Archive for October, 2005

I’ve written a new article on bentonite, a fining agent for wine. I’d like to write a series of articles on a variety of fining agents, how to use them, when to use them, how much, etc. This one hopefully will be a first in a series.

You can read it here if you’re interested.

Here in my part of Ontario, Canada, it was a gorgeous sunny day although on the cool side. I decided to go for a drive and take along my three year old son David to a small winery that I have seen signs for but never visited.

The winery, named Scotch Block, is located about 40 minutes from my home, just outside of Georgetown, Ontario. I had a couple of reasons for visiting. First, I intend on participating in this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday. This month’s theme is ” drink a wine of which 250 or fewer cases were made.” It’s being hosted by Gastronomie on the 2nd of November.

According to winemaker Fred of Scotch Block, pretty much all of their wines number far less than 250 cases with some being limited at a total of 1,000 bottles. So, I wanted to see what I could find that looked interesting. In fact, I picked up three different wines, but for Wine Blogging Wednesday, I’ll be sticking with one in particular as it best meets the guidelines for price.

The other reason I wanted to go there as to pick up frozen fruit. I was able to get about 8 pounds each of gooseberries, black currants, and blackberries (similar to a mullberry). Unfortunately they were out of elderberries, at least according to the girl I spoke with who worked there. The winery is located at a popular farm for produce and it was packed with people wanting to purchase pumpkins and other autumn products, so I’m wondering if the girl was just too busy to check the large freezers for me. I found it curious that they had so much other frozen fruit available, but no elderberries, which probably would have been harvested just last month.

I’m sure you can imagine what I plan on doing with this fruit. If you guessed, “bake pies,” you are wrong! Some years ago, while visiting the home of a pastor of a Canadian Reformed Church, the pastor poured me a glass of his homemade black currant wine, and it was delightful. So I’m going to see if I can make some decent wines out of the black currants and other berries I purchased.

I was also priveledged to be able to talk with the Scotch Block winemaker, Fred. Fred provided me with some very helpful advide including his own recommendations of yeast strains to try. I’ll have to see if my local wine making shop will order them for me.

Now that I’ve got the database set up, I decided it was time to add some tools for my tiny little home winemaking lab.

When making wine from anything other than kits, it’s good to know the PH level of the juice or wine at varying stages. I have an acid testing kit, but decided I also wanted to record PH levels, so today I purchased an Oakton Instruments pH Testr 1 from a local hydroponics shop here in Orangeville, called Lighthouse Hydroponics. I told the proprietor what I wanted to do, asked him for his recommendations, and this is what he advised me to get. He also sold me two different liquids for calibrating the tester – so I’ll have to play around with that to figure it out.

Now, let me point out that this is not necessary stuff to make good wine. But I want to make really good wine, and to have very good records so I can learn and possibly predict, manage, and practice good winemaking.

In the meantime, I’m sipping some Valpolicella which is 3 months old, and is tasting even more yummy than it did a month ago. I’m also going to bottle some Gewurtztrameiner this evening.

I’ll be sure to let you know of all my experiments in checking pH levels of a variety of liquids! Boy, this could be fun!

Winemaking has turned me into a mad scientist.

I’ve been wanting to keep track of all my winemaking activities, including recipes, racking dates, additives, etc., and finally got Wendy, my business partner who knows lots of neat things about MySql databases to help me out.

Although is a winemaking blog, for anyone who is interested, we discovered that the latest version of OpenOffice, V2, has something called “Base” that comes with it. It can connect to a MySQL database, or create its own, and is very much like the MS Access equivalent.

But of course, it is free! There were a few issues in designing forms that haven’t been completely worked out yet, but now it is data entry time. I’ll be going through all my paper records, and entering the information. I’ve decided to also mark each container, both primary and carboys with a number so I can track batches by what container they are in.

I also managed to make some time to visit my favorite supplier, Winemakers here in Orangeville and chatted with the always helpful Debbie. The owner, Bob, should be thankful – Debbie talked me into ordering all four of this year’s R.J. Spagnols Restricted Quantities (link opens in PDF format) for this year.

