Winter Wine Work

One of the most pleasant winemaking surprises so far has been the 2019 Frontenac. I had low expectations for this wine. Previous harvests have shown Frontenac to be color unstable and the Frontenac rosé from 2018 is bad enough I've got it in the dump pile. I put 4 gallons of 2019 Frontenac red wine in a barrel last February and have more or less kept it topped up. Four months ago I was ready to dump this wine as well - it was not color-stable, it was thin, and I was concerned it might be oxidized. Fast forward to today, and this wine is pretty darn good. Color somehow is improved and taste-wise it has smoothed out very nicely. I needed the barrel for 2020 wines, so I just went ahead and bottled 2 cases today. 

Additionally, I racked another 7 gallons of Vidal after a month of cold stabilization. I continue to keep separate 4 different batches of the enormous harvest. The last 5 gallons of "less ripe" Vidal went into the fridge to cold stabilize today. Chambourcin went into a 15l barrel with just under 5 gallons left. The plan there is 6 months of barrel aging for each half of the batch. The 2020 Frontenac went in the other 15l barrel. The Foch will go into the 10l barrel once it seals up.

The basement has been a disaster for some time, and we finally got around to cleaning it up. This meant assembling a wine rack. It doesn't hold every bottle but holds some of everything we drink. Lisa got some nice dry erase bottle labels.

2020 Wines - Chapter 6 - Chambourcin

It is with some sadness that we're making this batch of wine. We had high hopes for Norton and Chambourcin in the vineyard, but both varietals have been decimated with crown gall and I'm not optimistic that we'll get fruit again next year. We took about 120# of Chambourcin this year and we'll end up with about 9 gallons from it. 

My record-keeping has been terrible with this batch. I wrote everything down but I lost my notes, thus the late post. I do remember the the starting numbers were great. I didn't adjust pH and made minimal adjustment to sugar - or maybe it was the other way around, minimal pH adjustment, no sugar adjustment. Anyway, either way, these grapes came in better than any others I've grown. 71B to work down the malic, and VP41 for the MLB, co-inoculated. I pressed it off into 3 3gallon carboys plus almost another gallon. After a couple of days racked off gross lees and added 7 oak cubes per gallon to finish up. Great color on this wine, hopes are high. 

2020 Wines - Chapter 5 - Vidal

 This year we harvested about 400# of Vidal. We attempted to separate less ripe from more ripe fruit. We ended up with 15.3g from ripe fruit, 4g mixed with Frontenac Gris (giving it a darker color), and 4g of less ripe fruit. We cold settled the wine and one bucket came out dark, I believe that to be due to my failure to get KMS in the bucket. So I segregated that bucket as well, and any thoughts I had of using my 110l Speidel variable capacity tank were tossed aside. In the ripe, gris, less ripe batches, respectively, we got pH 2.88, 2.88, 2.86; pH was adjusted with 2t, 1t, 1.5t of calcium carbonate, respectively, to final pH of 2.97, 2.95, and 2.99. I fermented with QA23 again, along with the usual Booster Blanc and Opti White doses, and bentonite day 3. 

Given the number of buckets and size of batch, we couldn't really drop the temps much and it pretty much ripped through in a week. And again, like last year, got a reductive. I hit it early with a bench-trialed dose of 25ppm. It's cold stabilizing now, one carboy at a time. It will need fining, each carboy is not clearing well. Total is 22 gallons, we'll see if we end up bottling all of it. 

Grey Day Greenhousing

There is more work to do in the greenhouse than one would expect in November. Lisa and I spent the morning cleaning up, dividing, and propagating. 

Allison has developed a house plant problem so we potted up divisions of Alocasia 'California.' We divided Bilbergia 'Domingo Martin' hoping both Adam and Allison would try it. I also took cuttings of the various Hoyas; Allie claims she doesn't like Hoyas but we'll see if we can get her interested. 

We're preparing another shipment of plants to Adam in Florida. We've got the Alocasia, Globba 'Mauve Dancing Girl,' Heloconia 'Dwarf Jamaican,' and others. 

Fence Repair

The greenhouse was built in around 2004 and the fence behind the greenhouse was re-installed shortly thereafter. Lisa and I built it, but we reused some of the posts from the original back fence. In one spot of the fence, four of those posts had rotted at the ground line. The repair made a nice fall project. 

