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.