Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: JoeKitchen on September 16, 2020, 01:34:27 pm
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So over the last year I experimented with a few wine kits and will be making wine from fresh grapes this fall. I am stoked!
Will be getting 3 lugs of Cab Sav and 1 lug of Merlot this Friday for a blend, and 4 lugs of Pinot Noir in three weeks. Any advice?
With the Cab/Merlot, I was planning on using RC-212 at 85F for two weeks with 5% to 10% whole cluster. Then separating the runoff plus enough pressed to produce 6 gallons, aging that separate from the pressed. I was planning on using Medium American and Heavy Hungarian for the runoff and pressed, respectively.
For the Pinot Noir, 30% whole cluster with Vintner's VR21 at 76F, and run until it is dried out. Same runoff and pressing procedure as about with Light French on the runoff and Heavy French on the pressed? I was debating if I should split the amount of light French with some Medium French on the runoff though? I also am concerned 76F will produce too light of a wine; I am going for medium body.
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Years ago, I used to blend 2-3 grape varieties, some darker and some lighter, but every year the individual grapes were slightly different, so now I keep them in separate vessels. My last two batches were Cabernet and Shiraz.
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That may be a better idea with more control. I did split a chardonnay kit into two different 3 gallon batches, one half fermented at 60F and the other half at 46F, and will more then likely be blending some of the latter into the former when I bottle.
What do they do in Bordeaux, blend after fermentation or before?
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I have no experience and no practical advice, except that we all know that the traditional way of pressing is with your bare feet.
I wish you well on your experiments, and I would of course love to come to a tasting party when you're ready to release Chateau Kitchen!
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That may be a better idea with more control. I did split a chardonnay kit into two different 3 gallon batches, one half fermented at 60F and the other half at 46F, and will more then likely be blending some of the latter into the former when I bottle.
What do they do in Bordeaux, blend after fermentation or before?
I'd guess that the professional vintners do it after the secondary fermentation, that way they have more control about the taste and alcohol content.
I usually blended the grape juice before the first fermentation, it was simpler that way. Sometimes I blended the last batch of wine after the first or second racking, just to keep the demijohn full.
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In a previous life as a wine maker and my goal, as were all my colleagues locally, was to ferment both red and white on the cool side and in any case controlled temperatures. Traditional wine making in Europe was once left to chance, thus vintage years and not so vintage years. The cooler fermenting kept more of the character of the berries in the final product.
Back then I managed for a few years a couple of acres of Zin and Tinta Cão which was sold to another family winery. We bought Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc our own production producing just a few barrels for our own enjoyment. I worked at a couple of other vineyards and wineries back then and photographed as I drove the tractor, picked grapes, ran the press, all the way to the bottling and marketing. It was a great time in younger days with great people and enjoyable wines!
The controlled conditions were brought into the art of wine make by scientists at UC Davis and Fresno State U., and these created a culture of world-class wines in California, augmented by many small wine makers sharing their experiences with one another, swapping different musts and unfinished wines with one another to try different blends and constant testing and experimentation.
In the years since California made the big time, that knowledge and science was shared with the rest of the world and now it seems tough to have a bad year for wine.
Though the making is a lot of work, messy and sticky, it's fun to do and thoughout the process, allows you to sample your efforts along the way which to me was a bonus. When you get it barreled and aged, then bottled and past the shock, you'll soon know the results of your fun.
But, be careful with this all! Many of fifty or so wineries in my community (under 40,000 population), got into the wine business, much like you. A few bins and a few years and soon your hobby gets out of hand you you now become a wine maker sharing your art with many new friends who find your vintage is to their taste!
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Me, I'm a Philistine. I make 80% ethanol from granulated sugar and yeast.
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Me, I'm a Philistine. I make 80% ethanol from granulated sugar and yeast.
Do you make two kinds, one of red sugar and yeast, and the other of white sugar and yeast, bottled as Chateu McLennan? 8)
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Heh. I should. One for fish, one for pasta. :)
It does make fabulous nocino, though.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nocino&oq=nocino&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.7735j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Even more Philistiny of me, I drink it with grapefruit pop, soda water and lime juice. In fact, the hockey game's on right now and I gotta go make one...
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In a previous life as a wine maker and my goal, as were all my colleagues locally, was to ferment both red and white on the cool side and in any case controlled temperatures. Traditional wine making in Europe was once left to chance, thus vintage years and not so vintage years. The cooler fermenting kept more of the character of the berries in the final product.
Back then I managed for a few years a couple of acres of Zin and Tinta Cão which was sold to another family winery. We bought Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc our own production producing just a few barrels for our own enjoyment. I worked at a couple of other vineyards and wineries back then and photographed as I drove the tractor, picked grapes, ran the press, all the way to the bottling and marketing. It was a great time in younger days with great people and enjoyable wines!
