Better Today than Yesterday, Better Tomorrow than Today

This week the results came in for the Kansas City Cellarmasters Wine 2018 Classic. I entered 9 wines this year - only $10 entry fee, and I really wanted some feedback on all of of my 2016 wines. Also, some folks say these wine competitions are a bit random, so more entries gives a better shot at a medal.

In the past I've medaled at about a 50% rate. I guess I'm getting better, because this year I medaled with 7 of the 9 entries. I won second in class in two categories, worth $40 in gift certificates at St. Louis Wine and Beermaking. Hopefully I can put that toward grapes! In no particular order...

Syrah/Elderberry blend, a 50/50 blend, not surprisingly scored just out of medal range at 12.67. Judges felt that the elderberry overpowers this wine and I completely agree. You have to close your eyes and pretend you are drinking a fruity elderberry.

Syrah/elder/blackberry, 70/15/15 blend, scored better at 13.83 for a bronze. Still probably too much elderberry, and some judges felt it could use some sugar. This need for more residual sugar shows up a lot in my feedback, and I'm beginning to think this is just a personal preference we have for drier wines. These dry wines suffer in competition due to the Pepsi Paradox.  I've put at least one bottle away for long term aging, I think this wine will age well.

The 2016 passion fruit wine was interesting because we opened a bottle at Christmas (fulfilling a vow to open one bottle of each wine just before the submission date, just for quality control purposes). I thought it was excellent. Beth and Lisa noted an off odor of funk or onions which, try as I might, I couldn't pick up. Well the judges missed it too, and this wine came in at 15.33, my highest score, worth a silver medal.

Blueberry rosé scored just in medal range at 13.00, but that score was worth second in the category, so was enough for one of the $20 gift certificates. I'm not particularly proud of this wine - I bottled it early, but missed on the acid. So I dumped it back into the carboy, treated it with KHCO3, then rebottled. It was better, but I thought the KHCO3 left it a little out of balance. The judges thought it was still too acidic with too little blueberry. Fair enough. I recognized the mistakes I made and adjusted with the 2017 version of this wine.

The wine with perhaps the greatest discrepancy between comments and score was the 2016 elderberry. I got three judging sheets back, and the final comments from each were, "Nice balanced fruity wine," "Nice overall wine for its age," and "Very nice wine." So I would have expected a little better than 13.67, bronze medal range. Elderberry tends to age well. I am going to start holding some of these wines for year or two before sending them in.

Chambourcin scored 14.3, worth a bronze. There weren't too many negative comments here either, with one judge noting this wine should age well. I agree. Thank you, Bill Books, for these grapes.

I think the judges at this competition just don't like dry blackberry wine. Seems there is an expectation that blackberry will always be sweet. I went to great lengths to assure that my 2016 blackberry did not suffer from the fatal flaws of the 2015 blackberry. I still only managed a score of 11.67. Comments included "too tart" and "needs some sugar." One judge noted "little blackberry aroma." There is literally nothing but blackberry in this wine. Short of spiking it with flavoring or blackberry brandy, there is no way to cram in more blackberry. Next year I may pull off a 1/2 gallon and sweeten it to 2% RS, just for this competition.

In contrast, everyone lines up behind the 2016 blueberry. This wine scored a silver medal with 15.17. We did bench trials for back-sweetening and wound up using 40g/gal. Comments included another "too tart" along with "needs more blueberry." I made some tweaks to my blueberry this year that might help in this regard.

Finally, the 2016 pinot grigio. This was a California juice bucket. This wine scored 15.17 as well, worth a silver medal and second in the white vinifera category. I've detected intermittently a very slight off odor - one of the four judges picked this up as well. They all liked it well enough however.

Roll Out the Barrel

There comes a point with certain endeavors that you realize you might be in too deep. With winemaking, that point has almost certainly been reached when you install a vineyard. But a better, more accurate marker might be the acquisition of a barrel. 

