Pewsey Vale Dry Riesling - 2.5

This review is for the Pewsey Vale 2008 Dry Riesling from Australia.

A bit on the sour side. The grape flavor is rather weak, but I get some hints of bell pepper, black pepper, and peach. There is some bitterness and spiciness (I think thats where the pepper flavor comes from), as well. However, the pleasant flavors seem a bit overwhelmed by the sourness and bitterness. I'm not impressed with this wine.

Jaime says that it is very sour, but does have some grapefruit flavor. She really doesn't like this wine and wanted to give it an even lower score but stopped herself because she did finish the glass.

Peter rates this wine a 3 out of 10. I would only buy this if it was in the bargain bin.

Jaime rates this wine a 2 out of 10.

Time to end the suspense

I know you're all dying to find out what the paver stones are for. Well, here it is!

Yes, we got a hot tub! I've always wanted a hot tub and now I finally have a place to put one. I know that hot tubs aren't going to give you any real return on the cost, and they can be really expensive, so we tried to do it relatively cheaply. I had been keeping an eye out on craigs list for used hot tubs. There really wasn't anything as cheap as what I was hoping for. We looked into a couple refurbished hot tubs and weren't impressed, either. Through an ad on craig's list I did get in contact with a guy selling hot tubs out of a warehouse in lancaster. It was kind of a wierd setting. He just had a warehouse full of hot tubs sitting up on their sides and stacked one in front of another. He said he had around 120 of them. Some seemed to be in better condition than others, though. We ended up finding one that was an unused 2007 model with a refurbished crack in the lip of the tub. It was still more than I originally wanted, but it is new, comes with a warranty, free delivery and other goodies. It was quite a discount compared to what I would expect for a new hot tub and I was pretty happy with the deal. We've already used it a couple times and we're quite happy with it.

Authenticity in Winemaking

Dear readers, in the past I've gone on the record expressing my disappointment with winemakers fudging the sugar and acid content of their vino.

Call me a purist, but I miss the old days when it was a simple process: pick and crush grapes, wait a few months, bottle, enjoy. This is, after all, the romanticized image that the modern winemaker portrays... But as we know most modern wine is more of a factory commodity than a sincere expression of skillful artistry.

Not that I want to fault South Wedge Winery too much for messing with their juice (you have to do something to make this year's poor crop drinkable) but when it becomes acceptable to modify sugars and bacteria and acidity and this and that, the whole ideal of legitimate terroir has gone right out the window.

Apparently I'm not alone in my disappointment, and apparently the cheating is more wide ranging (and high priced) than I once thought. Check out this article -and the comments that follow-if you want the veil lifted and the mystique you once loved ruined.

Paver Stones

I've been trying to lay a few paver stones in the back yard to extend the small concrete pad behind the house. Unfortunately, this slightly reduces the size of the future garden, but its a sacrifice that needs to be made. The stones I used were from a stack that the previous owners had kindly left us for no apparent reason. Now, I don't know that these are technically "paver" stones. More like brick and/or concrete tiles. They're about 1.5" thick and varying sizes. I laid out some stones preliminarily in the pattern I wanted. This is what it looked like at first.

For a few of the pieces, I had to break them to the desired size. For that, I just smacked them on the edge of the concrete pad. It worked pretty well. The break lines aren't perfectly straight, but its good enough. Next I moved the stones out of the way and dug down so about three inches below the level of the concrete pad. Check out how nice that dirt looks!!

I had purchased a 0.5 cubic foot bag of pebbles, and another 0.5 cubic foot bag of coarse sand. The area I'm doing is about 6ft by 18 inches, so that should be about 2/3in thick layer of each of those things. These materials are specifically for laying pavers and it suggests a 1" thick layer of each, so I figured I'd be fine. Here is what it looks like after putting down the first layer and walking around on it to compact it a bit.

Next comes the sand stuff. Again, I walked around on this to firmly compact it. I then put one of the stones down on the sand to check the level.

Its hard to see from the picture but the top of the stone is a good 1" or more below the level of the concrete pad. Whoops. Not only did I dig up too much dirt, but when I compacted the stone and sand it seemed to just sink right into the dirt and take up no space.

So lets fast-forward 6 days later. I bought two more bags of pebbles and another bag of sand. First, though I put much of the dirt that I had dug up back over the first couple layers. Then I stomped around on it a while to compact it.

I then put one and half bags of the pebbles down on the dirt, compacted that and then put about 2/3 of the bag of sand on that and compacted it again. If you're wondering why the color of the sand is different, I bought it from a different home improvement store. Same basic thing, though.

Finally, time to put the stones back on and check the level.

Ugh. Apparently I need to do some leveling and stabilizing. That took a surprising amount of time, the rest of the pebbles, most of the rest of the sand, and all the remaining dirt I had left. I did reserve a small amount of the sand to put in a couple of the bigger gaps between stones. Here is the finished product.

I might be a bit biased, but it looks pretty good to me!! If you're wondering why I'm doing this in the first place, there is a reason, but you're just going to have to wait for a future post to find out. Oooh, suspense!

And just to make this a bit more garden related, I'll throw in a gratuitous closeup of the cover crops. That grass sure does look happy!

Dr. Konstantin Frank Rkatsiteli - 6.0

This wine review is for the 2006 Dr. Konstantin Frank Rkatsiteli. Yes, that is the name of the wine. To prove it, I have a picture.