Half-round fence posts are difficult to come by around here. Last time we did fence repair we found them at a Rural King store in Warrenton. Fortunately I had 4 left so we didn't have to make another trip. 

Other than the posts, we reused existing boards. It's not perfect but it's good enough. 

Sunrise in the fall can be pretty nice.

A Greenhouse Record

The normal fall sequence of events is we wait until frost is imminent in early October, scramble to push everything inside and back into the greenhouse. But because a single layer of tempered glass doesn't keep it warm enough for tropical plants through a Missouri winter, an extra layer of poly film is needed. When it gets really cold in November, we painstakingly wrestle with ladders and wrangle the extra poly film over and around all of the plants, usually with plenty of swearing. Often, tall children are employed. 

This year we're trying something different. Nothing has gone back into the greenhouse yet. Arguably some plants should, as we've had lows in the upper 40s a couple of nights now. But this weekend we decided to try getting the poly up early. This has the advantage of allowing better movement of people and ladders. It worked well. In fact, no children were used in the application of the 2020 poly film, and it's up earlier than ever. 

2020 Wines - Chapter 4 - Frontenac

 As with Foch, the Frontenac yield was low this year. We pulled in 87#, less than half of last year. It's another high TA, high pH wine. Crush and destemming yielded 8.8g of must, with TA crazy high at 22, pH 2.80. Double salt technique with 175g calcium carbonate brought pH up over 4.0, not ideal for fermentation. I added back tartaric to get pH to fermentation-compatible 3.38, but will admit that I'm somewhat out of my league with these numbers. As for sugar, 1.084 came to 1.090 with minimal 350g sugar. Used Opti Red and Booster Rouge but as with Foch, no enzymes. 

Pitched yeast 8/16, VP41 co-innoculated 8/17. Pressed off 8/22 to get 6.5g. To it, I added Enartis Tan Uva, 7.6g. This is much higher (triple) than the recommended dose, yet lower than the recommended dose of the unfortunately similarly named Uva Tan from Scott Labs. I just decided to split the difference and see what happens. 

2020 Wines - Chapter 3 - Foch

The 2019 Foch will be drinkable with decent color. We're trying some new techniques described here to preserve the color in 2020. 

Harvest brought in 51#, far less than the ~200# last year. Dancing Man kept some of the critters away, but we still lost 1/3-1/2 of the crop to critter losses. The yield this year was lower as well, probably due to a late frost. I calculated the TA at 17, pH 2.98. Crush and destem yielded over 5g of must. I treated with 50ppm SO2, then used the double salt technique 61g calcium carbonate to get TA to 10, pH 3.8. I added back some tartaric to get the pH to 3.41. 1.076 + 488g sugar to get to 1.090. Opti Red and Booster Rouge but no enzymes. 

I pitched yeast 8/16, VP41 8/17, then pressed 8/22 and immediately added 2.8g Enartis Tan Uva. Wound up with 3.5g plus a bottle for topping. Some oak cubes will help finish MLF. 

Harvest Day

Days actually. I picked 120# of Chambourcin by myself on Thursday. Then on Sunday we crushed the Chambourcin and picked, crushed, and pressed 400# of Vidal.

Chambourcin

That's about half

Big clusters

Lisa happily pressed all of it

Crush pad

Fruit of the Year - Camu Camu

 We hope for one new fruit from the greenhouse every year. This year it's the Camu Camu, Myrciaria dubia. Mine came to me by way of a friend Ethan in California, and we've grown it for many years now in the greenhouse. 

Like its cousin,the plant has nice peeling bark and tolerates wet soil. And, like its cousin, Camu Camu also fruits directly on the trunk. The fruit is very similar to jaboticaba, but with smaller seeds. We got about 4 fruit this year. 

Harvest Approaches

 Foch was at 17 Brix last week. I haven't checked this week, but it smells like it is getting close. 

This weekend's list, complete:

• Weed/Roundup the elderberries
• Dig up volunteer ornamental grasses
• Clean mud daubers off porch and garage
• Net the grapes
• Remove the grow tubes
• Weed the berm
• Weed the liriope
• Prune the lychees

We're targeting shorter, more frequent posts for my brother. So finally some nice pictures.

And from last week, Lake Michigan:

2020 June Week 3

I'd been losing all of my rainwater. It turns out I had a bad connection between the rain barrels. Of course now that it is fixed, we have no rain. 

We repotted some plants, including figs. Lisa is attempting to start a couple more from cuttings. In the past they have proven easy to root. 

