October-November 2008 Fermentations ...

Well, here's some pictures of the fermentations that I got started..... Some of the Italian wines...

And my St Croix/Marquette from my vineyard .......

And continuing in carboys ....

Malolactic Fermentation coming up next...... Plan to keep them inside a couple of electric blankets to keep the temps hot and constant.

Moved Fermentation Room....

Well, with a rampted up production (all in the Fall versus kits spread out all throughout the year), I had to move my fermentation room.


I had the gas company install a thermostatically controlled heater in our garage. Now, I can keep the temps nice and warm for yeast fermentation and malolactic fermentations. Then lower the temps for the rest of the winter to 55 degrees or so. Come summer, I'll need to move the carboys to my wine cellar to maintain the cooler temps.


Here's some pictures....

October 2008 - Getting Italian FRESH Juice again...

I wanted to "kill two birds with one stone". My wife and I wanted to visit our son who lives on the East Coast and I wanted to get some Italian FRESH juice that is not available to us in the Midwest.


So.. in spite of the high cost of fuel we travelled 3,000 miles (round trip). We had a nice visit with our son ... and helped him bottle some beer (That's me capping on his Ferrari Italian corker/capper).



























And, I got to buy my Italian FRESH juice from a winery run by a very nice Italian family. This was the same great juice I bought two years ago that turned out so great.

I got 18 gallons of Amarone (my favorite!), 12 gallons of Meritage (a Bordeaux type blend), and 12 gallons of Vino de Casa (a house wine blend). I'm also making 18 gallons of red Old Vine Zinfandel (California) and my meager few gallons of St Croix and Marquette field blend mentioned in a previous post.

Newly constructed Press......

After reading an article in WineMaker magazine about building a grape press (by John Zamarra), I decided to "improve" my set up and build a stronger frame similar to the one in the magazine. I now have a 6 Ton bottle jack to exert pressure. Now I should be ready for next year's harvest.

Here's a picture...I took the picture with the "small" 50 lb capacity basket (and the 8 inch spacer). I will replace it with a bigger (4-5 gallon?) basket before next year's harvest.

Fall 2008 - Helping out at a local winery

Recognizing that the best way to learn is by actually doing it, I decided to volunteer at a local vineyard/winery. I had helped pick grapes at other vineyards before but never stuck around for the processing.

So... I not only helped pick Edelweiss and Briana grapes but I also stuck around to help crush/destem and press and transfer to the tanks. It was a very looooong day but very interesting and educational and I had a great time.

I did not purchase any of these grapes as I was preparing to go to the East Coast to get grapes/juice and would not have time to process these local grapes adequately before departing.

Here's some pictures....

Summer/Fall 2008 - First wine grape crop

This Summer/Fall has been a real challenge. Aurora was hit by a tornado and we lost many big trees and the vines got battered really bad (our house, unlike many neighbors, came out undamaged). Lost quite a few clusters but vines held up okay. Then, later, we got hit by a golf-ball size hail storm that "totalled" our house roof along with our out buildings. The vines again got batterred and now most clusters were knocked off. The vines continued to hold up fairly well.

As a result, the grape crop was quite limited. So... I did a field blend with St Croix and Marquette grapes and was still able to make a few gallons of my very own red hybrid wine for the first time. More details on that later.

Here's some pictures of Marquette vines and clusters BEFORE the hail damage.

Early 2008 - Propagating Marquette Vines

This was my first attemp at propagating vines. Marquette vines were still hard to find at this time due to being new and resulting sold-out conditions. I wanted to try propogating vines myself so I gave it a try (and yes, I will send the U of MN a royalty check once I'm done and I determine how many survived).

I got mixed results... some cuttings worked great and others just died (rotted). I will try this again next winter/spring 2009. I'd also like to try to propagate some Edelweiss.

Here's some pictures of the "plants" and the beginning of my southern vineyard.

Late 2007 - Getting Serious

At this point I had a wine cellar with 800+/- bottles of wine made from high and low end kits, fruit from my trees, and now FRESH grapes and juice. I had only read a few winemaking books and read some material from various websites. So.... I continued to read everything I could get my hands on.... see the following list......

Jack Keller Website
BCAWA website
VAWA website
WinePress Bulletin Board postings
WineMaker Magazine articles (got back issues-almost all of them!)
Michiel Pergens - Home Winemaking
William Konnerth - WineMaking
Raymond Massaccesi - WineMaker's Recipe Handbook
Terrey Garey - The Joy of Home WineMaking
Lum Eisnman - The Home Winemaker's Manual
Jon Iverson - Home WineMaking
Jim Law - The BackYard Vintner - Vineyard Management
Jeff Cox - From Vines to Wines
Daniel Pambianchi - Techniques for making Chateau Style Wines
Philip Jackisch - Modern Wine Making Chemistry
The Wine Maker's Answer Book - Alison Crowe
Yair Margalit - Small Winery Technology and Operations - Chemistry
Thomas Plocher - Making Cold Climate Wines
Understanding Wine Technology - David Bird
The Science of Wine - Jamie Goode
The Art and Science of Wine - James Halliday
The Way To Make Wine - Sheridan Warrick
Knowing and Making Wine - Emile Peynaud (U. of Bordeaux, France-translated into english)
Winemaking -University of California at Davis
University of Bordeaux, France - Enology I (English)
University of Bordeaux, France - Enology II (English)



