Archive for December, 2005

Getting ready for Christmas, Celebrating Christmas, and then enjoying post Christmas, I realized I really needed to do some racking and make some notes about the wines I have pre-bottling stage.

First things first, I decided to bottle an Australian Shiraz that I started over 9 weeks ago. It was a Cru Select premium kit that has been sitting for awhile, and looked quite clear. So after sanitizing 3o bottles, and soaking corks in a sulphite solution, that was the first order of business. A mouthful of the Shiraz was of course met with “youthful” wine taste, but definitely Shiraz-y. I’ll be setting this wine down to age even longer in the basement after the bottles are labelled tomorrow.

Bottling the Shiraz made a little bit of extra space in my cubbyhole of a home winery, and the next thing on my agenda was to rack the garlic wine. The SG of the garlic wine was 1.004 – still a little fermenting to go. This sure smelled like garlic too. There’s going to be no mistaking the primary ingredient in this one.

After the garlic, and running hot water through my syphon and racking tube for about ten minutes to ensure there was no lingering garlic, I racked a Vieux-Chateau Du Roi, added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite, and have marked this for bottling later this week.

The five gallon carboy of blueberry wine that I started in November was staring at me, with lees on the bottom. The specific gravity of this was 0.990 and it was racked into a freshly sanitized carboy.

Next was the blackcurrant. This is an interesting one – it’s still showing signs of fermentation after being started a month ago, and the specific gravity was 1.010 – I’ll have to watch this to ensure that fermentation really is continuing, and if not, try and restart it. But it was racked off the lees as well.

Next up was blackberry wine. This wine has a brilliant cranberry red colour, similar to the blueberry we enjoyed on Christmas day, but there remains a bit of berry matter in the wine. The specific gavity of the blackberry wine was recorded at 0.992 – so I after racking, added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite, and I’ll let this age for another few months before racking again.

Finally, and loosely following the instructions of the Wine Kitz kit that I’m reviewing, which called for racking on day 28 (this was actually day 41), I recorded the specific gravity at 0.098 (the instructions suggest 0.0995), racked, added the package of mixed sulphite and potassium sorbate along with a packet of Kieselsol. The Wine Kitz instructions now direct that I stir this “for three minute intervals at least six times” over the next 24 hours before adding Chitosan and topping up.

I still haven’t started any of the meads that I was planning – just have run out of time recently. But hopefully before the end of the week, I’ll have some of those started.

Oh, as a final note for the day, don’t ever bother using conglomerate cork. It sucks.

Back in July, I began a blueberry wine according to this recipe. I made one gallon, specifically for drinking with whatever we were going to eat for dinner on Christmas Day.

I was remiss in not sampling the wine in the past two months so I was not sure what it was going to be like. I had also never bothered to bottle it, instead allowing it to bulk age in the one gallon carboy which I poured from into our wine glasses at dinner time.

Being the host, I asked Wendy to take the first sip . She tried it but wasn’t too sure as she had just been munching on some food and asked me to try.

I was disappointed. The wine seemed far too thin to enjoy with dinner and I was thinking I’d have to open a bottle of Vieux-Chateau Du Roi. However, knowing that it was all friends and family sitting around the table, and there were no wine snobs present, I decided to serve it regardless.

The color of the wine was a brilliant cranberry red – perfect as a Christmas color. It was also very clear even though this wine had not been filtered. So as far as appearance goes, this wine was excellent.

On the nose, well… with the dining area filled with the odour of thyme, sage, rosemary, and steaming turkey, it was difficult to detect much of anything. At first.

Something interesting happened though. After about ten minutes in the glass, the wine had improved dramatically. As the blueberry wine had been exposed to oxygen, the the “thinness” disapeared, there was a much nicer mouth feel, and more complexity found on the tongue. This wine definitely is one that would benefit from decanting like a good red grape wine would.

And as the evening wore on, and we had started out with a gallon which meant plenty for all that were interested (except my mom, who was driving), each glass improved upon the previous.

I did quickly pour some into a 750 ml bottle which I gave to my mom before she left so she could continue to enjoy the wine that the rest of us would be sipping on throughout the rest of the evening when she arrived home – which of course cut down on the amount the rest of us were able to consume.

Although I had pies and icecream ready for dessert after dinner, none of us were able to even think about finding any spare square inches in our belly; none of us had hollow legs either so dessert was declined by all.

I did however open an “ice style” blackcurrant wine for dessert – a heavenly delight called “Black Iced Passion” from the Scotch Block winery. A wine that you want to hold on your tongue for as long as possible, and yet at the same time look forward to it drizzling down your throat.

Ah, wonderful!

