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So, if you want to make wine, you need grapes. Duh. For a few years, we relied on people who knew farmers, and we were able to "cultivate" some relationships, and harvest some real vineyard grapes after the harvest was completed. But, like finding places to hunt, I prefer to do it without knocking on doors and making arrangements. So..........in the spring of 2009, we planted our own! Over the years we have had varying degrees of success, but this year, like every one before it, I am tempted to remove them (10 left - 3 syrah & 7 cabernet sauvignon), as I spend a lot of time pruning and maintaining them, and the harvests are usually very disappointing due to a variety of maladies. This year, all the syrah's were a waste, as were the garden cabs. We did manage to get about 20 pounds of "Toad Slope" cabernets harvested from the side of our house.
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Luckily, Lee, and Barb that we met from our church have a five acre vineyard nearby. They have been growing and selling commercial grapes for the last several years, and they generously let us harvest some of their crop after their grow and sell season. The grapes have been hanging for quite awhile by now (October), but we aint complaining. So as you can see, with the help of my trusty farmworker, we made off with about 100 pounds of merlot grapes this year (2019). I added our "estate" grown cabs with Lee and Barb's merlots. Why not?
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I used to rent a crusher-destemmer. It was way better, and more efficient than the $25 ancient one that I purchased from a former co-worker's neighbor awhile back. But it was about $45 to rent, and I had to go get it. The primitave one does the job more or less, crushing the grapes, and to a large degree removing the stems. The latter of which I pick out and discard along with any earwigs and little yellow spiders which inhabit the sweet berries (don't worry, I let them go). It is somewhat of a laborious process, as the hopper only holds one bucket of grapes, and the stems are sometimes buggers to find. I get most of them out of the "must".
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The next step is to take a hydrometer reading, and measurer the ph. This year's wine is high in alcohol, and low in acid (flabby). I am not confident in the science of acid adjusting, so, hopefully I can get better at it if I keep good notes as to my successes or failures. One thing that I do do everytime is after the grapes are in the fermenter, add some potassium metabisulfate to kill any latent yeast before I add the predicitable store bought stuff a day later. I also added two tablespoons of acid blend. This year's must was hard to stir, as the grapes were on the dehydrated side. A couple of times a day for a couple of weeks, I "punch down the cap", which is done with my big stainless steel spoon. This step keeps the skins and seeds that are pushed to the top with the expulsion of carbon dioxide from getting moldy, and also helps the mass fermentation of the batch. Not shown is the plastic lid that covers the fermenter.
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Now to press the wine. It is wine now, as the fermentation process is mostly complete. As with the crusher-destemmer, I used to rent a large press, but I bought this littly jobby from the same fellow as before. The press was still $200, but barely used, and to rent one was $40, so by now I am making money! Sure. Another fairly laborious process, but it is kind of fun using simple machines. The "cake" produced by the pressing is always difficult to discard without leaving a mess on the garage floor. This year was no exception. The garden hose and sprayer nozzle are used to combat the messes involved with this process.
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Wine press in action!
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After letting it settle overnight so some of the solids could settle out, I "racked" it into a 6.5 and 3 gallon carboys and added 2 ounces total of French oak chips that I boiled and drained. Who needs oak barrels? I put airlocks filled with sanitizer in each bottle, and moved them to the back of the garage, and covered with old long sleeve shirts. You want to fill your carboys up pretty full, as with the whole process you want to keep oxygen away from the wine. I think that somewhere in my process that this happens, as my wine tends to have that "pruney" flavor defect. It might be the corks, too. I added a second round of potassium metabisulfate this year as well. Perhaps this will help to prevent oxidation. Letting the wine bulk age in the garage over the winter helps by adding a "cold stabilization" which precipitates out solids including crystalized tartaric acid.
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In September, I finally got around to bottling the 2018 harvest. This was some home grown cabernets, as well as some merlot that we got from Lee and Barb. As I sometime do, I steralize the bottles a day or so before I bottle, as it helps meter out the labor. I make sure to dump any remaining sanitizer out of the bottles before I fill them with the bottliing wand. This device hooks up to the auto siphon hose, and has a valve in it that when depressed, it releases the flow of wine into the bottle. Remove the wand when the bottle is exactly full, and this leaves about a 1 3/4" head space for the cork.
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Speaking of corks, here is the wine corker in action! I soak my corks in sanitizer solution before bottling. So, now after bottling we wait. A few bottles were consumed early, and as usual they were pretty good, but not great. The rest of the bottles went under the house to cellar for awhile. That is pretty much the process in a nutshell for an amateur winemaker. Maybe someday, and with some help, I can finally "crack the code" to making excellent wine.
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