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.