But returning to my homemade blueberry wine – almost the entire gallon was consumed, and alas, I’ll have to wait another six months or so before I the next batch I made will be ready. But this time, I decided to make five gallons – 30 bottles, which I’m sure will be appreciated gifts, as well as a special occassion wine and I’ll also be able to lay some bottles down for further ageing.

There is also some evidence that blueberry wine has even more of the health benefits than red grape wine. It’s been reported that blueberries contain one of the highest amounts of antioxidant compounds which possibly ward off heart disease, cancers and other diseases. When made into wine, these antioxidant compounds remain to be beneficial to the human body. More information here.

Christmas is a wonderful time for children – and a wonderful time for the parents of children, at least to me as a parent it is. My son David has been talking about Christmas for the past week, and had been eyeing all the presents under the tree. He knew that they were not going to be opened until our friend Roy and then Grandma arrived on Christmas day.

When Roy arrived, David said, “Now we just need Grandma to be here!”

Not long after, Grandma and her Collie drove into the driveway, and that was that, as far as David was concerned. Now that Grandma was here, presents could be opened. How can you argue with logic like that? My three year old understands precise language, and it means exactly what it means. So we had fun opening presents – David had a blast!

I like to cook, sometimes. I don’t like everyday sort of cooking, but I love to cook for special ocassions, and today I was responsible for dinner – all of it. If I’m going to cook, I usually prefer to do it on my own. Everyone get out of the kitchen! “No, I don’t need any help right now, but thank you.”

Everything is planned in my head, exactly when to start the potatoes, the vegetables, make the cranberry sauce (although I was a bit late with that one), all timed so that the turkey could be carved when it was ready and steaming hot.

Everything (other than the cranberry sauce) turned out perfect. The turkey breast was deliciously moist and tasty, the gravy was so good that Wendy had seconds of the mashed potato – just so she could slabber her plate with gravy and used a spoon to get the last drop.

And the wine – I decided to serve my homemade blueberry wine with dinner – more on that in a separate post – but I have to admit I was quite proud of the fact that every part of dinner was made from scratch – including the stuffing.

However, what I’m most proud of is my 3 year old son. Man, if you could see him, you’d adore him as well. He is just the best and makes every ocassion something special. In fact, every day is special and moments throughout each day when I hear,

“Daddy, know what?”

“What, David?”

“I love you, Daddy.”

If you’re at home and browsing blogs and happen to come across this one, I’d like to take the time to wish you a Merry Christmas. I plan a quiet evening tonight with my three year old, David and we may spend some time racking some wines and perhaps, if I’m into it, starting some mead.

I’ve got the turkey brining at the moment. I’ll let it sit in the brine overnight and tomorrow we’ll have a yummy turkey dinner. I haven’t decided what wine I will serve; perhaps I’ll just bring out a variety of bottles and let folks choose for themself what they would like to drink.

However you spend Christmas or whatever you want to call it, I hope you have a wonderful time.

I’m pretty lucky that I’ve got a very good relationship with my ex-wife, mother of three of my sons. She enjoys wine, and I thought I’d help her out and purchased a starter winemaking kit along with a Chamblaise kit for her birthday.

I wasn’t around to help her out, but one of her co-workers makes wine, and Angela thought the co-worker would be able to assist with the various steps. Angela’s co-worker did help with starting the kit, but wasn’t around when it was time to rack the wine into the secondary. So, Angela followed the directions provided and did that part on her own.

Yesterday, I drove to Ottawa (where my ex and three sons live), and thought I’d give Angela a hand with another racking; her wine should be ready for bottling in a week or so. She did rack the wine about three weeks ago herself, but it still not quite ready as far as having cleared. It also needed some degassing.

So, we go take a look at her wine in the carboy. A closer look at the air lock reveals no water in it at all. Bone dry. Angela did not realize that she needed to put water in the airlock, so it had been sitting for three weeks, wide open essentially, to air.

I was a bit concerned. Well, a “bit” is an understatement. Here I had been telling Angela all about the wonderful benefits of home winemaking, and now would I have to tell her that her wine was no good?

I was expecting to taste the wine and find off-flavours, if not outright vinegar. First, I smelled it.. smelled fine to me. Then I tasted – again, it tasted just like a young Chamblaise should taste. Amazing! For three weeks, essentially there was no real airlock on that wine, yet even through the biggest rule was broken, it was still ok.

I will suggest that Angela add a bit of sulphite to the wine before bottling, just in case. I’ll probably be back out there in about two weeks to help her do the bottling as I have a floor corker and she has none at this time.

But there you have it. The biggest and most important rule of winemaking was broken, but still, it would seem, the wine is turning out fine.

Some of you may recall my unfortunate experiences with the Baco juice that I had ordered – to quickly recap, I had ordered some juice from a vineyard in Niagara, but I was not called in good time regarding when the Baco Noir grapes were harvested, and by the time I picked it up, it had already been fermenting for several days with whatever wild yeast that was around.