You might be asking "what the heck is Rkatsiteli?" Well, its a type of white grape primarily grown in Georgia (the country). It is one of the oldest known cultivated grapes (at least 3000BC). I know this not only because of Wikipedia, but also because the guy serving me this at a tasting told me so. Yes, thats right, this is not a wine of the month bottle, this is one I purchased at the winery. Dr. Konstantin Frank was one of the first people to be serious about growing grapes and making wine in the Finger Lakes. He even gets his own Wiki page! His winery on Seneca lake is still going strong and some people say it is the "best" in the Finger lakes. Anyway, you know I'm probably going to give this wine a good review if I bought it, but lets get on with it, shall we?

It has a fruity odor plus a rather earthy odor, not unlike the smell from when I opened the box of my homegrown mushroom kit (earlier this year). It is a bit on the sour side, but has a good amount of sweetness to balance that. Rather than just having a sour/bitter sweet/dry flavor, this has a good amount of actual grape flavor. I get some orange and mango flavors. A slight mustiness as well. I would say its not unlike a Riesling or Gewurtztraminer (which I am both partial to). Not a lot to complain about except that it might be a bit more sour than it needs to be.

Jaime says she gets some fruitiness and some definite grape flavor. It is sour, but not overly so. But there is some flavor in it that she really doesn't like, and can't quite pin down. She says that maybe she can taste the alcohol in it, and that might be what she doesn't like. [I think she's just crazy, thats all]

Peter gives this wine an 8 out of 10. I would buy this (obviously) as long as its not crazy expensive. When I bought it, it was $17, which is on the high side of what I would normally want to pay for a bottle of wine.

Jaime gives this wine a 4 out of 10.

Amalaya Vino Tinto - 2.5

Today's review is the 2006 Amalaya Vino Tinto from Argentina.

The odor is not real pleasant. In addition to the alcohol smell, I note somewhat of a turpentine scent. Its got a rather dry bite to it, but not overwhelmingly so. I notice a somewhat strong smokey flavor. Also a woody, oakey taste. Perhaps it was stored in burnt out oak barrels. I'm noticing the negatives, but not really noticing any positives. Overall, not so good.

Jaime fell asleep before she was able to give me her full review, but she did manage to give her rating and say that I could have her glass because "it would be a waste" for her to drink it.

Peter gives this wine a 3 out of 10. I probably wouldn't buy this unless it was dirt cheap.

Jaime gives this wine a 2 out of 10.

Campus Oaks Zinfandel - 6.5

Today's wine review is the 2006 Campus Oaks Zinfandel from California.

It has an appealing odor and is moderately dry and sour. I'm definitely getting some chocolate flavor in this one. A bit of oakiness as well. Its pretty good. I'm enjoying my tasting. Nothing to complain about. Just another solid California red...*yawn*.

Jaime didn't like it at first, but it grew on her after it had some time to breathe. "Not too dry, a touch of sour". "Doesn't have much of an aftertaste." "I get a hint of cherry".

Peter gives this wine a 7 out of 10. I would buy this if I saw it.

Jaime gives this wine a 6 out of 10.

Hidden Leaf Chenin Blanc - 5.0

This post is a review of of Hidden Leaf Cellars Chenin Blanc from California. Hallie is doing a wonderful job of modeling for us!

I don't know anything about Chenin, so I checked out the wiki page.

"Chenin blanc (also Pineau de la Loire and Gout fort), is a variety of white wine grape variety from the Loire valley of France. Its high acidity means it can be used to make everything from sparkling wines to well-balanced dessert wines, although it can produce very bland, neutral wines if the vine's natural vigor is not controlled."

Interesting that is says that about the acidity, because the first thing I thought when I tasted it was, "Wow, thats sour." The general rule for wines (I think) is that the sweeter the wine is, the more sour/acidic it should be. However, this is only mildly sweet. The sourness kind of dominates the flavor. Its not vinegary, it just seems really acidic. If I had to pick flavors off of my color wheel, I'd say olive and asparagus. That sounds pretty bad, but its really not. I wish the olive and asparagus flavors were stronger and the acidity less strong.

How come every wine description that I read uses fruits and dessert flavors? I suppose "sauerkraut", "wet-dog", and "soy-sauce" aren't real appealing to the recreational wine taster, but about 2/3 of the wine wheel is being completely ignored. Don't worry, I'm here to bring it back!

Jaime says: "It has a bit of tartness, but nothing overwhelming". "I like the flavor, but it doesn't have as much sweetness as I'd like."

Peter gives this wine a 4 out of 10. I probably wouldn't purchase this wine unless I saw it in the $3.99 bin.

Jaime gives this wine a 6 out of 10. "I would drink this, but I wouldn't go looking for it in a store."

Soleto Primitivo - 7.0

Our latest wine for review is a 2007 Soleto Primitivo from Italy.

Thanks to Wiki, I now know that Zinfandel is actually the American name for Primitivo, which has traditionally been grown in the "heel" of Italy.

The more I drink red wines from around the world, the more I realize that I like reds just as much as whites. Its just that the reds that I'm used to drinking (from around the finger lakes) are pretty terrible. This Italian red is pretty decent. I enjoy the moderate acidity and dryness. The tannin is also relatively mild.

I was trying to come up with flavors that I'm tasting and wishing I had one of those wine flavor wheel thingies to help me. Silly me, I have the internet! Just like that I have a whole pile of google hits for wine flavor wheel including this one, which I'm using now.

Thanks to my wheel, I can now pick out hints of tea, chocolate, and kerosene (in a good way). I don't love this wine, but I'm having a hard time coming up with anything negative to say about it.

