Putting them to Bed

Lisa was in Florida for a weekend with her mom and sister, and call was kind to me.

The back porch project took another step forward. We removed the railing in the center of the porch and I'm removing a section of concrete to make the center bed more balanced. I cut the concrete last weekend but it did not yield to a sledgehammer. I rented a jackhammer to finish removing the concrete, and it worked like a charm.

I dug out the concrete and put up the two white boards I had. I'm short by 6' 8" so we can't close the book on the project quite yet.

I put the hydrangeas to bed. The last few years I've quit putting up chicken wire baskets in favor of simply a pile of limbs to trap the oak leaves.

Those piles of limbs and leaves are hiding the hydrangeas

I can't recall ever getting the plants into the greenhouse this late, the second to last day of October. Jake helped me with the plastic a couple of weeks ago when he was home. The plants which spent the summer inside the greenhouse look great. The plants which have been outside look a little rough. Without the bananas, there was room for everything. I recorded a little tour.

2016 Wines - Chapter 8 - Blueberry Rosé

The inspiration for this Blueberry Rosé came from a single comment in a wine blog post. We collected plenty of blueberries from Danamay Farm and at a U-pick farm at the Chalet in Michigan. The berries were frozen, then thawed and directly pressed. The color was nice and dark.

We added half of a can, 24 ounces, of Alexander's Sauvignon Blanc concentrate, along with Booster Blanc, Opti White, and pectic enzyme. The pH was very low at 2.64. Just under 2kg sugar brought the SG to 1.090 and 7t calcium carbonate brought the pH to 3.29. K1-V1116 was rehydrated and pitched. It turned out to be a very slow ferment. I step fed the ferment, kept it cool at first, but finally had to warm it up a little bit to get the specific gravity moving. On day 8 the SG was 1.012 and I racked it to carboy.

This wine has a nice color and nice aroma for this stage of the game. If nothing else, it will be a unique country wine.

Minor Harvest

We had a minor harvest at the Pierce Ranch over the past couple of weeks. I cut down the bananas because we need the room and they are too slow to produce. There was one bunch of Dwarf Red left and I cut it down and slowly let it ripen in the garage. We couldn't eat them all before they were fully ripe, so I froze the remainder and we'll use these in wine.

Ready for the freezer

I grew the biggest sugar apple of my career. The rest of the family didn't like it that much so I ended up eating it all.

Finally, after about 10 years, we have blackhaws. They are reasonably sweet, mostly seed, but with a dark brown flesh which reminds me of a date or dried fig. The blackhaws are going into an Estate Quadberry Wine, along with elderberries, blackberries, and haskaps.

2016 Wines - Chapter 7 - Lemongrass Mint

With time, the 2015 Lemongrass Mint wine improved quite a lot. It was perhaps a bit heavy on the mint, but still a very drinkable white wine. Back in May, the mint and lemongrass were abundant, but I wasn't ready to make the wine. So I picked a 3 gallon batch worth, simmered the stock, and put it in the freezer.

Since I was splitting up a can of grape concentrate, I thawed out the stock and started this wine. The stock had 650g lemongrass and 2qt mint leaves. To this I added 24oz Sauv Blanc concentrate, 2.35kg sugar, citric and tartaric acids, Opti White, and Booster Blanc. Looks yummy.

K1-V1116 was the chosen yeast. I'm not sure why, but this was kind of a slow ferment. Maybe it was the fact that I rehydrated the yeast without any must. I kept the temp down to start, and when I let the temp come back up it never really took off. But it steadily worked down to 1.009 on day 7. Because of the slightest hint of an off odor, I splash racked it to the carboy.

Preparing to Grow some Grapes

Vineyard installation got underway this weekend in the back pasture. We finally fenced out the cattle a couple of weeks ago. Last week I brought home 4000' of high tensile 12.5g wire, 14 9' fence posts, and 14 earth anchors. Amazon had wire vices. A1 Rental had the auger and earth anchor driver. My good friends Bob and Shawn proved invaluable.

The earth anchors went in surprisingly well. Twice they stuck, but a 1" galvanized 6' pipe allowed us to get those last two all the way in.

It doesn't turn very fast, but it has a kick

We haven't had much rain, so there was a bit of a hardpan which made digging the post holes slow going at first. But once through the top 12" the auger chewed through the moister soil easily. 

Stretching the top wire proved to be a challenge. The first two methods were ineffective. But Bob earned every bite of his grilled cheese sandwich when he came up with an improvised wire reel using a garden cart. 

The wire went up easily for the last 6 rows.

Bob and I tamped in the posts at 65 degrees. We attempted installation of the tiebacks using the inline wire strainers. It turns out we were missing an important tool. 

You can't install a vineyard without this

The inline wire strainer ratchet can be found at Orscheln's for $6. On Sunday I made the lower part of the tiebacks in the workshop, then moved out to the vineyard to finish up.

The soil analysis came Saturday in the mail. The pH is 5.5. I need a lot of lime and a little potash, phosphorus, and nitrogen. I hope to till these in next weekend so I can hang the lower wire before it gets too cold.

A special thanks to Bob and Shawn for helping Saturday. My winery is open to you both any time.

2016 Wines - Chapter 6 - Pinot Grigio

I bought two things from St. Louis Wine and Beermaking, Syrah grapes and a juice pail of Pinot Grigio.

I hope the wine is as awesome as the label on the bucket

This wine started with some crazy numbers. I rechecked twice, and repeatedly got pH 3.01, SG 1.088, TA 0.4%. I didn't tweak the juice, but added K-meta, OptiWhite, and some pectic, then pitched QA 23. My plan was to ferment this as cool as possible, under 20C. However, I pushed the temp down before the yeast really got rolling. So two days later it was still puttering along around 1.078. I let it come up to 23C to get the yeast going, then put it back in the ice pack bath, keeping it down around 21-22C. With that help it steadily dropped to 1.006 on day 8, when it got racked to a 6.5 gallon carboy.

I don't know yet if I'm a fan of juice pails. There was relatively little interaction with this wine - it was a little too easy.

2016 Wines - Chapter 5 - Syrah

We got swept up in the moment 2 weeks ago at St. Louis Wine and Beermaking and bought a juice bucket of Pinot Grigio and 3 lugs of Syrah. Doing so further violates our "locally grown" winemaking precedent, but extending our winemaking boundaries requires sacrifices.

We crushed and destemmed at the shop. The volume would have required splitting the batch, so I picked up a larger fermenter. Once home, we added a small dose of Kmeta and took some measurements. SG was 1.102, pH 3.65, and TA 0.5%. We added 30g of tartaric acid, 6g Opti Red, and 12t pectic enzyme and let it macerate overnight.

The following day we pitched RC 212. This yeast is supposed to have higher nutrient requirements, but usual step feeding with Fermaid K resulted in an uneventful, steady fermentation. Temperature peaked at 29.4C. By day 6 it was down to SG of 0.998. On day 8 Jake helped me press.

We got just under 9 gallons. After racking off the gross lees I expect about 8 gallons. We'll MLF with CH16, give it some oak, and age this for a year.