Archive for the ‘Images’ Category

As promised yesterday, I finally got to the photos I took while on the road trip with my son James. The camera I had with me was a spare – my business partner having taken the good Nikon with her to Edmonton. I apologise for the poor quality of the images. Here they are:

As we drove along the Niagara Parkway between Niagara Falls and the Town of Niagara-On-The-Lake, there were signs like this identifying the various winery estates. Most of these wineries are relatively small and family owned. I passed a number of wineries along the road, but on a whim, decided to visit this one.

The above is an image of the Riverview Estates store and facility. As well as two wine tasting rooms, stocked with a variety of their wines, Riverview also has a small area at the front where fresh local fruit may be purchased. As well as the wine I purchased, I also bought a pint of delicious blackberries.

Shortly after arriving, we discovered owner commencing a guided tour of the operation with guests. James and I kind of snuck up to listen while taking photos of the area. Both ____ and his tour guests graciously invited us to continue with the tour if we wanted. And of course, we wanted!

This is an image of a bottling machine. This particular image was taken while visiting the Lakeview Estates vineyard, but Riverview has exactly the same set up, only less cluttered. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see this machine in action, but it fills the bottles, corks them and seals them.

These are the stainless steel holding tanks for wine as it ages. Temperature may be controlled with the use of an external device that is placed against the tank. I didn’t get all the details on this, perhaps next time.

Another tank that is used for holding wine.

Riverview Estates ages their red wine (and one of their whites) in these oak barrels. Although they are not cheap, the barrels are replaced every three years. Perhaps one day, I’ll have the room to have a couple of these babies in my wine making area!

While exploring the vineyard, these are the grapes we came across that were closest to us as we walked a bit. These are Pinot Noir varietal grapes. Between now and harvest time, they won’t get much bigger than their present size.

My son James is about 5′10″. The grape vines are quite a bit taller than he is! It was quite interesting to see how grape vines are cultivated, and the description of harvesting provided by Mike was very interesting. I hope I can get back there during harvest season to see how it is done, without having to use my imagination.

And for those that want to see what Niagara Falls looks like on a windy day with lots of mist in the air:

I have more pictures, but they turned out worse then the ones above. Next visit, I’ll be sure to take along the better camera, or have figured out how to use this one!

I picked up an inexpensive Polaroid camera (I cashed in some Airmiles) as I didn’t want to keep travelling with the expensive Nikon while fly fishing and wading rivers. The camera arrived yesterday, and it doesn’t take as good quality images as my Nikon.

I was trying it out, and decided to take a picture of the first Valpolicella wine I bottled last evening. It’s sitting on my desk beside my small fountain pen collection.

I won’t be opening this bottle for awhile. Perhaps after I have perfected making Valpolicella wine, I’ll open it up, or I may just keep it for posterity sake.

I like have 30 (well, I’m down to 28 now) bottles of wine. The total cost was $55.00 Canadian, which means that each bottle of wine was less than $2.00. The quality is as good as any 12.00 Valpolicella in the liquor store.

Great way to by pass the taxman. Make your own wine.

Here’s another view:

I love Valpolicella wines. Masi produces a wonderful full bodied Valpolicella, and even last year, the Ianism winery produced a Valpolicella that was simply awesome. It was so awesome, it never got bottled because every day, there were demands for this wine – so instead of bottling, the Ianism Winery simply siphoned off the wine from the carboy on an “as needed” basis. And with that definition of “need” in mind, the wine was consumed within a month.

I’m not sure that this years Ianism Winery’s Valpolicella will meet with the same quality as last year, nevertheless I am looking forward to letting this one bulk age a bit. I’ll probably rack it tomorrow after racking the Liebframilch and add the stabilizing and clarification ingredients which include Sulphite, Potassium Sorbate, and Isinglass – a fish by product, believe it or not.

Note the very rich red colour. This is one wine that will definitely leave red stains on your tongue if you drink copious amounts of it. After sharing a bottle or two with friends in an evening, my tongue needed a lot of extra brushing while cleaning my teeth to remove the marks.

But if it turns out well, as I’m hoping, it will be a wonderful, rich, full bodied wine that is a pleasure to taste as well as swallow. Yes, I swallow too Red wine, that is

This must was racked on July 3rd, and I managed to clear a lot of dead yeast cells – but if you look closely, and click on the image for a larger one, you might see that there is still a lot of sediment at the bottom as dead yeast cells have sunk.

If you’re looking for a wine to sip while in the company of spirited and robust conversation with friends, you’ll be hard pressed to find something better than a good Valpolicella, in my opinion.

This is an interesting image. The series of images that I’m providing were motivated by the request of Eric, who makes his own beer but has never tried wine.

The reason it is interesting (to me) is because this is a Chamblaise, or “Chablis” that I started yesterday. In previous wine making experiments, I have seen a lot of foaming like the image of the Blueberry must in the earlier post.

When I took the lid off the pail to take a picture of the yeast working on the Chamblaise, I was quite surprised to not find foam on top. This morning, there was a great deal of foam – however, this evening I did see that the must was still “working” as there is much bubble activity going on.

Chamblaise is a new wine style for me, so I’m not sure if the lack of foam on top has something to do with the variety, or perhaps the yeast that came with the kit. I’m interested to know why the foaming seemed to have declined sooner than in other wines I have made. I’m not sure if you will be able to see the bubbles from the image.

This is a picture of my Liebframilch in the Carboy before it has been clarified. I’m not sure if you will be able to see them, but there are still some elderflowers floating around in the must. I spent some time yesterday and today degassing the must, and tomorrow it should be ready for clarification when I’ll add a fining agent as well as Potassium Sorbate to stabilize it.

Unfortunately, my blog software won’t allow me to upload more than one image per post, and although I could go and do it manually, I’m too lazy at the moment.

So, the next bunch of posts will be images, with some descriptions, including pictures of my recent wine making adventures, some forgotten pictures of one of the greatest loves of my life – my wee son David Hugh, and perhaps some fly fishing images.

This first one is an image of mashed blueberries before adding the sugar water solution, the other ingredients, and yeast as I began my attempt at making wine from fruit and not using a wine kit.