine on the camera, but man are they dark! I'll have to take new brighter pictures and replace these.

Blueberry 2008 in the carboy

2008-03-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

Well, the blueberry fermentation is finally complete. Seems like it took forever to ferment to dryness (it has actually been 34 days). I'm actually not entirely sure if it had completely stopped fermenting. I could see a very slow, but steady evolution of tiny bubbles that led to a bubble in the airlock about every 2-3 minutes. However, the brix level had remained steady over 3 days at Brix = -1.5. I double check with a hydrometer and found that the SG = 0.995, which is considered dry. So I decided to rack last Thursday (3/18/08) and treat with an extra heavy dose of sulfites. Given how long the fermentation took, I'm wondering if I should increase my yeast nutrient dose? I've never had fermentations last this long...

After racking, I filled a 3 gal carboy and a 1.5L bottle (picture to the right). What a lovely, deep, deep, dark purple color! The taste is actually pretty good, as well. Still rather sharp from the dissolved CO2, but some nice dark fruit flavors and good mouthfeel. I think I'm going to need to add some more tartaric acid after it clears, but we'll wait and see.

Let the clearing begin!

Salute,
A Wine Student

Blueberry 2008 prior posts:
Initial Mix
Yeast Addition and Oxi-Clean
Pressing Blues

Cranberry Clearing

2008-03-16T14:27:00.001-07:00

It's been a little over a month since I last racked the cranberry wines off the gross lees. On Saturday, I went down to the wine cellar for another reason, but was struck by the different rates at which my Cranberry-Niagra and Cranberry-Banana wines are clearing. During the last racking in February, the Cranberry-Banana had won the prize for the most sediment, so I wasn't overly surprised to see how much clearer it was. However, that wine is almost crystal clear. The picture on the right shows how clear it is (carboy on the right). The Cranberry-Niagra (on the left in the picture) had dropped a lot of sediment in the past month, but still has a long way to go.

I was expecting this difference, as banana wines are known for their fast clearing rates. However I've never seen this in person until these wines.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Cranberry 2008 posts:
Starting the Body Experiment
Fermentation Almost Done
Racked the Cranberry-Grape
Racked the Cranberry-Banana
Racking off the Gross Lees

Introducing the Macchine Enologiche!

2008-03-02T17:19:00.001-08:00

I recently received a bonus at work, so I decided to spend it on myself and bought a new crusher/destemmer (I'm doing my economy stimulus part)! I'm proud to introduce my latest baby--the Macchine Enologiche! This recent arrival to these shores sports 100% Italian craftsmanship, stainless steel hopper and working parts, and an electric motor to make short shift of those pesky grapes. No grape can stand up to its awesome crushing power--bwahahaha!

Sorry, I think I was channeling Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor there for a moment!

During the 2006 grape season, I used an antique crusher for my cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel grapes. I had bought it from the same folks that sold me a grape press. They used to run a winemaking store in Colorado and both the crusher and press were the store's equipment. Lots of good karma there. Unfortunately, the crusher did not have a destemmer, so I literally spent 4 hours bent over a bin full of 100 lbs of grape must, hand sifting out as many stems as I could. My back simply can't take that again. During the trip to New York to pick up some grapes, I made use of the vineyard's crusher/destemmer. These lovely devices crush the grapes and then sift out the stems before dropping the grape mush into your collection bin. What took me 4 hrs of back-numbing work before was done in 15 minutes, and the only sweat I worked up was in moving the collection bins into the back of my truck. Ever since then, I've been lusting after one of these beauties. With the upcoming Chilean season, and my recent bonus, I took the plunge! Now that it is in my basement, my first thought was "Wow, that's big!" Oh well, it will certainly make my life easier this spring and fall, and many subsequent years. It will keep my wife from getting bored while we hand destemmed. And it is large enough for a small winery, so let's call it an investment in the possible future!

Say hello to my new baby--the gleaming Macchine Enologiche! She needs a better name--something feminine in Italian. Perhaps Vinia (Latin for wine)? Other suggestions?

