Introducing the 2010 South Wedge Winery Traminette

Its that time of year again. As the vegetables in the garden wind down, the grapes are finishing ripening on the vines. Last month, Jaime and I spent a weekend in the finger lakes to celebrate our 1st anniversary. While there we did a wine tasting tour. One thing we learned while doing that is there is a second source of grape juice in the finger lakes for home winemaking. Fulkerson Winery on Seneca Lake sells a variety of juices and winemaking supplies. I decided to give it a try this fall.

This year I decided to make a Traminette. The decision was based not only on grape preference, but also price and availability date (they only offer each juice for about 4 days). Much like last year's Seyval, Traminette is a mid-level priced grape that has some resemblance to the region's famed Gewurztraminer and Riesling grapes. In fact, Traminette is a hybrid and one of the parents is Gewurztraminer. The hybridization allows it to produce higher yield and have better cold tolerance for this area than a pure Gewurztraminer. I'm still not quite ready to move up the to higher priced grapes yet. The Traminette is $10/gal. as opposed to $20/gal for Gewurzt. After I make a good wine that I'm happy with, I'll try a more expensive juice.

Here is a blurry picture of the juice pickup area at Fulkerson. Each spigot is labeled with a different juice type.

As you may remember, 2009 was a terrible growing season not only for vegetables, but also for grapes. The Seyval that I got last year needed a significant amount of sugar added as well as Calcium Carbonate to reduce the acidity. Last year, the Seyval juice had 15.8% sugar and a total (or titrable) acid level of 1.185. Ideal levels of those are around 22% and 0.5-0.85 TA. This year, the Traminette juice that I purchased had 22.8% sugar and 0.85 TA. The sugar level is just about ideal while the acid level is a bit high, but not so high that it will make the yeast unhappy or upset the winemaking process. Recall also that the acidity will be reduced a bit during fermentation and stabilization. That means no extra additives this year, yay! The only thing I added was a small amount of yeast nutrient and the yeast itself. I used Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast. (The winery added potasium metabisulphite to prevent bacteria and wild yeasts from growing.) Here is the juice being transferred into a glass carboy for fermenting. I started the fermentation on 10/19.

About 24 hours later, this is what it looked like. Note that you can actually see little bubbles coming up the side in the front-right.

Interestingly, it gets cloudier every day. I would assume thats because of the yeast multiplying like crazy. Here is what it looked like about 72 hours after beginning fermentation.

So thats about where it is now. The juice will stay in the carboy for probably a couple months fermenting. The vast majority of the fermenting takes place in the first week or two and then it tails off slowly after that.