Archive for March, 2009

Some data that may or may not be of interest to anyone. The KenRidge GSM Kit that I started on March 8th has been showing some very vigorous fermentation. I decided to stir and press down the grape skin pack and noticed immediately the warmth coming off the pail.

Not a full two days, probably about 18 hours since I started the wine:

Specific Gravity: 1.049
Wine Temperature: 82F
Air Temperature: about 70F

The yeast is generating a lot of heat.

I’m expecting a special event to happen in the future. I don’t know when exactly, but it will be more than a year. Perhaps two. Perhaps three. When it happens, I want to have my own home made wine for those who attend.

One of my favorite wines is the La Fiole du Pape Chateauneuf-de-Pape. It’s not just the interesting bottle, but the wine itself is a wine I enjoy very much. It has been part of a few special occasions in the past year. While I will not duplicate this wine, I want something close to it.

La Fiole du Pape is a blend of four different grape varieties from the Chateauneuf-de-Pape AOC:

80% Grenache
7% Syrah
7% Mourvédre.
6% Cinsault

I discussed this with the owner of Winemakers, Bob Collins. After some thought and consideration, we decided that it would be best to make wine using two different wine kits. Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact ratio of the grape varieties in the KenRidge Ultra Premium “Founder’s Series,” but there is a kit that contains a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. According to Bob though, this wine on it’s own can have some bold leather tastes that some might not enjoy, probably from the Mourvre.

In order to soften that boldness, I’m going to make another batch of Grenache, a Cru Select Australian Bush Vine Grenache. After both batches have fully fermented, I will blend them together and allow them to bulk age together. It would be nice to source some Cinsault, but I haven’t found any yet.

The GSM kit comes with Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, which I will use, but I’m also going to add a packet of Lalvin Bourgovin RC 212.

Several years ago when I visited Scotch Block Winery, I had a chat with their Winemaker Fred Bulbeck. Based on some things we talked about, I came up with this recipe for Blackcurrant Wine. If you look at the recipe, it calls for two different yeast strains, EC1118 AND D254.

That blackcurrant wine turned out absolutely incredible. I wrote about it here. I regretted that I had made only 3 gallons of it.

I mentioned to some that I had co-inoculated the juice with two different strains of yeast and there were some funny looks. I’m no expert on yeasts, but it turns out that there is evidence to show that using two different strains of yeast when making wine can produce benefits that aren’t available when using only a single strain of yeast.

The Australian Wine Research Institute conducted a study on the use of co-inoculation on a Sauvignon blanc variety. Their conclusion:

“Co-inoculations, using both VIN7/QA23 and the Anchor Alchemy yeast combinations, have enhanced chemical and sensorial aroma profiles when compared to single yeast strain fermented wines and blends of the latter single yeast strain fermentation wines. This phenomenon is most likely due to metabolic interactions between wine yeasts (Howell et al., 2006). At the moment very little information is available about the metabolic interaction of various wine yeasts during fermentation. Researchers at the AWRI are currently involved in generating more information about possible yeast-yeast interactions during wine fermentation.”

The study was published in WineLand Magazine and reproduced for the Internet here.

This evening, I checked the specific gravity of the Winery Series Old Vine Zinfandel that I started last week. Yesterday, the SG was 1.031.

This evening, the reading was 1.018 – good enough for me to rack into the secondary carboy. Before doing so, the bag of grape skins was squeezed and squeezed to get every drop of juice that I could out of it. This will maximize the colour and tannin extraction.

I don’t top up at this stage. I’m not worried one bit about air in the headspace as the fermentation is continuing and whatever air was in there has now been replaced by Carbon Dioxide coming out of the wine and escaping through the airlock. When I do rack again, it will be into a Mexican 5 Gallon carboy which are stouter and shorter than the other ones I have. They seem to require less water or wine to top up and must have a bit less total capacity.

Other than sometimes being hypnotized by watching the airlock bounce up and down, I’ll not give this Zinfandel attention for about another week. At that time, I may take a specific gravity reading out of curiosity, but that’s about it for about two to three weeks.

I was thinking I might rack the Zinfandel that I started six days ago from the primary fermenter to a carboy. But, the Specific Gravity is 1.031, so it will be at least another day before I’ll rack. I want the SG to be below 1.020.

Speaking of racking, I’ve noticed quite a few searches done on how to siphon or rack wine. I’ve written an article with instructions on how to start a siphon available here: “How To Siphon And Rack Wine.”

The “wee man” has coloured all the labels, and we’ve glue sticked them to the bottles. They look really good on the green bottles!

So I was browsing the Advintage website and came across their FAQ’s. You can have a look here yourself.

Scroll down to Question No. 16.

“Can I age my wine in the carboy?

This is commonly known as bulk aging and is usually an accepted practice for people who are making their wine from grapes. When you are making your wine from a wine kit, you do not need to bulk age your wine and your wine WILL NOT benefit from doing so. Follow all the instruction perfectly in the time frame recommended and then bottle within one or two weeks”

Ummm.. your wine “WILL NOT benefit from doing so?” This is incorrect. All you have to do is look at their next answer to realize how silly their answer to question #16 is:

“17. How long can I age my bottles of wine for?