Jaime says "it has a tempting aroma", and is smooth and easy to drink.

Peter gives this wine a 6/10. Not too shabby, I'd buy this wine if it doesn't cost a lot.

Jaime gives this wine a 8/10. "Its tasty, I'd definately buy this wine."

Average score: 7.0

Garden check-up

Muffin gets to go out for walks periodically if the weather is nice. We've hit a mild warm spot, so she had to go check out the garden-to-be. To answer a question from one of the many fans of the blog, the grass is (at least theoretically supposed to be) an annual. In fact, its called "Annual Ryegrass". The Vetch is in there too.....somewhere. This pic is from 10/26.

When she's outside on a warm fall day, Muffin is not going pass up the chance to go for a walk!

Hallie doesn't get much face time on the blog, so its time for a random picture of her. If you're wondering why she isn't going for a walk herself, its because this is as close to the outdoors as Hallie ever wants to be. If you pick her up and take her outside, she'll start wimpering and run right back inside.

Checking in on the cover crops

Here is a pic of my backyard on october 10th. Thats basically one month after planting.

Its actually October 21st now as I write this (I'm a bit lazy about uploading pics). The grass now looks significantly higher than in the picture, but the Hairy Vetch looks about the same. I suppose you can't really see the Vetch in the first picture, so here's a close-up (also take on 10/10).

October has been unseasonably cold so far, so that hasn't helped the Vetch at all. As long as it makes it through the winter....

The only other bit of gardening related news is that I went to a composting presentation at the local Cornell Cooperative Extension. It was mildly informative. Throw a bunch of kitchen and yard scraps in a pile and let the bacteria and fungus go to town. Actually, one thing I learned that I didn't previously know is that you should stir up the compost pile as often as you can. The class was only $5 and included coffee, coffee cake, and doughnut holes, so I can't really complain.

Time for a brief update on the wine progress

The fermentation has been going along well for quite a while now and the bubbling has slowed down to a burble every 15 seconds or so. I figured its about time to move it into the secondary fermenter. The primary fermenter is a plastic bucket, the secondary is a big glass jug. I think you're supposed to put it in glass because its non-reactive and does a better job of sealing in/out wanted/unwanted gasses.

I tested the specific gravity with a hydrometer and got a reading of 1.007! The reading before fermentation started was 1.085, so most of the sugar is gone. 0.994 or so is supposed to be very dry, so there is still some left. 0.994 equates to about -1.75 Brix and the 1.007 is about +2 Brix, so there is about 3.75% sugar left. That would be awfully high for a finished wine, but more will disappear in the secondary fermentation. I'm curious to see what it will finish at naturally. I'm hoping for 0.5-1% residual sugar, but I've decided to let the yeast do what it wants. The only other options are to add potassium sorbate (which inhibits the yeast) or to frequently and repeatedly siphon the wine off of any yeast-filled sediment that forms. The latter option is just speculation on my part, but I think it would work eventually.

By the way, siphoning the wine off of the sediment and into a new container is called "racking", so from here on out I'm calling it that. I racked the wine into the secondary fermenter and added another 1/4 teaspoon of potasium metabisulphite. I tested the level afterwards and it only showed up as 15ppm. 40-80 is the number I was aiming for. I'm not sure the test was valid, though, since there were an awful lot of air bubbles getting into my test ampule that could have affected the results. 1/4 teaspoon should be enough to make the concentration 40 ppm just by itself. Well, even if the concentration is somehow too low, I have faith in my juice. Hopefully there won't be any bacterial contamination. Here is a pic of me racking the wine. You can see that it is quite cloudy. There is still quite a bit of yeast and other stuff that needs to settle out.

I tasted a little sip of the juice. Certainly much less sweet than it was before. Now that the sweetness is gone the sourness seems pretty strong. I'm still hoping that more of the grape flavor comes through in the end.

The wine will now sit in the secondary fermenter for at least a month. If it looks like its still really cloudy, I may rack the wine, clean out the glass fermenter and then put it back into that and let it settle more.

Seyval Rising

There's been a lot of buzz about South Wedge Winery's first ever Seyval, so Miller Homestead's investigative reporter A. Miller fills a glass and reports:

Seyval is a white hybrid, originally bred by the Seyve family, who thought up the clever name. The cold-tolerant vines fruit generously and early, making it popular in places with dreary and depressing climates like England, Canada, and most notably the Finger Lakes region of NY. (it also turns up in Missouri and to a small degree in Oregon) One place you won't find Seyval is in Europe though, since as a hybrid grape it makes some oenophilic traditionalists uncomfortable: "Non, ve do not vant dees meexed grapes en France... Ce n'est pas bon!" states French Foreign Minister Francois Loos.

Despite a controversial but complete ban on the grape by the E.U., Seyval wines nevertheless draw frequent and natural comparisons to whites from Burgundy, with fruity aromas and a mineral feel on the palate. Ducking the comparison to stodgy french whites, Seyval is versatile, its flavor easily varied by alterations in residual sugars, malolactic fermentation, and duration of oak aging.

The South Wedge Winery 2009 Seyval enters a crowded market, as most Seyval currently comes out of the Finger Lake region. But with the average bottle price hovering at ~$9, South Wedge is optimally positioned to dominate the $25-30 market with this new entry.

Montclair Sauvignon Blanc - 4.5

Our next wine review will be a 2008 Montclair Sauvignon Blanc from California:

Again, muffin just wants to be where the action is, even if it means trying to climb up my leg to get into the picture.