This is a little 10L barrel which matches my most common 3 gallon batch. It sealed up in a couple of days. Today it received the 2016 elderberry-blackberry blend.

I'm not wild about the spigot, it tends to leak. And the hole on top is too small to admit my autosiphon. But it sure smells great. We'll leave the 2016 EB in for 2-4 weeks. Next up is the 2016 Syrah. I'm hoping it will concentrate it to an acceptable level.

The barrel wasn't the only toy which arrived this week. I got a backpack mister/sprayer. I found a little powdery mildew on some of the grapes. So yesterday I fired up the sprayer for the first time. It's pretty darn heavy when full. Four gallons of Captan and Immunox were sufficient for one pass through the vineyard. It will take some fine tuning to make this whole spray process more efficient.

Amaretto is the Bacon of Alcohol

Every so often we have a Friday office Happy Hour. This time we held it at our house and Brice supplied the line of the evening. It was not from his T-shirt which asked, "WTF Where's The Fish?"

We wound up going through 5 bottles of home brew, and here they are, in order of consumption (and inebriation).

2015 Elderberry Blackberry Rosé was the starter, chosen because it is pretty reliable. But it was strangely too heavy for a warm evening on the back porch. Can a wine have too much body? At the end of the evening the bottle was empty.

2015 Lychee is as popular as ever. Well balanced, semi-dry, plenty of lychee aroma and flavor. Jamie wants a bottle for her birthday. My parents friends have requested 3 cases. Before bottling this wine, I absolutely agonized over the acid adjustments. It would seem that it was worth it.

2016 Blend 1 was just bottled last weekend. It is 50% Syrah, 50% elderberry and I'm very happy with this result. The Syrah (from grapes) came out smooth and uber-fruity but too thin and light. The elderberry brings the color back. The taste is just what you would expect from this blend, equal amounts of elderberry and fruity Syrah. I need a clever name for this blend.

Bottled wine from last weekend

2016 Blend 2 was also just bottled. 70% Syrah, 15% elderberry, 15% blackberry. Elderberry contributes some color and just a little background earthiness to contrast the fruitiness of the other flavors. I hit this with a little extra KMS before bottling because the Syrah underwent MLF and the blackberry has all of that malic acid. So far so good. Another empty bottle at Happy Hour. 

Finally someone went into the cellar and came back with 2015 Blueberry. I am not fond of this wine. It is made with red grape concentrate, and I simply can't get past the Concord. Saturday morning, even after the second rinse of the bottle, I could still smell the Concord grape. Naturally everyone loved it.

Making Repairs

The 2017 Icepocalypse has, so far, not materialized. In fact, some of the ice is melting today. The power is still on, and while we can't do anything outside, we can get plenty of winemaking done inside.

A patient brought me 30# of blueberries. The circumstances of the acquisition are suspicious but I didn't ask too many questions.

I already have a straight blueberry and a blueberry rosé in the carboy, so some of these berries are going into a quickie blueberry lemon wine.

This wine will be a quick, early drinker. It is not even worth a chapter, it's pretty cookbook. The rest of the morning was spent remedying various wines which have gone off the track.

Another patient gave me a huge batch of Arkansas Black apples. I pressed them off and made a straight juice, no water, Arkansas Black wine. The wine had been cleared, stabilized, and satisfactorily backsweetened, but it still had a musty smell which kept me from putting it in a bottle. Then I stumbled across this slide deck from Dominique Delteil detailing the use of Noblesse to clean up various problems in wine. The apple got 1g of Noblesse and astonishingly, it is much better. It's more "appley" with a longer finish and little to none of the mustiness it had before. Now I just have to clear it again before bottling.

The problem with the 2016 Blueberry wine was acidity. A pH of 3.07 might be fine for a Sauv Blanc but this wine was like eating a blueberry Sweetart. I've never used any post-ferment KHCO3, but this wine needed help. We bench trialed KHCO3 additions and landed on 1.5g/L. I treated the whole batch and cold stabilized it. Today I racked it; the pH is 3.37 and it is much smoother. I'm not yet sure that I didn't kill the aromatics and make it flabby.