All wine kits are designed so that they can be consumed right away. Your wine does have a shelf life however and can be stored and consumed at a later date. The length of time that it will last depends on many factors. There is no set aging time. A lot of it has to do with the care that was taken during the winemaking process, and of course, the conditions you have for storing your bottled wine. Optimum conditions are a constant 55°F. Many people do not have these conditions. The most important thing, however is that the wine is kept at a constant temperature and not in a place where the temperatures fluctuates up and down on a regular basis. Another fact to consider is that the corks we supply with the wine kits are not meant for long-term aging. If you want to age your wine, we recommend that you purchase a higher quality cork.”

Let’s see what they have correct in that last answer first. They are right. There is no “set aging time.” It does depend on many factors, including the variety of grapes the juice came from, the chemical make up of those grapes the year they were harvested, and yes – the conditions in which the wine was aged!

I’d disagree that optimum conditions are a “constant 55F.” It’s more like a range of temperature that does not have sudden changes. If you could get a constant temperature of 55F, that would be optimum I guess, but a degree here or there isn’t going to do damage.

But here’s the thing: In question #17, they say “Many people do not have these conditions.” I’d suggest that “MOST” people do not have those conditions available to them. And this is one of the reasons why bulk aging a wine will benefit many people. If they can bulk age their wine, their wine is not going to be affected negatively as much if it’s a bulk of 5 gallons than it will be affected if the wine is in 750 ml bottles. And if there do happen to be some sudden changes in temperature, 5 gallons of bulk will handle that far better than 750 ml will.

What’s your opinion or experience?

I’m not sure where my head is tonight. Or where it was when I visited Andrews Scenic Acres and purchased some fruit, including black currants back in October. Tonight, I did some grocery shopping and am positive I put bacon into the shopping cart. When I got home, there was no sign of any bacon.

Later on, I decided I was a tad hungry, and thought I’d open a can of French Canadian style pea soup. Put it on the burner on medium, and then got distracted.. and started writing an article. About 45 minutes later, I smelled something. “Has someone left something on the stove?” I thought to myself. It didn’t even click in that it was ME that had left something on the stove. Went to the kitchen where I was met with burned pea soup. Guess I wasn’t that hungry after all.

I checked my freezer tonight. In October, I drove to Andrews Scenic Acres specifically to buy their frozen black currants. I bought about twelve pounds. I’m sure of it. I also bought gooseberries and elderberries for wine. But it was the black currants I was after. But in my freezer, I can only find 4 lbs of black currants, and many more pounds of gooseberries. Makes no sense. 4 lbs of black currants is not nearly enough to do what I was planning on doing. Perhaps I got confused while rummaging around the freezers at Andrews Acres.

Or perhaps a certain redhead is rubbing off on me! I write that with a little smile on my face. But anyhow…

One of the things I’ve been noticing is that many folk are looking for information on degassing wine. So while my pea soup was burning, I wrote some of my thoughts on degassing wine and how most wine kits don’t provide the best instructions for this very important step of the wine making process, especially if you are hoping to bottle wine in 4 to 8 weeks. You can read it here. I hope you find it helpful.

Getting back to the black currants: After double checking and being almost 80% sure that there are no more black currants in the freezer other than what I found (I suppose it could be under side of beef I put in there, but I don’t think so), I may have sourced an even better supply of black currants! I did some checking, and the cost is much better than what I’ve been getting at Andrew’s Scenic Acres. If things work out, I’ll tell you more about that shortly. How does 20 lb pails for $25.00 sound? Before I tell you where, I need to make sure they are excellent quality – and if so, that this guy will reserve some for me every year before he sells out of them to you!

I really enjoy black currant wine, and one of the things I wanted to do was have a good quantity on hand to do some experimentation as well as duplicate the last batch I made which turned out heavenly.

Ah, in times like these, might be helpful to know, but see below this:

“The purpose of Chapter 15, and the Model Law on which it is based, is to provide effective mechanisms for dealing with insolvency cases involving debtors, assets, claimants and other parties in interest involving more than one country…”

~ Chapter 15

I suppose some of my American readers might be interested in the above Chapter 15 considering the economic times existing right now. But… there is another Chapter 15 that we all might want to study and learn more about as well:

Chapter 15 of The Home Winemaker’s Manual by Lum Eisenman. It covers in great detail “CLARIFICATION AND STABILIZATION.”

Did you know that you can count to about 400 while bottling 5 gallons of wine? Well, if you’re six years old and you get “messed up” a few times and lose track, you can.  Ok, the six year old wasn’t actually bottling the wine, but he was practicing his math skills as he looked at the floor and saw five rows of six bottles and knew I was going to fill thirty bottles.

When I began to fill them, David decided to see how high he could count. So I listened to him go all the way to 400, just as I was finishing up bottle number 30.  He continued on past 400 while we corked the bottles – David putting the cork into the corker, helping me push down on the lever, and he’d be reaching for the next cork as I removed the bottle.

So we did bottle 30 bottles of blueberry wine.  I suppose it will soon be time to try another batch of it and use the EC-1118 yeast instead of DV10.  Perhaps it wasn’t the yeast, maybe it was the blueberries, but this batch is just not as good as what I had before.  But it’s in the bottles and the labels have been printed off,  just awaiting the “wee man’s” colouring skills before we gluestick them on.

I think I’ll also try a blueberry wine with a some sweetness to it.  But before I do that, I have black currants and elderberries in the freezer that are crying out for attention.

If David is around when I start making the black currant wine, I’m sure he’ll be beyond 900 from the time I start to the time I pitch the yeast.