I get a bit of apple and rose. Its not too acidic. In fact, I wish it were more sour. Really not a whole lot of flavor in general. There is a barely noticeable unpleasant aftertaste that I can't quite put my finger on. Its very similar to the taste I have in my mouth after I have an order of McDonalds french fries. Anybody else get a strange slightly dry/sticky feeling in your mouth accompanied by a strange almost metallic taste after eating McDonalds fries? Its a shame, too, cause they're the best tasting fries of the major 3 burger joints. Ok, back to the wine. Jaime says it doesn't have a lot of flavor, and that its "predictable and lackluster". She didn't see my review before giving her comments, so thats kind of remarkable that she had such a similar reaction to this wine (minus the mickey-Ds reference).

Peter gives this wine a 4/10. I'm not impressed.

Jaime gives this wine a 5/10.

Average score: 4.5

Preparing the Juice

Soon after making the blog entry about acid and sugar, I went about actually doing what I said I was going to do. I poured a gallon of juice into a bucket in preparation for neutralizing the acid. I decided to check the sulphite levels first, though. Mostly I just wanted to try out my tester kit and break open one of the ampules. Glad I did the test, though. As you can see in this picture (clear liquid as opposed to dark purple means the gauge can be read), there is less than 13 parts per million (ppm) in the juice. I am aiming for 40 ppm. So I added 1/8 teaspoon. I didn't check the levels afterwards since each test costs me about $2. The sulphites should help protect from bacterial infections, especially during this period with low levels of alcohol and repeated exposure to the air.

I also tasted a sip of the juice. Not terrible. Tasted like grape juice. A bit less sweet than grocery store varieties. I didn't find the sourness from the acidity to be unpleasant.

Here I am measuring out Calcium Carbonate. Muffin really just wants to be wherever the action is.

I added the calcium carbonate slowly to the gallon of juice over a period of 1 hour, stirring frequently. I left it like that in the bucket for about 24 hours. When I opened it up, there was about a 1/4 thick layer of crystals at the bottom of the bucket. Hopefully it was calcium malates and calcium tartrates. From what I read, Malic acid and Tartaric acid are the two main types of acid in wine. Another chemical you can use to reduce acid is potasium bicarbonate. When that combines with tartaric acid, it precipitates potasium tartrate crystals, which I understand to be cream of tartar.

I took a sip of the neutralized juice. It really was way less sour. Kind of boring tasting, though. Sweet, with a hint of grape flavor.

I siphoned the gallon out of the little bucket and back into the big bucket, leaving the crystals behind. Then I measured out 3.7 lbs of corn sugar. Wow, thats a lot of sugar! I checked the specific gravity after that, and it read 21 brix. Right where I was aiming for!

I took another sip at this point. Certainly sweeter. Not bad. I noticed in all my sips that there wasn't a whole lot of distinctive grape flavor. Hopefully its just being overwhelmed by the sugar and other things in there and it will be much more noticeable after fermentation.

Lastly, I started up the yeast. I'm using Lalvin 71B-1122. There are quite a few different wine yeasts available. The 101Winemaking website had descriptions for the kinds they sell. For this one, it says it will ferment up to about 14% alcohol (most others go higher), and is good for fruitier wines where some residual sugar is desired. Thats what I'm going for, so it sounds like a good match.

I put some warm water ~100F in some tupperware with a teaspoon of sugar and sprinkled the yeast on top. After 20-30 min, I noticed it foaming up a bit, which I took to be a good sign. I dumped the yeasty water into the big bucket of juice, closed the lid, and put in the airlock so it could start fermentation.

After 24 hours there were still no bubbles coming out of the airlock at all. I was getting pretty worried at this point that I had done something wrong. I would have expected bubbles within a few hours considering how well the yeast had been foaming in the tupperware. I remembered that the online directions for the yeast suggested putting some of the juice into the water with the yeast after it started foaming so that the yeast wouldn't be "shocked" by the temperature change. I had forgotten to do that, and was thinking that I may have more than just shocked the yeast. I gave it until 48 hours before I broke out the backup packet of yeast that I had purchased for use with a future wine batch. Happily at 36 hours I saw a few bubbles. About one a minute or so. It accelerated steadily after that, and by 60 hours it was bubbling faster than once a second. Its still going strong after 5 full days. Go little yeasty beasties!

First Wine Review - Ledgewood Creek Merlot - 8.5

It turns out that three of our friends/family thought of the same great idea for a wedding gift for us. We now have subscriptions to three different wine of the month clubs. That means that we get 6 bottles of wine a month. So rather than get swamped with wine, we figured we're going to have to start drinking it. Not the worst thing in the world!

On a related note, I have a great-uncle and great-aunt who have been married some ridiculous number of years (50+), and one tradition they have is to have a cocktail hour together every day. In fact, last time I visited them, I think it was suggested that the cocktail hour should be part of a healthy marriage. They always seem to go for Martinis, but since neither Jaime or I like Martinis and we have a plethora of wine, why not use that for our cocktail hour?

This is supposed to be a wine-making and garden themed blog, but it will be running out of posting subject matter over the winter (no garden and the wine will just be sitting there conditioning in the bottles), why not review the wines we're tasting? A word of caution, though. Neither of us are really wine connoisseurs (yay spell-check!). We may or may not have the palettes of an aficionado, but we certainly don't have the vocabulary of a sommelier. So this will be more like wine reviews for the common folk. Keep a look out for future wine review posts! The name of the wine and the final rating will be included in the titles.

