2018 Wine - Chapter 5 - Pear

We had our best pear harvest to date. A storm knocked off at least 5# of pears early on, and despite my best efforts, they refused to properly ripen. A few weeks later, however, our Bartlett tree yielded some 22# of pears. Then our trusted friend and ally Tom offered 11# of his Seckel pears, purported to be the only truly American variety in commercial production. I chilled the pears for a couple of weeks to help with ripening, then froze them whole, with a plan to press and ferment 100% juice.

When they came out of the freezer they were not much to look at. And when I first cut them up, I was not optimistic. The pears seemed unwilling to give up any juice. I cored the pears and pushed on, and I was thrilled with the result.

We got 2.3 gallons for a yield of about 14.5#/gallon. The numbers were great as well - SG 1.070, pH 3.78, TA 6.8. I made just minor tweaks, pectic enzyme, 6g tartaric to a target TA of 7.5, and 340g sugar to a target SG of 1.085. The yeast was K1-V1116 rehydrated with GoFerm, and once it got going it went into the chiller. Step fed with Fermaid K with 4g Bentonite. After 2 weeks in a mostly closed fermentation bucket, it slowly dropped to 1.020 and I racked it to carboys.

The pear wine is still slowly fermenting. If it sticks before it's dry, so be it, because it tastes great right now. If not, it will be backsweetened.

2018 Wines - Chapter 4 - Traminette

This wine was trouble from the beginning. I don't mean starting with harvest, I mean starting with the decision to plant this grape. Since making that decision, we've sampled several Traminettes, mostly from southwest Michigan, and all have an overpowering floral, plumeria aroma of which we're not too fond. Fast forward to the 2018 harvest, where we originally intended to combine all of row 6. After sampling the Chardonel and Traminette together, we wound up picking them separately, only to find the Chardonel numbers pretty good but the Traminette number lousy.

My next mistake was attempting the so-called "double salt" technique to deacidify the wine. This involves adding the carbonate to a small portion of the must. The issue is that at lower pH, calcium and potassium carbonate pull out only tartaric acid. But if you get the pH up to 4.5 or better, you can pull out malic as well and supposedly keep the wine balanced. The trick is doing it without browning the wine. My Traminette is brown.

We started with 63# of grapes. I didn't write down the original numbers, but I used 22g K2CO3 with the double salt technique, leaving us with pH 2.83, TA 7.8, and 3.5 gallons of must. To that I added another 9g calcium carbonate, 3g Booster Blanc, 6g Opti White, 2t pectic, and 578g sugar to get the SG to 1.088. The pH came to 3.0, a more favorable environment for the 71B-1122 yeast, which hopefully will work on the malic acid. The must was step-fed in the usual manner with Fermaid K, and after a week fermenting it in a tub with ice packs, I moved it into a carboy at 1.040. A week later it was 1.030 and I finally had room in my chiller system. Three weeks on, it hit 1.018 and I brought it out and let it come up to room temperature.

In the event the color on this wine remains brown, I have some Polyclar to try to clear it up.

Fall Tropical Fruit Harvest

Today served up a nice variety of fruit. Cool weather has arrived and we'll start moving plants back tomorrow. 

Clockwise, from top left: 'Mallika' mango (Mangifera indica 'Mallika'), 'Kari' star fruit (Averrhoa carambola 'Kari'), strawberry guava (Psidium cattleyanum), limeberry (Triphasia trifolia), miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum), lemondrop mangosteen (Garcinia madruno), Barbados cherry (Malpighia glabra)

2018 Wines - Chapter 3 - Chardonel

On August 18th, Lisa, Jake and I picked 80 pounds of Chardonel. In the field, pH 2.74, Brix 22.6, TA 10.5.

I added 25g calcium carbonate to get TA to 8.0. The pH rose to 2.93. Starting SG 1.093. It was cold settled for 24 hours on 2t pectic enzyme, then racked onto 4g Booster Blanc and 8g Opti White. We used QA23 and kept it in water bath with ice packs for the first week. The wine was step-fed with Fermaid K and bentonite added. After 1 week the SG dropped to 1.040 and I moved the wine to carboy and the temp control system set at 55F.

As with the Frontenac, the wine didn't get below about 58F, but after another week we were down to 1.000, so it was racked to carboys and treated with KMS.

2018 Wines - Chapter 2 - Row Seven

We picked all of the grapes on the same day, in part because we wanted Jake to be able to help. Having read stories of difficulty making good red wine from Frontenac we elected to make rosé. We didn't have much Foch, and one of the vines billed as Frontenac is clearly not. So we lumped everything together from the seventh row and made rosé.

We adjusted the TA down from 1.08% to around 0.80% with calcium carbonate. The pH came up more than expected from 3.16 to 3.59. The wine may require some acid additions later. We also added KMS, 4g Booster Blanc, 6g Opti White. The starting Brix was 25, SG 1.102. We fermented it in our temperature control system set at 55F and the temp stayed in the 57-58F range throughout. I step fed with Fermaid K and added bentonite once the fermentation got going. That temperature didn't slow the QA23 and it powered through to 1.004 in a week.

After another week it was down to 0.994 and we topped with 1 bottle of cheap dry Missouri rosé from Stone Hill to make it an even 3 gallons.