Updated Vineyard Pictures

Seems like every year there are new and different challenges to growing grapes. We've had tornado winds one year, then golf ball size hail another year, late frosts a couple of years, and this year we had a very very wet spring (vineyard was under 6 inches of water for several days) combined with 60+ mph thunderstorm winds that blew the canopy like a "kite'' and bent the wood posts over 45 degrees.

Things are looking better now. Vines are doing well. Veraison is just starting so the netting will go up soon along with the electric fencing.

Here are a few current pictures of the vineyards and a pic of some of my "cuttings" that I will use to fill in the empty spots vacated by the vines I took out this past spring.

Enough is enough !!!!

I mentioned previously that I had pulled out my Concord vines this Spring. These were my first vines. I made a lot of jelly with them but I do not like them for wine. I prefer to make "wine" jelly anyway (especially a nice Barolo). So, they got taken out and will be replaced with Marquettes.

My St Croix vines are now 5 (or 6?) years old and I have attempted to make wine with them for the past few years. As I mentioned in a previous post, I simply have not acquired a palate for this wine. As I mentioned previously, I am really impressed with the Marquette wine I have made and would much prefer this to the St Croix.

So..... today, I also pulled out all the St Croix vines from my vineyard!!!

The vineyard looks rather "spotty" now. The Concords are gone, the St Croix are gone, and several Marquettes are gone (Very unusual bunny damage this winter and I got a bit sloppy with the Roundup). Now have about 17 empty spots.

Oh well, I'll fill in the holes with more Marquettes and in four years I'll be back to producing vines again.

Update on last year's wine (2009 vintage)

In a previous post I explained how I made 4 variations of my Marquette 2009 wine. Here are some tasting notes now that it is 9 months old. Being only 9 months old all four batches obviously exhibited "young" characteristics which should improve with time as the wine mellows and matures.

Batch "A" is a 60%/40% blend (Marquette/Italian grapes). Although tasting fine the Italian wine flavor did come through very prominently. The chemistry was not changed much by this blending so all that really got accomplished was a modification of flavor.

Batch "C" was modified by the addition of a small amount of Potassium Bi-Carbonate to reduce the TA a bit and increase the pH. Unfortunately I can taste "something" different in this batch which I think is the Pot Bi-Carb. This may go away with more time but at this point I do not see enough of a benefit (TA and pH wise) to repeat this process in the future unless I absolutely have to.

Batch "B" was diluted (amelioration) 10% with RO water which lowered the TA but left the pH unchanged. Color did not suffer because I originally used Lallzyme EX and Opti-Red in the fermentation to boost color extraction. This batch was the best tasting of the four. It might have benefited from a bit more oak but otherwise is a very nice table wine.

Batch "D" was left untouched and has a TA of 7.2 and 3.33 for pH. This was the next best tasting wine. A bit more oak and another year or two of ageing should make this a very nice wine. I will most likely ameliorate this batch similar to Batch "B" at the next racking.

With a higher end TA and lower end pH these should be long lived wines. Although TA at 6.5 (batch "B") is just a wee bit higher than I wanted it, it is still very good for a "cold-weather" wine and it should mellow with additional ageing (which the low pH should allow).

I'm very happy with the way this wine turned out. Hopefully I can replicate these results again this year (assuming Mother-Nature cooperates). For cold weather areas like Nebraska, I'm really happy with the way this wine tastes.

The wine made from the St. Croix grapes did not turn out as well. To me, this grape has a very unique taste which I'm not fond of. I have tried St Croix wine at many other wineries and although very well made they all seem to have this unique taste also. I will most likely extract my St Croix vines next year and replace them with more Marquettes.

Vineyard Update ...

We had a very unusual winter this year. Snow drifted as high as 16 feet in the vineyard/orchard (heavy snows and winds were blowing 50 mph for days!!). As a result, the "cute" little bunnies (we have a lot of them) sat on top of the snow and ate the tender shoots off the top of the peach trees then as the snow melted they continued to eat but changed over to the vines. Yes, they sat on top of 6 feet of snow and ate the tender shoots (and as the snow continued to melt) all the way down to the cordons and in some cases chewed away at the younger cordons. So,.... I have a spotty northern vineyard this year with some vines that will produce very few clusters. I will use new base shoots to replace trunks and cordons as needed for next year's crop. Those that did not get eaten are doing extremely well.

We had a very early warming this spring and the vines popped their buds into leaves early. But, luckily we did not have a severe late frost to kill them off. It did get down to 29*F one night but that was still a degree over the critical temp for major damage. I found almost no damage.

