OK, I finally got off my lazy ass this morning and bottled some of the grenache I made last year. Since the cessation of fermentation I have left the wine alone in an air-lock sealed glass carboy, and haven’t touched it since late November (well, I’ve been sneaking tastes every so often). The carboy is sitting in my cold basement, on a cool concrete slab floor. At just under a year old, I figure that my wine has reached the point where I can begin to judge my efforts—early on it tasted good, but raw.

I'm holding the glass at an angle so you can see the cololr of the rim

There’s a half-inch layer of fine lees at the bottom of the carboy, but since I haven’t done any lees stirring, my guess is that there’s not a lot of yeast autolysis flavor in the wine. I pulled the airlock off the carboy and stuck my nose in and smelled: yay, the wine smells clean, and has no brett, and no undue VA! The wine now smells more like wine, and less like primary fruit. It also smells moderately evolved, perhaps more so than a commercial wine, aged in reductive conditions, would be at this age. The wine is slightly cloudy, medium brick-red, and the thin, watery pinkish rim of shows some faint browning. Since I’ve not used any sulfur at all, except for cleaning my equipment, I suspect that without the protection of this antioxidant that there’s some oxidation going on (carboy is also not topped up all the way—it’s like a micro-amphora). The smell is pleasant, a bit raisin-y, but not cooked, maybe a bit like a Valpolicella ripasso. On the palate I am surprised how much acidity the wine still has, and that is still tastes lively. It is still a simple, one dimensional, one-note grenache, but somehow fun to drink—perhaps because I made it myself?

This was a great experiment for me, and now I want to make more wine this fall. I’m thinking about trying out a sparkling wine, and a sweet muscat.

I am going to bottle most of my grenache, and drink it over the summer. I may have some for you to taste (gratis—it is quite illegal for me to sell it to you) at the shop if you stop by later on this month.

Oh, and I am making a vermouth this summer, and am trying to source some of the flavoring botanicals from stuff I find growing in my neighborhood. So far I’ve found: black walnut, wormwood, sage, bitter orange, thyme, oregano, pine needle, wild ginger, fennel pollen (lots!)—I know there’s a lot more out there, too! I will use the remaining grenache as the base wine for my vermouth. I would appreciate any tips about interesting botanicals growing in the Silver Lake area.

Lodi Winery Labs e-mailed my test results. Here they are:

I can stop waiting for malo to complete because it already has (must’ve happened naturally toward the end of primary fermentation–so, this explains why I failed to observe any bubbles in the airlock after I pressed the wine and siphoned it into a glass carboy).

I now know how much sulfur to add: I have 5 mg/L, and want 25-30 mg. For the sake of science, I’ve decided to bottle some of the wine with no added sulfur, and some with a minimum of sulfur. It’ll be cool to see how they turn out, different or not.

VA? Not much. I was worried about acetobacter contamination, as I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants, without any addition of sulfur so far.

pH? A little high, but I’m not freaking out about this. I guess I could add some tartaric acid but I like the wine as it tastes now, so screw that. Total acidity is in the range of microbiological stability (I think the  lower threshold is 6 g/L).

Alcohol? I’m surprised at the test results. I expected something more in the 12.5-13 percent range, but my wine is closer to 14.5 percent. When I measured the unfrermented must with my refractometer, it read 24.9 brix, and I know theoretically that a wine fermented to dryness yields approximately 1/2 the brix reading in alcohol.

So, how does my raw wine taste? I think it tastes delicious, and this makes me happy! No oak, no sulfur (so far), no filtration, no fining, just a little bit of tartaric added because I was a chickenshit. The wine is still cloudy, but not nearly as cloudy as it was when I first pressed it. I’m relieved that I made something palatable, and am gratified that I made something that tastes good. I like that it’s low in tannin and fresh tasting–I wouldn’t guess that it’s high-ish in alcohol. It’ll be fun to see how the wine evolves over the next few months. Next task: bottling the wine.

I thought that there’d be a home test kit for pretty much every aspect of the winemaking process, but I was wrong. SO₂ is something that you cannot test reliably at home, at least for red wine, unless you purchase the requisite lab apparatus (approx. $500). Of course my inner geek wants, no, demands to have this bit of hardware right now, but I figure that $500 pays for a lot of wine tests, so sorry, inner geek, no lab equipment will be coming your way anytime soon. Also, I do plan on making wine in the future and would rather spend this money on a small stainless basket press.

If you have one of these for sale (cheap!) lemme know.

 OK, so how to reliably measure the SO₂ in my wine?

