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.