By now I knew that I did not want to go commercial but hopefully the books above would allow me to better understand things. I was satisfied just making wine for my own consumption but wanted to make the best possible wine I could. So, reading all these books about wine/grape chemistry, wine science, winery operations, along with enology textbooks from U.C. Davis and books from world famous authors such as Jackish, Margalit, Peynaud, etc. really helped. I learned a lot! The more I learned the more I realized how much I did not understand beforehand!! And, the more I realized how much I still don't know. But, book knowledge is not the same as hands-on experience. I need to get more "experience". I really need a "mentor".

At this point, I wanted to stop making kits and do all fresh fruits/juice if I could. At this point I'm fairly confident that 2007 will be the last year that I make kits.

I already had fairly sufficient equipment such as floor corker, pH meter, Chromatography testing items, refractomer, Mity-vac, filtering setup, large fermentors, etc. But I still lacked some things such as a good press, a crusher/destemmer, inert gas setup to name a few.

I also wanted to use better corks because I was making better wines (fresh vs kits). I ordered some "real" corks (vs aglomerated or synthetic) but found that they were a bit dry (probably sitting around waiting to be sold in small quantities). So, in order to be sure I would get "fresh and moist" real corks, I ordered a sealed bag of 1,000 corks and re-bagged them in smaller quantities myself (used Food Saver machine and 1/2 gallon mason jars).

And....I bought a Nitrogen/Argon inert gas set up and began working on a better and larger press.

Fall 2007 - White Wines (Fresh Grapes)

After tasting the wine from the FRESH Italian juice that I made last year, I wanted to make more wine from fresh grapes or juice. Therefore, I picked grapes at two different vineyards this Fall.

The first was a Traminette. This grape has Gewurtztraminer as a parent and the resulting wine is a great cold-weather alternative. The second was Seval Blanc. This grape is also a cold weather grape that makes a very nice wine.

Considering I was only making 300 lbs total, I crushed and destemmed by hand then used my "first-attempt" grape press that I made using a hydraulic bottle jack. After a day to settle out the juice in a refrigerator, I began the fermentation at a low temp (slow and cold).

Wow! Was I surprised at the resulting wine. An aroma that fills the room and a great fruity flavor. Something that I found lacking in the lower-end wine kits that I had made to date.

Here's some pictures of the Traminette grapes and fermentation....

Smudge Pot ....

Here's a picture of a Smudge pot that I added to my vineyard.

This type of pot was used in places like California to "heat" the vineyard on cold nights to ward off the damaging freezing temps. It was commonly filled with diesel fuel and ignited and left to burn on nights when the temps were expected to drop below 32 degrees. Hundreds of them could be seen in some vineyards... what a fantastic sight!

This is a nostalgic item that I often saw in California when I lived there and just had to have one for old time sake.

Fall of 2006 - "FRESH" Wine Juice from Italy

While on a trip to the East coast, I had the opportunity to purchase some FRESH Wine Juice from Italy. I got a pail of Amarone (my favorite) and a pail of Sangiovese (the predominate grape of Chianti).

After making this wine I was shocked at how fantastic it was. Up till now I had only been making kit wines (concentrates) that lacked an aroma and had a sweet taste that some describe as "kit taste".

At this point I really wanted to only make wines from fresh grapes, fruit, and/or juice.

Planting of the Marquette vines May 2006

Here are the Marquette "greenhouse" vines ... ready to plant! VERY tiny plants but they grew just fine.




















Here they are planted with protection cages around them (the bunnies need to be kept away as they just love to eat them).

Cherry and Peach trees

Here's a picture of one of the peaches that I picked off my peach trees. Nice and big and tastes great!

After freezing a supply for winter desserts, the rest goes into making peach wine.






















Here's a picture of one of the peach trees that was in full bloom in the Spring! What a great fragrance!






















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Here's a small portion of the cherries that were picked. I usually get about 100 lbs per year.

Again, some are frozen for winter desserts then the rest goes to a fantastic cherry wine. This is great stuff for arthritis too

The cherry tree in full bloom in the Spring.

St Croix vines - Spring 2006

It all started with the apple, cherry, and peach trees and a desire to make some wine. After making some fruit wines, I decided to try growing some wine grapes. I had a few concord vines that were doing well but were being used primarily for jelly. I started to make some concord wine and decided to plant some St Croix vines. Here is a picture of the first "greenhouse" St Croix vine that was planted.