The first wine for review is a 2005 Ledgewood Creek Merlot. The bottle says Suisun Valley. A quick wiki search showed this to be in California near Napa Valley.

Jaime notes a hint of cherry flavor first. I noticed a bit of earthiness and smoke along with the fruitiness. Its moderately dry. None of the flavors are terribly strong or overwhelming. Nothing harsh or upleasant. I'm not really sure how to describe this wine because there is no one distinctive characteristic to it. It would be great for somebody looking for a relatively mild merlot that tastes like a merlot. A red for people who don't like really strong dry reds, but it still tastes like its supposed to. I really really like this wine, but I probably fall into the aforementioned group. Every once in a while I like a really strong red, but not that often. This would probably be perfect for holiday gatherings where you're looking for a red that everybody would like and wouldn't overwhelm a dish like pasta with red sauce.

Jaime rates this wine a 8/10. Mmmmm!

Peter rates this wine a 9/10. I would definitely buy this wine if I saw it in a store.

Average score: 8.5

No idea how much this would cost in a store, but I hope its not too much, cause I'd really like some more of it. What a good start to the wine(s) of the month!

FYI: Jaime's rating scale is probably a bit more generous than mine. I really try to aim for an average of 5. I think she would probably average around a 6.2. I know, you're saying that doesn't make any sense since I rated it higher than her. I get the impression she thinks this is an enjoyable, above average wine. The rating of 9/10 that I gave it means this is probably a +2.5 standard deviation wine for me (1 in 100 or better). Really one of the best reds I can remember. Mmmmm, indeed.

Sugar and Acid

Time to figure out how much sugar to put in, and adjust the acidity. The place I bought the juice from kindly tests all of their juices and puts the results up online so I don't have to. The sugar level is pretty easy. You can get a pretty good idea of the sugar level by using a hydrometer to test the specific gravity of the juice. The acid is more difficult. That requires titrating a sample up to a specific pH level so you can measure how much base is needed to change the acidity. Titrating requires some equipment and chemicals that I don't have (maybe $60 worth) and is an added hassle that I don't feel like I need to do. If I were to get really serious about wine making, I'd have to get that equipment. If I remember from chemistry, titrating isn't really all that fun. Jaime begs to differ, so if it needs to be done in the future, she's the one doing it.

The test results for this years Seyval juice were posted on monday and are as follows:

15.8 Brix (Brix is just percent sugar)

1.185% total acidity

3.10 pH

It seems as though this is not a good year for the Seyval grapes. That is the lowest Brix level and the highest acidity and lowest pH out of any of the last 8 years or so that are shown on the website. Ugh. I like the idea of just leaving the juice the way it naturally is and letting the wine turn out however it turns out, but these levels are so far off the ideal that I'll definately have to do some adjusting. Perhaps when I get some more experience I'll have a better feel for when I can do that and when I can't.

The ideal Brix level (according to 101 Winemaking) is around 21-23. Yeast has the potential to turn the sugar to alcohol with a factor of about 0.575, so the 15.8 Brix means that the wine would have at most 9% alcohol, and that is if it is allowed to ferment till all the sugar is gone (0% residual sugar). Bumping up the Brix to 21 gives it a maximum possible alcohol level of 12%. So that seems like a reasonable target to shoot for. I'd like a little bit of residual sugar left, so hopefully the wine will end up with around 11% alcohol. According to the above website, 1/8lb of sugar will raise the Brix of one gallon of juice by 1.0. Then for my juice, 21-15.8 is 5.2 Brix times 6 gallons times 1/8 lbs equals 3.90lbs sugar. Thats a lot of sugar. I have corn sugar. 101 Winemaking says this is good to use because it is simple sugar (unlike cane sugar) and the powdered form dissolves pretty easily. I guess Jaime's useless food scale may actually come in handy here.

On to acidity. For all but one of the previous years' Seyval juice, the acidity was ideal or a bit low. So when I was picking up my juice, I also picked up some tartaric acid to bump up the acidity of my juice. Then I found out that the juice was actually way too acidic this year. I had to order something to reduce the acidity. Fallbright was sold out of many of the chemicals that are used to reduce acidity when I tried to order it, so I would assume that lots of people are having the same problem. I was able to order a bag of calcium carbonate (old-school chalk). The calcium carbonate does reduce the amount of acid, but it takes a couple months for the acid salts to precipitate out, so I definately want to get that started soon. Luckily the calcium carbonate came in the mail only 2 days after I ordered it!

I don't fully understand the relationship between pH and total acidity. My guess is that total acidity is a measure of the amount of basic chemicals that are needed to buffer the acidic juice. I think(?) different liquids have different buffering capacities, so adding the same amount of basic chemicals to two different liquids that have the same pH may not raise the pH by the same amount. Most of the calculations on the website are based off of the total acidity, so thats what I'll be focusing on as well.

The website suggests a finished total acidity (hearafter called TA) of 0.7 to 0.85. My juice is at 1.185. Some of the acid will go away during fermentation (0.12), plus if it is cold stabilized some of the acid will precipitate out (an additional 0.08). So the first thing to do is remove that from the total, leaving 0.985. I'll aim for a finished TA of 0.785, mostly just because the math is easier that way. So I'm aiming for a change of 0.20 in the TA level. According to the website, 2.5grams of calcium carbonate will reduce the TA by 0.1. I need twice that change, so I'll add 5g/gallon times 6gal, which comes out to 30grams of calcium carbonate.