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry 2008--A Pressing Issue

2008-03-01T04:03:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks have been very busy--computer troubles, a sick guinea pig (now there's an interesting story), and the usual work load, so I've been thankful that the blueberry wine that I started on Feb 12 has been quietly bubbling away in the kitchen corner. However, all good fermentations must come to an end, and indeed, the yeast activity on this batch began to significantly drop in the past few days. On Thursday night, it had reached Brix = 2.6 so I decided to press and transfer to a carboy.

Now some people use a small press for their fruit wines. Not me, I use a hands-on approach. I line a plastic bucket with a nylon mesh bag, pour the must into the bag/bucket, and then lift up the bag to let the wine drain out. Yes, it's a little labor and time intensive, but it's cheap (no wonder I fit into New England well), and easy to clean up. Plus, I get to get my hands dirty!

Disclaimer--I am not and never was a member of any "Athletic Department". Although lifting a 4 gal bag of fermenting mush isn't trivial! And I do seem to have the hairy chest to match!

For those who recall the mess I made when I added the yeast (see post), I am sitting on a layer of plastic. Note the stain free wall and cabinets behind me (Thank you, Oxiclean)! Now, don't freak out--there is no fire hazard in this process, that's just where I keep the extinguisher because I haven't yet hung it on the wall. Trust me, I'm not that dangerous in the kitchen!

After pressing, I poured the liquid into a carboy and topped with an airlock to let the fermentation finish. I'm not worried about the airspace in the carboy at this point because the must is still giving off CO2 that will displace the air in the carboy. I've moved the carboy to the warmest place in the house (the guest bathroom) to finish fermentation, and it is dutifully slowly bubbling away. Will probably be done within a week. At that point, I'll rack into a smaller carboy and top off to protect it from oxidation.

I'm quite pleased with the color extraction that I achieved. Adding the Lallzyme EX during the cold soak really gave a boost of color. Of course, a lot of that color will drop out as the wine clears, but we're starting at a very inky reddish-purple, so the final result should still be very dark.

So far, so good!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry 2008 prior posts:
Initial Mix
Yeast Addition and Oxi-Clean

Cranberry 2008 #4--First Racking

2008-03-01T03:12:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, look at the date. It's been awhile since I've updated you with my efforts. Had a little minor computer hard drive problem--it crashed. A lesson learned about storing your life on a computer, it costs a lot of money to get it back after a hard drive crash! Could of bought a new computer by the time it was over. Oh well, I can at least take comfort in the fact that by fixing the old one, I'm reducing my carbon footprint. Although given that I'm sick of snow, a little global warming sounds like a good idea at the moment!

Anyway, back to the wine...

About 3 weeks after completion of fermentation, both batches had dropped a pretty good layer of lees (these are the solids--yeast cells, fruit solids, seeds, etc--that drop out of the wine as it clears). The cranberry-banana had dropped significantly more and was much clearer than the cranberry-grape. I decided to rack off the lees to avoid any possible off-tastes from autolysis of the dead yeast cells. Each carboy was racked into a new sanitized carboy with 1/8 tsp of k meta and I used the extra bottles of cranberry-banana to top off the carboys.

Some observations:
1) the Cranberry-banana is much clearer (and tastes more like pure cranberry). It is just slightly translucent at this point.
2) Neither wine gave off much CO2 when I tried to degas.
3) The cranberry-grape is very pleasant tasting with a distinctive grape aftertaste. Perhaps a better balance of the cranberry tartness and the grapey flavor--time will tell!
4) Interestingly, within a week of racking, the cranberry-grape had dropped another good layer of lees. The picture below highlights this new lees layer and the difference in clearing rates.

Some lessons learned:
1) Adding bananas to a wine really DOES help a wine clear faster.
2) Niagra grape juice can make a good blending component for fruit wines.
3) Hand pressing really helps degas a wine!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Prior Cranberry 2008 posts:
Starting the Body Experiment
Fermentation Almost Done
Racked the Cranberry-Grape
Racked the Cranberry-Banana

Skirted Disaster...

2008-02-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday morning, I brought the pail of blueberry must up from the basement where it had been cold soaking for 72 hr at a nice, chilly 45 °F and let it warm up while I was at work. I came home and got my starter made and set it aside to grow while I double-checked my Brix and acid levels.