Other than that, work has kept me extremely busy for the past week, and I haven’t done much at all on my hobby. I did however, pick up a Liebfraumilch kit in order to satisfy Wendy’s desire for the stuff, and also about 8 or 10 pounds of frozen blueberries. I want to make a five gallon batch of blueberry wine.

More soon!

That’s my son. His name is David, and he’s an awesome son. Recently, he and I went on a little “adventure” together, just him and I. It was time to pick up our Baco Noir juice from Lakeview Vineyards, near Beamsville Ontario in the Niagara region.

The picture above is David, after spending almost two hours in the car with me, falling asleep, and me waking him up when we arrived at Lakeview. David is kind of like his dad – waking up from sleep is not the most pleasant thing but once awake, watch out! David wanted to jump around on the steps, pick crab apples, and explore. But I needed to pick up my juice!

After picking up the juice, I asked the staff for permission to walk around their grounds, partly so I could take some pictures, and partly so David could expend some energy. Permission was granted, and David and I checked out the vineyard.

David regularly helps Daddy with wine making, and especially enjoys helping with the bottling. He likes to hold onto the corks, and when the big floor corker needs another cork, David knows exactly what to do. The cork goes into the hole as Daddy places the bottle of wine underneath, and David reaches up, two hands on that corking lever, and helps press the cork down into the bottle. I’m sure the Ontario Labour Board wouldn’t approve, and we’re probably breaking some safety regulation, having a three year old help with the wine corking, but neither David or I care much about that.

Regardless, David knows about making wine. So he was quite excited himself to run around the vineyard, and see “wine juice berries.” That’s what he called them, and what an appropriate name it is, don’t you agree?

David had an awesome time, running between the rows of grape vines, looking at them all. He even wanted to taste the grapes, but knew that we should ask permission first. He knew they weren’t his wine juice berries – and if we couldn’t find anyone to ask… well, we shouldn’t take any of the “berries” for ourselves. Amazing really, how children can have a sense of property rights when one teaches respect for their own property as well as others. So instead of eating the berries, we had fun exploring and looking at them all. And David had a lot of energy to expend as well!

That’s David, pointing to some “wine juice berries” high on the vine – I believe they are Pinot Noir grapes that we’re looking at. David ran up and down the rows of vines, exclaiming, “Look, Dad, purple ones!” And then when we came to some white grapes, the exclamation, “White wine juice berries, Daddy!” It was a wonderful adventure!

After taking a bunch of pictures of David, he wanted a picture of him and me. Good thing I have an older Nikon that swivels, and we sat together, me squatting in front of wine berry vines, while he sat on my knee, and we peered into the camera viewer to get a picture of both of us together. I was a bit .. rough looking, not having shaved for a few days, but David didn’t care. It was just awesome that the both of us were able to go on a wee adventure together, laugh, play, and look at “wine juice berries.”

I have no idea if David will ever enjoy my hobby of winemaking, and it doesn’t really matter. All I know is that it was wonderful for me to take him along to pick up my Baco, let him explore, and have a wonderful “adventure” together.

I hope you have as much fun as I do with your winemaking. Even if the wine doesn’t turn out as well as you had imagined, I hope that your memories are as good as mine, and the only thing that really matters, is spending time with that which you love.

Ah, it was a wonderful adventure, and we’ll be doing more of that as well.

It’s amazing how much work time takes away from play and hobby time! I’ve been wanting to rack my ginger wines for a few weeks now, but haven’t had a chance. I’ve also had a couple of kits sitting in my winemaking room, waiting for me to start them.

First, the Ginger Wine. I started some ginger wine according to this recipe, and doubled it to make two gallons instead of just one. I wanted to make one sweet, and one dry.