The website also says that you don't want to go over a pH of 3.45 or the wine gets unstable and it gets easier for bacteria to grow. Since its already at 3.10, it can only change by 0.35. According to the website, approximately 0.35g/liter (1.323g/gal) will change the pH by 0.1. So that means that I shouldn't add more than 4.63g/gal. Now I don't remember chemistry all that well, but I seem to recall that the pH scale is logarithmic, which would make this whole calculation bogus. Nevertheless, I'll err on the side of caution and only add 4.5 g/gal. That would mean that the TA change would be 0.18, so the finished TA would be around 0.805. So the total calcium carbonate added will be 4.5 times 6gal or 27grams.

For the calcium carbonate, it strongly recomends taking 1/3 or less of the juice out, adding the calcium carbonate to that(slowly over an hour), letting it sit for a day or so, then siphoning it back into the rest of the juice, leaving any precipitate behind. "This helps to prevent excessive distortion of the entire natural acid profile." Whatever that means. Actually it says that ideally I should take out just enough to reduce the TA of the small batch to zero. OK, so 1.185 times 1 gallon times 25g (2.5g per 0.1) is 29.625 grams. Thats the amount that will neutralize one gallon. I'm putting in 27g, so I'll need just under one gallon.

So to summarize, I'm going to take out 1 gallon of juice, add 27grams of calcium carbonate, let it sit for 24 hours, siphon the juice back into the big batch, then add 3.7 lbs of corn sugar and stir till its dissolved. Sweet!

Turning Grape Juice Into Wine

I'll outline the basic process for making wine in this post.

1. Pick bunches of grapes off the vine and rinse them off

2. Crush/De-stem the grapes. This is usually done at the same time with a machine. Back in the day, the stems would be manually removed, and then people would stomp on the grapes to crush them.

3. Press the crushed grapes to get the juice. Again, done mechanically, often with a bladder press.

4. Add Metabisulphites. This is an anti-bacterial agent that prevents runaway bacterial contamination. Supposedly even the Romans used this stuff, or something like it for the same purpose.

5. Filter the juice

6. Add sugar as needed so that the yeast will have enough food to make alcohol with. If its a good year, you won't have to add much, if any. Bad years you may need to add a bunch.

7. Test the amount of acid and adjust the acidity as needed. Again, if its a good year, you many not have to do much here.

8. Add yeast and do a primary fermentation

9. Siphon off the juice and continue secondary fermentation.

10. Add clarifying agents. This will bind with random stuff floating around and cause it to precipitate, leaving clear wine.

11. Add some more metabisulphite (it evaporates slowly) so that the wine will stay stable in bottles.

12. Cold stabilize (optional) the wine by putting it in a freezer at 25 degrees or so for a while. This will precipitate out some more stuff and supposedly cause the wine to become more stable.

13. Siphon it off into bottles and cork them.

14. Let it age in bottles for a couple months

15. Consume

Red wine is slightly different in that the primary fermentation is done on the skins. The juice from red grapes is actually white, and its the fermentation on the skins that turns it red. So for red wine, step 3 actually comes after step 8.

The place I bought the juice from already put the initial metabisulphites (step 4) in the juice, so I'm currently between items 4 and 5 with my Seyval juice.

Wine Tasting

On the way back from Fallbright, Jaime and I stopped at a two wineries to do some wine tasting. Neither of us had been to either of the wineries before. The first place we stopped at was Rooster Hill winery, on the eastern shore of Keuka. The wines got mixed reviews from us. My favorite of the bunch was a Traminette. Apparently Jaime has a policy about buying at least one bottle of wine from each winery that we stop and taste at, so we got a bottle of that. I'd heard of that grape, but didn't know much about it. Turns out to be a hybrid of Gewurztraminer and a French-American hybrid grape, Joannes Seyve 23.416. The wiki page on it says that it tastes like Gewurz, but has better cold tolerance. I don't know about the cold tolerance, but it did taste like a yummy Gewurtz. The wiki page also says it has good yields of 12-22lbs per vine. For most wine grapes you need 12-16lbs of grapes to produce a gallon of juice. Each gallon will produce around 5 bottles of wine. So apparently a happy grape vine will produce 4-9 bottles of wine. Good to know!

The other place we stopped was Red Tail Ridge winery on the western shore of Seneca, just south of Geneva. We weren't too impressed by the wines here. The only one that we both enjoyed was the semi-dry riesling, so we got a bottle of that.

One overly general stereotype that I've formed recently is that most of the white wines produced in the finger lakes have more body and flavor than the same grapes grown out west. Conversely, the reds from California and Oregon seem to have much more flavor than the same grapes grown in the finger lakes. For the most part this stereotype has served me well, though there are exceptions. One of these exceptions was the estate grown pino noir at Red Tail Ridge. The description speaks of "outspoken cherry and red raspberry" with "underlying earthy notes, smoke, coffee, and cocoa." I'm pretty sure the cherries and raspberries in my sample got burnt because all I could taste was strong smoke and maybe very darkly roasted coffee if I used my imagination. Full of flavor...yes. Good....no. Also, there was a rather strongly flavored Lemberger wine there, but it is not estate grown, and when I googled the Martini Family Vineyard, Sonoma, CA was what popped up.

I'd always wanted to know how wine grapes tasted compared to the grapes you'd buy in the grocery store. Red Tail Ridge has a driveway that is lined with grape vines that were chock full of grapes that were nearing maturity. Too good to pass up. I stayed in the getaway vehicle with the engine running while Jaime grabbed a handful of grapes.