 If you want to use the minimum amount of sulfur in your wine you need an accurate way of measuring sulfur, so without the right equipment, that means overnighting a sample off to a testing lab. Today, I’m sending 250 ml of wine in a clean water bottle, inside a Ziploc bag, to the Lodi Winery Laboratory. I’m getting the “standard panel,” which will tell me among other things how much SO_2, volatile acidity, and malic acid is in my wine. When I have the results, I’ll post them. This data will tell me how much SO₂ to add to the wine before bottling.

I do want to rack the wine off the gross lees as they’re not doing the wine any good right now, but without knowing how much SO₂ is  in the wine I don’t know how much to add, and I am concerned that racking without sulfur will harm the wine by possibly introducing stray yeasts or bacteria. If I could rack asceptically, I could get away without using sulfur, but I don’t know how to do this yet (my mental model: sparge with inert gas and then use a sanitized siphon into a closed, sanitized container).

The wine is slowly falling clear in the carboy.  Malolactic fermentation did  not start spontaneously and rather than wait for it to start or not, I added malolactic bacteria on Friday. I do see some very fine bubbles on the surface of the wine but I’m unsure if they’re from a slow secondary fermentation or something else. I’m worried about the amount of headspace in the carboy—it’s about three inches from the bottom of the neck, exposing a fairly wide surface, and without additional wine to top it off I’m concerned that the wine will become oxidized. One option would be to add some wine that’s close in style to bring the level up; another option would be to siphon off into a smaller carboy; yet another, add sanitized marbles. Right now, I see a good two inches of lees on the bottom of the carboy, and I know that lees contact adds complexing factors to a wine, but I’m tempted to rack and bottle ASAP.

And up from the ground came a bubblin' crude!

Today, using a hydrometer, I measured the specific gravity in each of my two fermenters. They read between 1 and .990 SG. That means that there’s little or no sugar left to ferment. That also means that it’s time to press the must, and thanks to a loan from my friends Sandy and Ralph, there’s a small wine press coming my way today or tomorrow.

I have mixed feeling about extending maceration for my first ever batch of wine. First, I don’t believe the raw material contained a lot of tannin (biting into a berry, I felt a just a bit of furring on my tongue) and one reason wine makers choose to extended maceration is to allow some of the tannins to polymerize into long chain molecules. This affects the organoleptic perception of tannin in a finished wine, as long chain tannins feel softer than short chain tannins (and I also know that grapes picked before phenolic ripeness will only ever have short chain tannins, no matter how long you age them). A second reason to perform extended maceration is that you want a lot of extract in your wine, but (a) I doubt that there’s much more extract left in my must, and (b) I don’t want my wine to be super-extracted anyway. One reason not to perform extended maceration is  that you run the risk of acetobacter contamination (great if you’re making vinegar, not so great if you’re making wine). Some very fine wines are made using long, very long post-fermentation maceration (Occhipinti nero d’avola, for example), but I don’t have confidence that I know how to avoid this, so, again, another reason that it’s time to press.

BTW, what, you may ask, does the wine look and taste like at this point? It’s cloudy, of course, as I haven’t racked it yet. I’d say it’s medium purple-red. In the mouth, it’s dry and medium bodied, not terribly tannic. It tastes a bit like sour cherry juice.

Ambient temp: 80
Must temp: 81
Brix: 6
Smell: vinous, no obvious acetic or otherwise off aromas.
Taste: it’s starting to taste like wine!

I’ve been doing two punchdowns a day and when I stick my (scrubbed and clean) arms into the fermenters, I don’t feel a lot of warmth–I was expecting the must to rise to 90 or so degrees at some point, and  it hasn’t. At first, the fermenting must was a good five degrees warmer than the ambient temp, but now there’s not much difference between the two readings. Meanwhile, Brix continue to fall. I stupidly thought that I could just take a Brix reading with my refractometer and that would tell me how much alcohol was currently in the wine, but it’s not that simple. Once a solution contains alcohol you can’t do a straight reading but need to do a calculation based on two data points: one from a refractometer and the other from a hydrometer. More on that later.

The fermenting must smells clean and sweet, but I’m just not hearing or seeing the intense fermentation I expected. I know something’s going on, as Brix continue to fall, but what’s up with the lack of vigorous fermentation? If Brix were constant, I would have a stuck fermentation, but that’s not happening. I added some yeast food a few days ago and didn’t notice much difference, so I’m loathe to add any more right now.