A couple of interesting observations were noted. One, the pectic enzyme and Lallzyme EX had worked wonders in breaking down the fruit solids to give a very liquidy must with this wonderful, deep, deep, inky dark color (more on that later...). Second, both my Brix and acid levels were lower that my tests when I mixed everything together. The Brix level had dropped slightly to Brix = 22.2 and the total acidity was back around 3.1 g/L. I added another 10 oz of sugar to reach Brix = 23.8 and another 10 g of tartaric acid to reach total acidity = 4.4 g/L. The acid levels are still on the low side, but I'm more worried about the pH at the moment because that has a big affect on getting fermentation started in blueberries.

So everything was going pretty hunky dory. After several hours the yeast starter was fermenting well, so around 10:00 PM I went to add the starter to the must. After dumping it in, I reached around for my sanitized spoon to scrape out the remnants of the starter, lost my grip on the bowl, and watched helplessly as it fell into the must.

KER-SPLASH!!

Inky dark blueberry juice went flying all of the kitchen wall, floor, and nearby cupboard doors! It wasn't a lot of juice, but it sure made one heck of a mess.

It's late, my wife is in the bedroom doing her pre-bed relaxation routine, and I've got blueberry juice all of the wall. I grabbed a dishcloth and start scrubbing, only to find that the juice easily wiped away, but it left a purple stain on the paint and everything else it touched! Panic began to set in. I carefully eased open the bedroom door and asked quietly if we had any bleach in the house. No--crud! (to her credit, my wife did not come running in distress to see the horror that I had made of her new kitchen). Wild thoughts are running through my mind--can I repaint the kitchen by morning? And how many counts of paint will it take to cover up the stains? A quick scan of the laundry room to see what strong soaps were available, and I spied a container of OxiClean. What the heck, let's give it a shot...

Oh salvation! Wiping the walls down with a concentrated solution of OxiClean removed the juice stains with nary a trace! I did have to admit what had happened the next morning to my wife, but I'm proud to say that she could find no trace of stainage even after practically examining the walls with a microscope!

No, this was not a thinly veiled commercial for OxiClean. Although, I am open to an endorsement deal if the company would like to recreate the event--let's just do it in someone else's kitchen. I didn't have the luxury of time to take pictures of the mess and the end result, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

OxiClean--that stuff kicks a...!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Blueberry Wine 2008

2008-02-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

January/February seems to be my time to make a batch of blueberry wine! One of the first wines I made was a blueberry wine in January, 2006, I made another batch in January, 2007, and here I am again. It does really help when blueberries freeze so well!

I really liked how the 2007 batch turned out (see recent review post), so this year, I just want to tweak the recipe a bit. My main objective is to produce a rich, full-bodied red wine, so I'm going to try to extract as much color and tannins as possible with a cold soak, enzyme addition, and yeast choice.

2008 Blueberry Recipe:
10 lbs frozen blueberries from Trader Joe's
10 lbs frozen wild Maine Blueberries from my local Market Basket
6 L H2O
3/8 tsp grape tannin
3 tsp pectic enzyme (8.1 g)
Lallzyme EX (0.8 g)
RC-212 wine yeast
Yield = ~3 gallons

I let the blueberries partially thaw on the countertop and then poured 6 L of boiling water over the berries in the fermenter to help set the color. At this point, I got my hands dirty and crushed the berries by hand. The larger cultivated blueberries from Trader Joe's were much easier to crush than the small, wild Maine berries. Fortunately, freezing the berries does a pretty good job in breaking down the cellular structure and release the juice. Boy, does blueberry juice stain human skin--my fingertips were almost black after the squishing was complete! It's hard to see in the picture, but I did put down a layer of plastic so I wouldn't stain my wife's kitchen floor!

I added pectic enzyme, as well as Lallzyme EX, which is a pectic enzyme designed for optimal color extraction and stabilization in red wines. I also added the grape tannin, a dose of potassium metabisulfite, and lysozymes to sanitize the must and prevent malolactic fermentation. Blueberries contain citric acid, which is metabolized to acetic acid by ML bacteria and I don't want that in the finished wine.