We got a few chardonnay grapes and a few red grapes (pino noir maybe?). As we sped away and the sound of sirens faded into the distance, we sampled our plundered goods. Not bad, actually. They had big seeds and the skins were very tough, but the juice I was able to get out of them was pretty good. I'd venture to say a better tasting snack than grocery store grapes. Just as sweet with a different flavor. I was expecting to get a strong chardonnay and pino noir taste, but it was rather subtle.

First Wine Post

The hairy vetch and ryegrass are just growing slowly on their own. Not much to do or to say about it, so its time for something else. Wine! As you may or may not know, I've made a few batches of beer from kits and I've made several batches of wine from kits as well. I think I like the wine more for a couple reasons. Primarily, I like a good wine more than I like a good beer. The three wine kits have been a Gewurztraminer, a Pinotage, and a Riesling. The Gewurz got rave reviews immediately, the Pinotage started out so-so, but has been getting better (too bad we only have 3 bottles left!), and the Riesling was ehhh. Perhaps that one will get better. We still have 20 or so bottles of that, so I hope so.

The Riesling suffered from a couple errors during the bottling process. Most notably, the siphon slipped into the lees during final racking, which resulted in a significant amount of lees in the bottles. Also, I run the wine through coffee filters as I'm doing the final racking for an extra level of clarification. The coffee filters and funnel set-up fell into the finished wine twice. Ooops. The result was bottles of wine that have sediment, and may actually still be fermenting slightly in the bottles. It seems to have a slight bubbly sensation when you drink it.

With the exception of the bottling errors, the kits turned out relatively well. Time to ratchet it up a level of difficulty and make wine from grape juice or right from grapes.

After doing some internet searching, the only place in the finger lakes I could find that sells grapes and juice is Fallbright, on the eastern shore of Keuka lake. Some of the Grapes and Juice are surprisingly expensive. Riesling and Gewurztraminer (arguably the grapes best suited for the Finger lakes and therefore quite tasty) cost around $20/gallon. 5 gallons will make around 25 bottles worth, so thats $4/bottle, not including the chemicals, bottles, corks, equipment, and time necessary to make it. On the other end of the spectrum, there are grapes like concord, which are only $6/gal. I decided to go for a mid-range grape this time. I remember having tasty Seyval wines before, and that was only $9/gal, so thats what I decided on.

I had initially wanted to go right from the grapes, but when you take into account the amount of juice that can be squeezed from the grapes, the juice is actually a bit cheaper. If you do buy grapes, their website says that you can use their crusher and presser for free to get the juice out.

Last saturday Jaime and I took the afternoon to drive over there and pick up the juice and a bunch of supplies. Thats the place below. Sorry about the quality of the picture. I forgot to bring my camera and had to use the iphone. Kind of surprising how bad the picture turned out. I think it must have been focusing/light-reading from the clouds.

The place is basically a little shack with a bunch of chemicals inside and some machinery for grape processing out back. You can see some grape vines behind the shack and Keuka lake in the background. I asked them how much of the grapes/juice they produced there and they said all but three of the red varieties (I can't remember which ones). We picked up the juice and a bunch of chemicals and supplies. I figured while I was there, I'd pick up enough stuff so that I could make one or two more batches and all I would need would be the juice. Hopefully this will allow me to make something weird like a fruit wine. With the 6 gallons of Seyval juice and everything else, the total came to about $145 including tax. I'd guess that about $100 of that will be used for making this batch of wine.

Looking good

The Vetch sprouted nicely and is actually taller than the grass now. The weather has been remarkably warm lately for late September. The warm weather is very good for encouraging growth of the Vetch. Thats a very good thing because I learned from more internet research that Hairy Vetch should be planted at the end of August to ensure that it has enough time to grow a good enough root system to survive the winter. My Vetch was planted on September 12th, so I guess its time to cross fingers again. This pic is approximately 7 days after it sprouted.

Congratulations....its a monocot!

After about 6-7 days of watering, hoping and gentle cooing, the ryegrass and hairy vetch sprouted! Yay! This picture was taken 8 days after sowing the seeds. Its hard to differentiate the hairy vetch in the picture, but if you look close, some of the grassy looking stuff has red stems.

Cover Crops

After tilling and watering the area, it was time to plant a cover crop. For those who don't know, a cover crop is plants don't really have any value (food or money wise) but they are supposed to maintain or improve the soil. I originally wanted to get a nitrogen fixing legume. Nitrogen fixing is the process of using symbiotic bacteria in the soil to take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and put it into the soil where other plants can use it. Most vegetables use up quite a bit of nitrogen, which is the main component of most fertilizers. When you use a nitrogen fixing cover crop, you dramatically reduce or eliminate the need to artificially add nitrogen. I started doing internet research on cover crops, focusing on nitrogen fixing plants. By the time I got my soil samples back telling me that I have plenty of nitrogen in my soil, I already had my heart set on a specific plant....Hairy Vetch. Its one of the few (maybe only) nitrogen fixers that can survive the winters around here and produce a useful amount of nitrogen during the off-season months when there are no vegetables planted. Besides...I like the name. The Vetch was also chosen because its relatively easy to kill by tilling it when it is flowering in the spring. Thats a good thing so that it doesn't turn into a weed in my garden next year. Hairy Vetch grows quite a bit of mass in not a long time, so when it comes time to till it into the soil, it provides a lot of decomposing organic matter in the soil (a good thing). Lastly, the Vetch has a moderately deep tap-root that should burrow into that hard clay layer and help break it up somewhat.