The controlled conditions were brought into the art of wine make by scientists at UC Davis and Fresno State U., and these created a culture of world-class wines in California, augmented by many small wine makers sharing their experiences with one another, swapping different musts and unfinished wines with one another to try different blends and constant testing and experimentation.
In the years since California made the big time, that knowledge and science was shared with the rest of the world and now it seems tough to have a bad year for wine.
Though the making is a lot of work, messy and sticky, it's fun to do and thoughout the process, allows you to sample your efforts along the way which to me was a bonus. When you get it barreled and aged, then bottled and past the shock, you'll soon know the results of your fun.
But, be careful with this all! Many of fifty or so wineries in my community (under 40,000 population), got into the wine business, much like you. A few bins and a few years and soon your hobby gets out of hand you you now become a wine maker sharing your art with many new friends who find your vintage is to their taste!
Too late, lol. I kind of took a nose dive.
I'll have 46 gallons aging in a month, and a barrel. A small barrel though, only 8 gallons, but it is new Hungarian oak with a medium toast.
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When I was a post-doc at Cornell, we made wine in the fall. A former Cornell chemistry professor who was then the President at Clarkson University had purchased a couple of hundred acres of vineyard on the eastern side of Lake Cayuga and was selling pressed grape juice. We would buy five gallons and ferment it on the lab bench. We had the glass blowing shop make a nifty looking fermentation lock. I forget what the grape varieties were but the finished product was akin to a chardonnay.
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I will say something that I did not expect when diving into this was:
1. How quickly I was able to learn the differences in taste between the three kinds of oak and toast levels to the point where I could pick up on them in other wines.
2. The surprising taste of un-oaked red wine, and exactly how much oak effects the flavor.
3. How quickly short chain tannins bond into long chain tannins to produce a much better mouth feel and reduce that dry mouth tannin effect.
4. The sheer annoyance and amount of work of pressing grapes after fermenting, not to mention the inevitable stains of your cloths and hands, especially at the cuticle of your nails.
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Okay, so I am taking a big risk with one wine. I have some very high quality grapes that are at around 0.998 (those who make wine or beer will know what that means) that I plan on performing an extended maceration to round out the tannins and decrease the fruitiness, which I dont like. I plan on letting the wine sit on the skins for another 14 to 24 days, plan on pumping in argon gas to protect the cap and seal the whole fermenter.
Here's hoping I dont make vinegar.
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Here's hoping I dont make vinegar.
If that should happen, it could be one of those lucky accidents and produce some spectacular homemade vinegar.
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So over the last year I experimented with a few wine kits and will be making wine from fresh grapes this fall. I am stoked!
Will be getting 3 lugs of Cab Sav and 1 lug of Merlot this Friday for a blend, and 4 lugs of Pinot Noir in three weeks. Any advice?
With the Cab/Merlot, I was planning on using RC-212 at 85F for two weeks with 5% to 10% whole cluster. Then separating the runoff plus enough pressed to produce 6 gallons, aging that separate from the pressed. I was planning on using Medium American and Heavy Hungarian for the runoff and pressed, respectively.
For the Pinot Noir, 30% whole cluster with Vintner's VR21 at 76F, and run until it is dried out. Same runoff and pressing procedure as about with Light French on the runoff and Heavy French on the pressed? I was debating if I should split the amount of light French with some Medium French on the runoff though? I also am concerned 76F will produce too light of a wine; I am going for medium body.
1/30th at f/16.
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If that should happen, it could be one of those lucky accidents and produce some spectacular homemade vinegar.
Yeah, it could be the best 10 or 12 gallons of vinegar I've ever had, but considering what I spent on these grapes, it would not make me happy.
Today the wine is at 0.9965 (started at 1.106) with a good amount of whole berries that have yet to pop. It tasted just a tad on the sweet side, but you really have to think about it to taste the sugars, with a fair amount of fruit. No tannins yet, so ...
Shrink wrapped, then argon gas pumped in to protect the wine, tight fitting lid and shrink wrapped again, and now time to wait a week. Tannins are alcohol soluble, and the skin tannins leech out first. They are short chain tannins that will link and round out to be smooth, however shortly there after the seed tannins start to leech out, which do not round out. So the wine will get tough as nails, then smooth, and within 4 or 5 days tough as nails again. The trick seems to be protecting the wine long enough for the skin tannins to round out and pressing right then to keep the seed tannins at bay, and then into the barrel.
Fingers crossed.
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Best of luck with your new adventure!
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Joe, will you stop the fermentation and bottle all the wine, or will you leave it in the barrel?
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Just wondering Joe if you're familiar with UC Davis and their continuing education extension courses on winemaking.