I made some time today to rack the two, and added the half cup of demerrara sugar to the one that will be sweet. It will also be higher in alcohol content – a nice after dinner wine on a cold winter night here in Central western Ontario. Well, I hope it will be nice! It certainly smells interesting – the ginger is unmistakable. And I like ginger.

A few weeks ago, I purchased two kits from Winemakers here in Orangeville – a Cru Select “Platinum” kit consisting of Australian Shiraz juice, and a Grand Cru Zinfandel.

The Zinfandel is a four week kit, while the Shiraz is a six week. Costs were CDN$55.00 for the Zinfandel, and CDN$85.00 for the Shiraz. The Shiraz contained 16 litres of concentrated juice (so only 7 litres of water added) while the Zinfandel only contains 10 litres of concentrate.

I’m interested in aging the Shiraz for at least a year, while consuming the Zinfandel quickly. How quickly? I guess that depends on how many friends come over to help drink it! Both kits will make about 30 750 ml bottles though.

I was a little disappointed in the Specific Gravity of the Zinfandel, only coming in at 1.064 after adding the water to bring it up to 23 litres. That is quite low. The Shiraz was 1.072 – again, a little on the low side, but close enough to the range I’d like it to be in.

I also have a couple of new articles I want to write for the main Home Winery site, as well as do a quick one with pictures of my three year old son David, when he went with me on our “Daddy And David Adventure” trip to the Niagara Wine region to pick up fresh juice.

More on that soon.

So this evening I’m sanitizing and rinsing bottles so I can bottle up some Pinot Noir. Everything is going well, even though it is a bit of a mind numbing activity.

I’ve got a little pressure spray attachment on my faucet that when I press down on it with the mouth of the bottle, a good spray of water shoots into the bottle, rinsing it.

So merrily I’m going along, when all of a sudden, the whole darn faucet comes out of it’s fitting behind the sink! I’ve got hot water spraying up to the ceiling and all over me. Probably would have made a good cartoon or something, but at the time, it was a wee bit shocking with this hot water spraying all over the place.

Thankfully, I have a plumbing box handy, and managed to replace the o-ring that had completely split, and somehow the end of the faucet was able to slip up behind it’s retaining ring. So I did manage to get 35 bottles sanitized – but it’s 3:30AM, and I’m tired now.

Ah, what the heck.. Pinot into the bottles.. it’s Saturday, I can sleep in.

Jens at Cincinnati Wine Garage has the Wine Blogging Wednesday recap up, and there’s a lot of interesting reviews of Pinots. Go check it out.

It took more than 48 hours to see obvious signs of the yeast working on the Riesling juice I picked up recently. I had a bit of concern after 36 hours and seeing nothing visible or smelling any sign of fermentation. However, the wine is very active right now. In about five days, I’ll transfer the wine to secondary fermenters and let it sit another week. With the acid content, I’m thinking I’ll stabilize when the SG is a little above 1.000.

I’m also learning about the wonderful effects of aging on wine. Even one week, at least with a new wine, can make a difference. I’m sipping Pinot Noir that is now 7 weeks old. I’m surprised the greater body and lingering notes of rasberry I’m detecting. This is the same Pinot that I reviewed for Wine Blogging Wednesday.

The call came today – Riesling was being harvested and the juice would be ready in the afternoon. David, my 3 year old, and I got ready for the 90 minute car drive down to Beamsville to pick up 46 litres. Ah, fresh juice!

According to Lakeview, the vineyard where I bought it, the juice came in at Brix of 19 degrees, 10.5 grams/litre acid (which seems high to me), and PH level of 2.65.

I don’t have an acid test kit or PH metre but I did measure the specific gravity and found it to be 1.082 which is a little higher than the 19 degrees Brix that the vineyard said.

I added some sulphite to each pail, waited a couple of hours before hydrating yeast with a little yeast nutrient, and we’re waiting for the primary fermentation.

I’m a bit concerned about that acid level so I’ll talk toBob Collin about that when he’s back from his honeymoon.

But I’m happy to finally have some fresh juice to work with. I’m looking forward to this!