At this point, the raw must had Brix = 7.4 (SG = 1.028), so I added 5 lbs 12 oz white sugar to reach Brix = 23 (SG = 1.094, PA = 12%). I'm a little bit concerned about the acid levels, which were really low at total acidity = 1.08 g/L and pH = 3.45. The must tasted very flat and lifeless. A malic acid tested indicated only ~160 mg/L, so I'm assuming that the rest of the acid is citric acid (good thing I added the lysozyme). I added 8 tsp of tartaric acid (41.3 g) to bring the total acidity = 4.05 g/L and pH = 2.93. I decided to do any more acid additions after fermentation was complete as I'm getting worried about the low pH. Loyal readers will recall that the 2007 batch also had a low pH, but total acidity was ~6 g/L from the fruit alone without having to add additional tartaric acid. At the moment, I'm chalking this up to a difference in Michigan & Maine blueberries. The must tastes good at this point, maybe still a little low in acid, but much improved and much more lively than the starting point.

At this point, the must looks like the picture on the right--a lovely dark purple and thick must. I moved the bucket downstairs to the basement for a 48 hr cold soak at 45 °F (New England winters are good for something!). The must is currently resting comfortably, and I plan on letting it warm up to the kitchen room temperature for about 8-9 hours before pitching yeast starter on Tuesday evening. I'll keep you updated with fermentation details!

Salute!
a Wine Student

Cranberry Update #3--My babies are asleep...

2008-02-04T18:05:00.001-08:00

Sorry, folks! Haven't had much time in the past week to add the latest news of the cranberry saga.

The cranberry-banana batch finally reached the same Brix level as the cranberry-grape after a very slooowwww fermentation (Brix = -1.7, SG = 0.994), so I decided to rack and sulfite to keep the outcome consistent. This batch was a comparative breeze to rack as the lees were very compact, although the wine itself is much cloudier. I obtained 3 gal and 2.25 L of wine. I'm keeping what didn't fit into the carboy in some wine bottles for use in topping up during future rackings. Everything received 100 ppm addition of sulfite and 1.5 g of lysozyme to prevent MLF.

All of the cranberry is now safely resting in the basement (current temperature is 50-55 °F) and beginning to clear. The cranberry-grape is on the left and the cranberry-banana is on the right in the picture. Yes, I'm pretty low tech with my carboy labels--masking tape and magic marker works just fine for me! You may not be able to tell from the picture, but both wines are throwing a pretty significant layer of lees even after a couple of weeks. Not too much to do on these wines for now, but to sit and wait for them to clear. Ah, the agony of patience!

Salute,
a Wine Student.

Chilean Grape Order Placed!!!

2008-01-25T18:18:00.000-08:00

I am rather excited this week because I placed my order for Chilean grapes from M&M Produce in Hartford, CT that will be delivered around the 2nd week of May. I ordered 270 lbs each of malbec and syrah grapes which should yield of 15 gallon of wine each. I'd like to produce a big, full-bodied red with a lot of concentrated flavor from both varietals. There's two ways to accomplish that. One involves barrel aging. The other is to remove some of the free run juice, which concentrates the tannins and flavors that are extracted from the grape skins by the remaining fermenting juice. Since I currently don't own a barrel (donations are greatly appreciated!), I can't do the first option. My current plan is to remove about 3 gal (20%) of the free run juice and ferment that separately as a rose. I haven't quite decided whether to ferment each of the varietal free runs separately, or combine them for a 50/50 malbec/syrah rose blend.

The rest of the details are still up in the air (yeast selection, cold-soak, extended maceration, etc). If anyone has suggestions for their favorite malbec or syrah fermentation practices, I'd love to hear them!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Cranberry Update #2--Cran-Niagra Racked...

2008-01-25T18:09:00.001-08:00

The tale of the dueling cranberry fermentations continue. On Jan 21, the specific gravity of the Cranberry-Niagra had stabilized at Brix = -1.7 (SG = 0.993). My Accuvin test strips indicated that there as about 750 mg/L of residual sugars, which is in the dry range. I decided to rack into a 3 gal carboy, sulfite, and let the wine clear. The racking turned out to be fairly tricky because the lees were a thick, fluffy layer--not compact. I ended up transferring over just over 3 gal of wine, but had to leave quite a bit behind. It's very curious that the lees are this fluffy. I added 100 ppm of potassium metabisulfite and 3 g of lysozymes to prevent malolactic fermentation. After racking, I moved the wine to the basement to begin to clear.