As of today (June 12th) some shoots are already 2 feet over the top wires (top wires are 6.5 feet). The cluster pollination went well and I will need to do a LOT of cluster thinning (it really hurts to cut off all those beautiful excess clusters and throw them away!!). If we don't get damaged by hail or tornadoes this year, the crop should still be about the same or greater than last year.

The southern vineyard is going well. I continue to add new vines but lost some when I got a bit careless with a Roundup spray under the vines to kill the weeds. I will let some of the more established vines have a small crop this year.

Marquette Wine Chemistry

Here’s a recap of my first real experience with my Marquette grapes. I had a small harvest the previous year (2008) but I did a field-blend the Marquette and St Croix grapes.

As I indicated in my harvest post, I picked my Marquettes a bit early due to an oncoming rain storm. So, I started with TA of 12.5 g/l (1.25%) and a pH of 3.43 and a 22 Brix. This was close to the average harvest numbers that I read about from test sites.

I added a bit of sugar to get the Brix up to 23 and added 20PPM of SO2. Then I added Lallzyme EX, Opti-Red, 30g of oak chips, 6 grams of Tartaric Acid, some DAP, and some Fermaid. This raised the TA to 13.3 g/l but got the pH down to 3.30 Although I wanted to use D-254 yeast, I forgot to order it so I used RC-212 instead which I had on hand.

I fermented rather warm and pressed the skins after 5 days. The thin skins had given up all they had. The wine was almost fully fermented after 7 days. I added my mlf culture and some Biolees and kept it in the75 temp range for 6 weeks giving it a good stir every few days (and purging the headspace with Nitrogen). My Chromotography test showed that all the malic had converted to lactic as hoped for. As expected, these cold-weather grapes had a lot of malic (due to our shortage of sunshine and long hot summers) so the TA dropped drastically to 7.5 g/l and unfortunately (but also expected) the pH jumped up to 3.85 I added 40 PPM of SO2.

I did not want to go into cold-stabilization with a pH that high (fear of the pH raising further during the process). So, I added 2 g/l of Tartaric Acid (46 grams for a 6 gallon carboy). This got the pH down to 3.54 but as expected the TA rose to 8.4 g/l After cold stabilization, the TA dropped to 7.2 g/l and the pH also dropped down to 3.33 which I is what I had hoped for.

Although the 7.2 TA would be fine and would mellow with time, I decided to try some modifications. I decided to split into 4 batches. Batch “A” was to blend with some Italian wine (a nice Vino-de-Casa) I made the previous year that had a pH of 3.1 and a 6.0 g/l TA. I did a 40% Italian wine to 60% Marquette and ended up with a 3.24 pH and a 6.7 g/l TA. This should be a really nice wine after a bit of ageing.

Batch “B” was a 10% amelioration (RO water). This resulted in a wine of 3.33 pH (no change of course) and 6.5 g/l for TA. The color did not suffer and the taste was still strong so the 10% dilution did not have much of an effect except to lower the TA a bit.

Batch “C” was to add some Potassium bi-Carbonate. This resulted in a wine of 3.5 pH (still okay) and 6.2 g/l of TA. Again, this is a very nice wine.

Batch “D” was no change at all. I left this batch untouched with a pH of 3.33 and 7.2 g/l of TA. With a bit of ageing this too should be a very nice wine.

Now, for the really hard part….. waiting for another 6 to 18 months to see how these taste !!!!

Update re: Winery and new "Mini-Brewery"

Wow! It has been about 6 months since my last post. Time really flies.....

Winemaking activities over the winter are always rather slow and hands-off while waiting for the new wines to "do-their-thing". I hope to post soon with the numbers and actions I've taken over the last 6 months with both the St Croix and Marquette wines. They are really tasting good!!

With all the snow and drifting I have not been able to start any of the winter pruning. Many of my vines are still under several feet of snow.

It's now been about one full year since I started my mini-brewery. I jumped in with both feet and skipped the usual "extract" brewing (from concentrates) and got right into "all-grain" brewing. I have a couple of mash lauter tuns, a couple of propane burners, several pots and a Keggle, a 14lb grain mill, 6 corney-kegs, CO2 tank, beer fridge, etc. I've brewed 16 batches of beer in the past year and am finding this new hobby (obsession?) to be a lot of fun. Now, friends and visitors can enjoy not only a wide variety of wines but can also enjoy up to 6 beers on tap with others available in bottles.