Wine Progress

Last weekend I siphoned the wine off of the sediment (a second time). I tried a sample of it and was pleasantly surprised. The bitter, chemically flavor I tasted last time was mostly gone, though there was still a hint of it. I'm hoping that will keep going away.

Unfortunately, the wine still remains cloudy. It should have cleared up on its own, but since it hasn't, I put in a commercial clearing agent. That should theoretically gather particles together and make them large enough to precipitate out.

The next step is cold stabilization. Dropping the temperature down to around 32 will cause excess acid to precipitate out and also help kill off some or all of the yeast. Last year when I did cold stabilization, I just put the wine in the garage. That isn't really a well-controlled thermal environment, so I decided to try something that I had seen suggested online. Bury it in snow. If it is really cold for a long time, the temperature could drop too low, but its supposed to be semi-warmer for the next week or so. Its supposed to be above freezind during the daytime most of the week. The snow should keep the wine right around freezing and insulate it from any really cold temperatures overnight.

So I dug a hole in a snow pile on the side of the driveway and put the wine in it. Here is the wine in the hole.Here is what it looks like after piling the snow on. I packed it down firm enough to walk on. You can just see the airlock sticking up out of the top of the pile. I filled the airlock with vodka so that it won't freeze.
Speaking of warming temperatures, its almost time to plant the garden....well, kinda. Here is what the garden looks like 4 weeks before I am hoping to do the first plantings (the weekend of 3/13). I'm not too worried about there being snow on the ground, I'm just worried that the ground will still be frozen at this point. It wasn't last year, but I think last year was warmer than normal.