The 2016 Syrah was made from California grapes. This wine has a couple of issues. First, it ended up too light. I should have cold macerated it. But for a light red it will be fine. The bigger problem is a lingering bitterness. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I overpressed it. I fined a portion with bentonite and albumin and it worked as advertised, the bitterness is completely gone! I treated the 5 gallon batch last weekend and today I racked it off the lees, with a plan to bulk age this until next fall. I have 8 gallons, and I intend to bottle some and use the rest for blending with elderberry and Chambourcin.

The biggest problem is the 2016 Lemongrass Mint wine. It developed a slight off odor during fermentation which seemed to improve with splash racking. However, a month later the smell was back, worse than ever. I suspected a H2S problem. I tried the usual splash racking and sulfites, no joy. I then treated it a month ago with Reduless which initially didn't seem to do a thing. I was one step from pitching this wine when today I went back to recheck it and lo and behold, it was much better! Not perfect, but improved. I racked it off the Reduless and dosed it with Noblesse to try to finish the cleanup. My last trick was going to be ascorbic acid and copper, but I may not have to do that.

The rest of the 2016 wines are coming along nicely. I have one more batch of elderberry rosé and that will be about it. It's a good thing, too, because I'm out of carboys and airlocks.

We have one more wave of freezing rain tonight, but we are no longer in the "crippling" zone and based on the appearance of our roof, I'm thinking we dodged a bullet.

I hope I don't need this

Thanksgiving 2016

Adam stayed in Florida with Joy's family for the 2016 Thanksgiving, but Jake and Allie were home. I think we were all hoping for a better November, as both the election and The Game didn't have the desired outcomes. Still, it was great to have everyone together.

The weekend had an inauspicious start. 

The sole occupant, not from our family, was unhurt. Not sure the tree will survive however, as the wound is large and deep. It takes a lot of alcohol to total a car without leaving the yard.

On to the food.

The new breakfast dish had apples and pastry topping. Easy and delicious.

Breakfast casserole is tradition.

I finished some limoncello that has been sitting in the closet for a long time. Vanilla is the secret ingredient.

For the first time, we smoked our turkey. The turkey was injected, and thus the big controversy was over whether we should wet brine it starting the day before. In the end, I gave it a 12 hour soak in a diluted wet brine, then smoked it for 6.5 hours around 275F. 

It was good, but not that smoky. All of the online sources say the perfect smoking turkey is 12# and we used a 20# bird. So maybe next time we'll try a little smaller bird.

We drank 2015 Elderberry-Blackberry with dinner and while nobody commented on the wine, the bottle was emptied, so I think that is a favorable review.

Before the weather turned on Sunday, Jake and I got some outside work done. We did some fence repairs, adding a fifth board where the cattle are still pushing under the fence.

Then we rented yet another great tool, a T-post driver, and went to work in the vineyard.

With this tool, the in-line T-posts went up in under 2 hours.

The cattle watering trough is gone, replaced by a hydrant. We're almost ready for grapes. In April we're getting 36 Norton and 36 Vidal Blanc, for 2 rows of each. I'm also trying Frontenac, Marechal Foch, Chambourcin, Traminette, and grafted Chardonel.

On the winemaking front, MLF of the Chambourcin and the Syrah was more or less complete 2 weeks ago.

 

Today we hit both batches with Kmeta and racked off of the oak. Naturally, we sampled both. The Chambourcin has a deep color, medium body, firm tannins; it tastes of dark berries with a nice long finish. The Syrah is, oddly, light in color and body; tannins are soft, and it is quite fruit forward jammy. While it is lighter than I was aiming for, Lisa will love this wine.  Jake too! Happy Thanksgiving!

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.