"Whether you're interested in a career in the wine industry or are just a devoted oenophile, you can take this unique course from anywhere in the world. Access top-quality, college-level course material in an interactive, web-based environment and gain exposure to an internationally recognized program and instructors, including industry experts and UC Davis faculty. Designed for individuals working in the wine industry and affiliated networks, as well as wine enthusiasts this course explores such topics as the history of wine, fundamentals of the winemaking process, wine and health issues, basic wine tasting, interpreting a wine label and wine-growing regions around the world. This course can be taken as a stand-alone course or as the first course in the Winemaking Certificate Program."
https://cpe.ucdavis.edu/course/introduction-wine-and-winemaking (https://cpe.ucdavis.edu/course/introduction-wine-and-winemaking)
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Joe, will you stop the fermentation and bottle all the wine, or will you leave it in the barrel?
Yes, to the former, eventually.
Right now I have a WA Chard in the barrel (8 gallons) trying to pull enough flavor out of the smaller barrel (which for those unfamiliar imparts oak flavor faster due to a greater surface area to volume ratio) so I can sur lee age this Bordeaux blend for 6 months, at least. (Also, I am sur lee aging the Chard, though for only 5 or 6 weeks, but I am unsure how effective the sur lee will be with the Chard.)
Once again, for those unfamiliar, barrel aging (in addition to oak flavor) introduces a slow oxidation and evaporation of liquids, both of which helps the wine, especially when using a sur lee process. The issue with small barrels is that the oak flavor matures too fast for the full effect of gradual oxidation and evaporation to come to fruition, whereas a full size 60 gallon barrel hits the right sweet spot in terms of time. But, alas, 850 pounds of grapes to process for a full size barrel is way too much for me to handle; next year I plan on getting a 50L (~13.5 gallon) medium plus barrel. This is why stripping some of the flavor first with a short aged secondary wine, to allow for a longer aging with a primary wine second, in a small barrel is key.
After that, this wine will be put into a carboy for another 6 months before bottling.
At this point, the barrel will be used for a third wine, a tawny port, which is what I really bought the barrel for. Long term gradual oxidation is required for tawny ports, and the results are magical! (With barrels, I have been told, it is important to have plan for other wines to be cycled into the barrel so it never dries out.) I have a Petite Sirah, Malbec and Cab Sav I plan on blending, fortifying with 151 rum and brandy, sweetening with dextrose and aging until caramel, so like 6 or 8 years.
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Just wondering Joe if you're familiar with UC Davis and their continuing education extension courses on winemaking.
"Whether you're interested in a career in the wine industry or are just a devoted oenophile, you can take this unique course from anywhere in the world. Access top-quality, college-level course material in an interactive, web-based environment and gain exposure to an internationally recognized program and instructors, including industry experts and UC Davis faculty. Designed for individuals working in the wine industry and affiliated networks, as well as wine enthusiasts this course explores such topics as the history of wine, fundamentals of the winemaking process, wine and health issues, basic wine tasting, interpreting a wine label and wine-growing regions around the world. This course can be taken as a stand-alone course or as the first course in the Winemaking Certificate Program."
https://cpe.ucdavis.edu/course/introduction-wine-and-winemaking (https://cpe.ucdavis.edu/course/introduction-wine-and-winemaking)
Looks nice!
I think this is the beauty of the Internet, insofar as information is so widely available, and the application of the idea that no one really cares what you're credentials are so long as you can produce. I have no real credentials in photography, but people pay me more then most with do to shoot buildings for a living. To be honest, I gained a good portion of those skills from forums, conversations and cheap classes.
I joined a wine making forum months ago and leaned so much from just asking questions. Hopefully it is now beyond knowing just enough to hang myself, but, if not, next season will come.
Hey, to be honest though, making wine is much easier then blending and rolling cigars, which I have learned a fair amount about.
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Joe,
I hope yu are going to invite all your LuLa fans to a tasting party when it's all ready. ;)
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Now it would be a good time to crack open one of the barrels and celebrate. Especially in Pennsylvania.
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Now it would be a good time to crack open one of the barrels and celebrate. Especially in Pennsylvania.
Barrels? ???
I only have one barrel Les, for now. Maybe I'll get another barrel (50L I'm thinking) next year, but they are expensive considering it's just a few pieces of wood and metal rings banged together.
But anyway, I pressed the wine yesterday and racked off the gross less this morning, ending up with about 12 gallons of wine, plus the 1.5 gallons of Soigné Rosé. 26 days total on the skins. The tannin structure went from nothing (at 10 days) to tough as nails around 22 days, and then totally velvet/plush at 24 days. I let the seed tannins start to leech out for a couple of days afterwards for some more structure. The wine is still super fruit forward, so I think I will be able to oak it for a fairly long time, maybe 8 months.