We bought gooseberries at the Farmer's Market last weekend and they (over) ripened over the past week, so we made a gooseberry cobbler, supplemented with some jostaberries. I didn't get a pic coming out of the oven. 

Plumerias are happy

2020 June Week 2

We were out of town two weeks ago due to an unexpected trip to Texas. Back at home this past weekend where the primary occurrences were dreary home maintenance tasks. I planted 4 vines of what we hope is Frontenac Gris. The grafted Chardonel came up easily, thank goodness. I touched up paint on the back porch and the front door.

On Sunday we cleaned out the detached garage and sent a truckload of stuff to the dumpster. The pool is clean and enjoyable after a few hours of work.

Putting the LOG in Blog

Optimistically I'm committing to a new weekly post of the happenings around the house, wine cellar, kitchen, and greenhouse.

Spring is a good time to do this because there is plenty to do. We've cut down the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick and dug out the stump, replacing it with Dwarf Japanese White Pine 'Yatsubusa'.

The boxwoods are gone, replaced with oakleaf hydrangea 'Munchkin'.

We added to our Cercis collection with a nice one called 'Ace of Hearts'.

Grapes are growing fairly well. I lost a couple of the Vidal I installed last year, but I have two ready to be planted. If I'm lucky I can still get them planted in the next couple of weeks and fill in some holes. 

The greenhouse plastic came down yesterday, and the shade cloth is back up. Most of the plants are out, including the plumeria, jabos, mangoes, sago palms, and others. 

The poolhouse is ready for summer. I fixed a leak in the water softener, but the portable softener seems to be the way to go. The pool heater has the temp to 82 and with warm weather on the way I suspect we won't need it again until fall.

It's a good time to post some pictures of my favorite tree. This is a Kentucky Coffeetree which I planted as a seedling. I posted about this little guy four years ago, and it just continues to grow very slowly and bloom like crazy. If anyone out there knows how to determine if this is my retirement plan, please contact me. 

2020 Spray Schedule

May 2 - Mancozeb
May 12 - Mancozeb + Quintec (quinoxyfen)
May 23 -
May 30 - Abound (azoxystrobin)
June 5 - Mancozeb + Emerald (boscalid)
June 14 - Mancozeb + Quintec
June 24 - Abound (azoxystrobin)
July 1 - Mancozeb + Stature (Dimethomorph) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 8 - Mancozeb + Quintec + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 16 - Captan + Emerald (boscalid) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
July 24 - Captan + Quintec + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)
August 2 - Prophyt + Emerald (boscalid) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)

August 12 - Abound (azoxystrobin) + Sevin (zeta-cypermethrin)

2020 Wines - Chapter 2 - Passion Fruit

This is potentially a beautiful wine, one which did not deserve my shabby record-keeping. I was more focused on the jaboticaba wine I had going at the same time, and now I can't find any of my notes. I know that I didn't use any secondary fruit, adjusted the pH up a bit with calcium carbonate, and fermented cool and slow. It looks great - it always starts the color of store-bought orange juice, then lightens up. Thankfully it didn't lose the aroma of passion fruit through the fermentation.

2020 Wines - Chapter 1 - Jaboticaba

I've been saving this fruit for years, literally; freezing every fruit that comes from the two trees. That may explain the short-term outcome. But I'm committed. And I'm committed to a second batch as well, which hopefully will come along more quickly than the first. It went like this:

• Thaw, then crush 3.8kg of fruit. TA 0.83%, pH 3.20, SG 1.030.
• Added 2.2l water, assuming 50% of the fruit volume will contribute to the final volume to just over 1g (some for topping).
• 3ml 10% KMS.
• 465g sugar to ~1.075.
• 1t pectic 
• 0.2g Lallzyme EX
• 1g each Opti Red and Booster Rouge.

No tannin additions. After 24 hours, another 155g sugar to 1.090. The pH was 3.05 and TA 0.97%. RC 212 and step feeding.

I pulled the seeds and skins after 72 hours to eliminate potential for any bitterness. This pic shows where we were mid-fermentation.

The problem is that even with KMS at crush and even before going dry, the wine took this brick color just a couple of days later.

We have about 4 bottles worth. We'll finish this out, but the color instability is a little disappointing. It doesn't taste or smell oxidized. Maybe that's just the color the fruit wants to give. Time will tell, but now it is time to start collecting a new batch of fruit.