Although the vineyard refunded my money and accepted responsibility for not notifying my properly, I thought I’d experiment and see if I could come up with something drinkable anyhow.

After several rackings and cold processing over the past three months, I decided to sample this liquid.

“YUCK!”

It was indeed, undrinkable, and I held out very little hope that it would improve ever. It was simply, quite disgusting.

So down the drain it went. Which did have one benefit as it freed up a couple of small carboys that I needed and now don’t have to buy.

But it was still worth the effort, for you just never know. But clearly the “yuck” factor in this experiment was such that dumping the stuff was the best thing to do.

One thing I have never done is filter my wine. Some of my wine, made for early consumption, has not aged that long, and certainly wouldn’t win any wine competitions based on clarity.

And of course, some of those wines, after sitting in a bottle awhile, does have a wee bit of sediment. But I personally can live with that, and it still tastes quite yummy to me.

One of the knocks against filtering that I’ve come across is the possibility that filtering could remove some of the taste characteristics. But I really don’t know if this is true or not.

What do you think? Do you always filter your wine? Never filter it? Any ideas about the “characteristics” issue of filtered wine?

The reason I’m wondering about this is that I’ve got about 9 gallons of Reisling that I made from pure juice, harvested the day I started the wine from grapes on the Niagara Peninsula – the wine has been ageing for about six weeks now, and it looks very clear to my eye in the carboys. I also have a Liebfraumilch which was clarified and has been ageing in the carboy for about 4 weeks since, and I could read a large print book through the glass and wine of the carboy if I wanted to.

I’m also thinking about giving some of this wine as gifts – some I hope that will be considered “special.” And I’m considering for the first time ever, filtering the wine.

I’ve heard and read so many different ideas and thoughts on this – but I’m open to even more if you want to contribute. Thanks!

Time has a way of sneaking up quickly! I had meant to participate in this month’s “Wine Blogging Wednesday,” the theme of which was to buy a wine based solely on the attractiveness (to you) of its label.

But alas, with all sorts of activities including Christmas planning, snow shovelling, working and winemaking, the 7th of December rolled by with me forgetting about heading out to the LCBO to find a pretty wine label.

Derrick of Obsession With Food has December’s Wine Blogging Wednesday Wrap Up, here.

First, the 90 pounds of honey that I ordered from one of my clients, Austerfield Apiary, has arrived. That means about 30 gallons of mead! Now, I don’t think I’ll really make 30 gallons of mead this year as I know I’ll be setting aside some of this delicious honey for consumption with honey and peanut butter sandwiches. But I am most definitely going to be doing quite a lot of experimentation with this fresh, unpasteurized honey that has gone through virtually no processing.

Do you know what a 30 pound pail of honey smells like when you take the lid off? Mmmmmmm. There are not many nectars that smell as lovely as that. Which perhaps is why mead was the nectar of kings in days gone by.

I’ll be posting my mead making activities as they occur and will keep you updated.

But perhaps the other part of the title of this post, “Suck It, Baby” is why you are really visiting and reading. Ah yes, I have also received my wonderful little sucking device – it sucks CO2 out of wine filled carboys very efficiently. You may have read this post on Passing Gas where I mentioned that I had been given the use of a vacuum pump to try out pulling CO2 from a carboy. I was quite impressed, but also disappointed to discover that the retail price of a Barnant Vacuum-Pressure Pump was close to $300.00 Canadian.

At times like these, E-Bay can be your friend. I did a search, found one single Barnant pump for sale on E-Bay, bid on it, and won it for $50.00 plus shipping. When it arrived this afternoon, the first thing I did was plug it in to find that it’s sucking and blowing just like Bob’s.

One other final note – I’m now a member of the Blogging Alliance of Non Partisan Canadians, administered by my good blogging acquaintance, Bow. James Bow. Although my Ianism blog has either died or is in pergatory (it was a member of James’ blogroll community), James wants more Canadian non-political related blogs on his blogroll, and I’m happy to be a part of that.

Perhaps some of those inclined to political debates I used to engage from time to time will sometime come to understand that perhaps actually doing freedom, which includes making your own wine and beer is more profitable to me than simply writing about it.

Thanks, James.

Do you ever find the smell of garlic to increase your appetite? I do. And tonight especially so, as I started a wine that is most definitely not made for sipping – but if you truly want to call yourself a “gourmet” cook, perhaps you’ll want to consider winemaking for this particular wine alone.

Yes, a garlic wine that is meant for marinades or a salad dressing base. You can find my recipe and instructions, based on the one found in Making Wild Wines & Meads over here, entitled Garlic Wine.

Ever try anything like this yourself?