Ambient temp: 75 degrees
Must temp: 81 degrees
Brix: 16 (I am surprised at how quickly the  sugar is falling)

Here's the must on day 3 of fermentation, just before pigeage

Ambient temp: 75 degrees
Must temp: 79 degrees
Appearance: Foamy, and the cap is about three inches from the top of the fermenters (hope it doesn’t get much closer, else I’ll need to pour some off into another fermenter).
Smell: Smells like yeast.
Question: Should I be measuring brix every day? My hunch is that at the beginning of fermentation it’s not that important, as the wine isn’t going to abruptly ferment to dryness over night.

Here’s a description of Lalvin RC212 yeast from the Lalvin Web site:

The RC 212 is a low-foaming moderate-speed fermenter with an optimum fermentation temperature ranging from 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). A very low producer of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulphur dioxide (SO2), the RC 212 shows good alcohol tolerance from 12% to 14% per volume.

The RC 212 is recommended for red varieties where full extraction is desired. Lighter red varieties also benefit from the improved extraction while color stability is maintained throughout fermentation and aging. Aromas of ripe berry and fruit are emphasized while respecting pepper and spicy notes.

Grenache is a thin skinned variety, not known for producing very dark pigmented wines (the color of a wine is all in the skins), and I like the idea that the yeast decision I made can help extract and retain color in my finished wine. Now that I think about it, Banyuls, one of my favorite types of dark pigmented wines, is actually made from 100 percent grenache (I know, Mr. Pedant, that carignan is also permitted), but the dark pigment in Banyuls is probably a result of fortifying the wine sur grains (though I wonder if old vines plus schist also have something to do with it).

The old vines berries I have are smaller than I expected, probably a function of their age, and their juice is sweet and clean tasting. Every time I taste fresh wine grape juice (er, in this case, fresh frozen), I ask myself: why doesn’t someone start a business selling organic wine grape juices, varietally labelled? Wine grape juice tastes like grape juice, really good grape juice, and it is instructive to taste pinot noir juice and realize that most of  the organoleptic aspects of a wine are a function of the fermentation process. I know Navarro and a couple of other people sell bottled grape juice, and Navarro’s gewurz juice is delicious, but where’s the organic stuff, where’s muscat grape juice, where’s the syrah grape juice?

I spoke with a friend with long experience making wine commercially today, and she pressed me to add some tartaric acid ASAP–if I’m going to  acidify, best to do it during primary fermentation, otherwise, it can make for an awkward wine.

Today, I transferred the now-defrosted grape must into two clean and sanitized primary fermenters. I wasn’t able to find a large (e.g., 30 gallon) fermenter in Los Angeles, so I’m using two 6 gallon fermenters I have for making beer and cider. I hope there’s enough room to accomodate the rising cap in these fermenters (I’ll find out soon enough–a bit of grape juice on my cement floor is hardly going  to keep me up at night, and I can always transfer some of the excess must to another fermenter).

I rehydrated 10 grams Lalvin “Burgovin RC 212″ yeast in 101 degree filtered water for 30 minutes. I’m too much of a chickenshit  to do a wild yeast fermentation; it just doesn’t seem like such a brill idea to go that route for an autodydact’s first wine, especially without having seen the  fresh fruit, not being able to sort the  fruit, & etc. I know from several conversations with Bill Jablon that there’s a lot to learn about natural wine making, a lot to learn about working with wild yeasts—I’ve never even made pain levain! So, no native yeast fermentation for the grenache experiment. I did not add any yeast food at this point; I’m going to wait until fermentation starts.

I believe some native fermentation may have begun in the defrosted pails anyway because the tops of the sealed pails were bulged out a bit and the must measured 74 degrees, which was 4 degrees higher than room temp. Can I say how awesome it is to have a slab-floor garage that stays cool, especially after having lived in apartments for most of my adult life? I measured the temp in our garage last summer one day during a week-long heat wave, and it was only 74 degrees, whereas it was about 100 degrees outside.

The must measures about 25 brix (didn’t do temp correction, so prob. slightly off), in the range of what Brehm says on his Web site for this vintage. I was unable to measure pH as I do not have an acid test kit. Per Brehm, these ‘07 grenache noir grapes have a total acidity of  4 gm/liter, which is on the  low side (Warrick says the ideal range is between 6 and 8 gm/liter). I would like to avoid acidifying the must, but I can always add tartaric acid later on if I need to. So, it looks like I’ll have a wine that’s 12.5 percent or so final alcohol, with an as yet unknown pH. Yay!

I pitched the rehydrated, bubbly yeast, loosely covered the top of the fermenters, and that’s it for today. Note: I did not add any sulfur at this point, following Brehm’s recommendation to do this after primary fermentation is complete.