Most websites recommended pairing the Hairy Vetch with another cover crop. The other crop would ideally grow quickly in the fall (when the Vetch grows slowly) and provide a layer of thermal insulation for the Vetch during the winter. A friend of mine who is a thermal engineer is fond of saying that everything in life is a thermal problem. I decided on winter oats. Unfortunately the company that I ordered from (Peaceful Valley) was out of winter oats at the time. So I decided to go for something similar like cereal rye. However, unlike the oats, the rye survives the winter, and I was worried about the grassy plant becoming a weed that would be difficult to kill. I saw something called annual ryegrass. Assuming it was similar, but an annual (dies off each year), I purchased that. I found out later that its a completely different species and rather different, but at least its supposed to grow quickly in the fall and then (hopefully) die. I got a pound of each. I found recommendations to plant 10-15lbs of ryegrass with 25-40lbs of Hairy Vetch per acre (43,560sq ft) for professional operations. I have maybe 400 sq ft to plant (less than that gets really good sun), so that comes out to maybe 1/8lb of ryegrass and 1/3lb of Vetch.

Since this is far from a professional operation and I wasn't sure about how well I was going to be able to cover the seeds and get them to germinate, I decided to aim for 1/3lb of the ryegrass and 1/2lb of the Vetch. They came in 1lb bags, so I figured I'd just shake the bags sprinkling the seeds on the dirt. I didn't do so hot with the ryegrass, ending with only about 1/3 of the bag left. Hopefully the ryegrass won't be so dense that it smothers the Vetch. For the Vetch, I had to innoculate the seeds first with bacteria. Remember the symbiotic relationship from above? The bacteria is not present in all soils, and especially where there haven't been any nitrogen fixing leguminous plants growing there in a while (peas and clovers are examples of other legumes). So anyway, I bought the bacteria with the seeds. You basically just wet the seeds and coat them with the black, powdery dried bacteria. I did that for half of the bag, so I got the right amount of Vetch seeds and I spread them around the garden area. To cover the seeds, I took a garden rake and basically "teased" the top layer of dirt to mix in the seeds. Then I sprayed a bunch of water over things again. Its been very dry around here for the last month and a half after having a record cold and rainy first half of the summer. After watering, I noticed some of the Vetch seeds on top of the soil, so I re-teased the top layer. Then I decided that it still needed more water, and I thought it would reduce water evaporation if I finished with the smoothed surface after watering compared to the very rough surface after teasing. So I went through a couple of cycles of watering and teasing, ending with a watering. There were still Vetch seeds visible on the surface, but I just decided to cross my fingers.

So to summarize:

2/3 lbs annual rygrass and 1/2 lbs hairy vetch (with innoculant) were planted on september 12th.

Intermission

The quality of the video after posting it isn't so great, but you get the idea. Jaime gets WAAAAYYY too much enjoyment out of this video.

Welcome to Miller Homestead

You might be familiar with another blog of a similar theme. However, that blog seems to be focused more on farming babies than food at the moment. Don't fear, though, the Miller Homestead blog is here to take up the slack.

Actually, I just figured that since I was going to write down info about my gardening and winemaking experiences for my own records, I might as well make the information public in case anybody happens to be interested. I'm hoping to record things like planting dates, how well certain varieties grow, what processes/ingredients or didn't work for winemaking, etc.... Perhaps there will be a few sporadic entertaining posts thrown in just to confuse people.

The story begins in late June of 2009 when I closed on a new home in Rochester, NY

One of the first projects that I wanted to do was to turn the back yard into a vegetable garden. This backyard is almost ideal for it. Its too small to be really useful as a yard, and the bomb-shelter of a garage on the side makes it rather unsightly. Besides, who really wants to mow grass? It has reasonably good southern exposure(for a small urban backyard) and is just about the right size for a beginner vegetable garden. Here is what it looked like when I moved in. Don't mind the lack of sun. The picture was taken pretty late in the evening.

I dug a hole in the yard to get some dirt for a soil sample. As I dug in, I discovered that there was a VERY hard layer of clay-like soil about 6-8" down. I decided to take a sample of the surface layer and a sample of the hard stuff. Both were sent in to Dairy One Soil Laboratory. (Cornell stopped doing routine soil samples and is sending their customers to Dairy One so they can focus on research) After a week or so, I got the results.

Good news on most fronts. Soil pH is between 6 and 7 (which is ideal). The top layer has an exceptionally high CEC, which measures the ability of the soil to hold nutrients. The lower layer has an OK value for CEC. Base saturation levels (which I don't really understand) for potassium, magnesium, and nitrogen are in the OK to ideal ranges. Also, the Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, and Nitrate levels are all in the "very high" range for both samples. That apparently means that the "nutrient is present at a level higher than required to support crop growth". So I don't know where this super dirt came from, but my plants are going to be awefully happy about it. Actually, I remember reading that one of the reasons that the original Biosphere II project failed was that the soil was too rich in nutrients, which caused a massive soil microbe bloom, which then sucked up all the oxygen. Hopefully we have enough oxygen floating around our backyard to support both us and the microbes.

In september I finally got around to starting on my garden. Renting the roto-tiller was easy enough, though getting it to the house and back to the rental place turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. Here is a picture my wonderful wife took of me tilling the yard.

The tiller was able to get through the top layer easy enough, but the tines didn't seem to want to go through the hard clay layer that was about 6-8" down. I went over the garden several times, but the tines were pretty much bouncing off the clay layer. Ugh. Nothing I could really do about it.

This is getting to be a bit too long of a post, so I will break it up with an intermission.