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.

Paybacks and Payoffs

I have not yet decided whether to make pawpaw wine. I'm freezing the pulp as they ripen, and I've got over 4# now which should be enough for a 1 gallon trial. It would be easier if I knew whether it would be any good. Online reviews are scarce and indeterminate. One person paraphrased Jack Keller, calling it "life-changing," but given what Keller wrote I think that is a bit of a stretch. For now I'm content with smoothies.

In the greenhouse I made a discovery that will be meaningful to very few of my friends. We have fruit set on garcinia intermedia. This is most commonly known as Lemon Drop Mangosteen. This garcinia is a seedling from my first PR trip in 2010. It is not the first it has flowered but it is the first time to set fruit. It is hard to contain my excitement.

As a thank-you for the grapes and support, I took the Books some wine. I sent two bottles of their 2016 Chambourcin and one each of the 2016 Blackberry and my 2016 Motley Red blend. Early reviews, based on the text messages, were favorable.

Estate Pawpaws

It is difficult to get to them in time, the deer eat them right off of the tree. They will ripen just a little bit after picking.

2017 Wines - Chapter 2 - Vignoles

I got a text from the local vineyard a couple of weeks back. They were unable to get their Vignoles pruned last winter and therefore are unable to harvest mechanically. Once ready, I could take all of the Vignoles I wanted.

Of course the call came at perhaps the worst possible time. Lisa and I were set to leave town for four days and so I couldn't really start a ferment. The solution turned out to be a well known technique known as cold settling.

We ended up with about 90# of grapes. Field testing showed pH 2.81 and SG of 1.086. We whole-cluster pressed around 6 gallons which tested at 2.85 and 1.084.

Before heading out of town, I raised the pH to about 3.0 with 2T calcium carbonate, added 2T pectic enzyme, then capped the bucket for a 4 day period of cold settling in the fridge.

The wine 4 days later had dropped a fair amount of tartaric acid and sediment, and racking yielded a nice clear must. I will definitely perform cold settling again! The pH hung in there at 2.99 but the TA was brutally high at 15g/L. Calculations indicated that 7T of calcium carbonate should drop the TA to around 8g/L and coincidentally this was the maximum recommended dose. We slowly added the calcium carbonate, watching the pH, but eventually wound up adding the maximum amount and arrived at an acceptable preferment pH of 3.33.

We used 11g Opti White, 6g Booster Blanc, 0.6g Lallzyme EX. We used QA 23 with GoFerm and Fermaid K, step fed. We mostly succeeded in keeping the fermentation below 15C using ice packs placed in water every 4-6 hours in the outer bucket.

The cooler temps didn't slow down QA 23 at all. Bentonite was added at day 3. The Vignoles dropped to 1.004 by the 7th day with great aroma and no off odors. After racking, we are just short of 6 gallons.

We'll give it a few days to finish up in the carboy and rack it off to a 5g and 1/2g carboys. A very promising wine!

2017 Wines - Chapter 1 - Blackberry

We didn't have to travel as often this year to get the fruit we needed, as the elderberry and blackberry yields continue to improve at home. Therefore this year's blackberry was an all-juice, no water affair using mostly home-grown blackberries. The ingredients:

• 51# blackberries
• 2.5# elderberries (for color and tannin)
• 0.5g Lallzyme EX
• 5g OptiRed
• 5g Booster Rouge
• 2t tannin
• 1 cup heavy toast American oak chips
• 2700g sugar 
• 6t calcium carbonate 

The sugar adjusted the SG to 1.090. The calcium carbonate adjusted the pH to 3.40. 71B was the yeast, step fed with Fermaid K, total of 1.5tsp. 

I let this wine go until the cap dropped, then pressed off 5 gallons. 

Once in the carboy, I dosed with KMS. There was a fair amount of sediment and airspace after the first day. Given how quiet the wine was and that we were leaving town, I racked it down to 4.5 gallons in separate containers. We made several tweaks to the technique, including tannin and oak chips in the primary, elderberry in the primary, and letting it ferment to dry before pressing. It will be interesting to see the result.

A Good Food Day

Last weekend we went to the Chalet. Lake Michigan showed its many different faces. Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Bob came on Friday, when the Lake was angry, and so the afternoon was spent poking around St. Joseph.

Saturday the Lake calmed down and we stayed home. We had a delicious Bit of Swiss breakfast, followed by a nice walk. Lunch was tasty Vietnamese-style vegetarian sandwiches. The afternoon was spent on the beach (Lisa and Robert) and hanging out at the Chalet (Sharon and Bob). We broke out the wine early, starting with the 2016 Pinot grigio. Lisa and Sharon love it, but I still get the faintest hint of hay or a barnyard. Next we moved to appetizers and 2016 blueberry rosé. All agreed this was good wine, even better at the end of the bottle. Dinner was flat iron steak with tomato-fregola warm salad, accompanied by 2016 blackberry wine. I'm satisfied that this year's blackberry does not suffer the flaws of 2015. More Bit of Swiss for desert. Sharon declared it "a good food day." Indeed.

Eclipse 2017