The wine actually tastes pretty good--very lightly tart with a grapey/cranberry nose and good body! Pretty heavy on the yeast, but that's to be expected at this stage.

The cranberry-banana is still fermenting. As of Jan 25, I still see gas evolution with Brix = 7.8 (Sg = 0.995). It hasn't stabilized yet, so I'm continuing to let this one go. The biggest difference besides the slower fermentation is that the lees are much more compact. Racking should be a breeze compared to the other wine.

Interesting...

Cranberry Update #1

2008-01-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

A brief word on the current status of the Cranberry experiment. I've been patiently monitoring the fermentation progress, and these little buggers are taking their sweet time.

As of today (January 19):
Cranberry-Niagra OB = 7.6, SG = 0.993, Actual Brix = -1.7
Cranberry-Banana OB = 8.2, SG = 0.997, Actual Brix = -0.8

I was just about the rack the Cranberry-Niagra grape wine when I measured the residual sugar with Accuvin test strips. RS = 1000 mg/L--still on the off-dry side.

Both wines are still bubbling CO2 gas through the airlocks (cranberry-banana is generating the most bubbles through the airlock.

I must be patient, even though Martin Luther King Day weekend would have been the perfect time to get everything racked, sulfited, and starting to clear. Patience, grasshopper, patience...

Salute!

2006 Winter Dry Apple

2008-01-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

I seem to be on a bit of a trip down memory lane recently! I was perusing my collection tonight and decided to open my last bottle of the second fruit wine I ever made--my 2006 Winter Dry Apple.

This wine earned the "Winter" moniker because I started it in March 2006. A couple of months earlier, my first attempt at apple wine ended in a disaster. I was reading Terry Garery's book The Joy of Home Winemaking and followed her recipe for apple wine, choosing a mixture of Granny Smith, Braeburn, and Fuji apples. The only problem was that I chopped the apples into ~1/8 inch pieces and tried to mash further with a potato masher. Didn't work that well. I went ahead with the sugar and pectic enzyme addition, and then added the yeast 24 hours later. Even after fermentation was complete, I still had big chunks of apple left--almost nothing had broken down like I had expected. It smelled pretty bad at the time, but I plunged ahead reasoning that it was just the fermentation aromas. A couple of weeks later after the first racking, it still tasted like rotten apple juice and vinegar. Needless to say, it went down the drain shortly after.

To recover from that disaster, I decided to start with apple juice and forgo the fruit mashing. I came across some Santa Cruz Organic Apple Juice at Meijer in Ann Arbor. The bonus was that the juice came in gallon glass jugs, exactly what I needed for making smaller wine batches!

Winter Dry Apple Wine recipe:
2 gallon Santa Cruz Organic Apple Juice (mostly red & yellow delicious apples)
2 lbs 8 oz sugar
1/2 tsp grape tannin
1 tsp pectic enzyme
2 tsp yeast nutrient
2 tsp ID Carlson acid blend (TA = 0.7%)
Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

Fermentation proceeded smoothly. After it was completed, I split the batch into 2 gallon jugs and added dark toasted French oak chips to one jug (this batch become my Apple Clipper). Three months and two rackings later, I bottled each batch. I bottle aged an additional 3 months and have been very slowly consuming since then. This bottle happens to be my last bottle of the Winter Dry Apple.

The Tasting results:
Appearance: Golden yellow, perhaps a little bit hazy.
Aroma: Heavy apple aromas, but also some kiwi notes
Taste: Tastes a lot like it smells. Full mouth feel, and smooth finish with just a little tingle on the tongue.

Having made this and one other apple wine, I must admit that I'm not huge fan of apple wines--at least those made from Delicious apples. But I learned a lot of technique while making this wine, and it gave me confidence that I could make a decent wine from scratch instead of just the wine kits that I had been making.

Since I've moved to one of the cider capitals of the country and birthplace of Johnny Appleseed, I want to get some cider from late harvest apples this fall and try to make a clean, crisp apple wine and see how I like a non-Delicious Apple wine. Seems like I should figure out how to work with the local produce!

Salute,
a Wine Student