blending

[Alex Tretter]

What is a a good wine to blend with alicante

 

[Mac60]

I blend Alicante with Zinfandel & Cabernet also Sangiovese

 

[Bubba1]

My father blended Alicante with zinfandel and muscat in the past I grew up with that in my house.

 

[Rocky]

My father blended Alicante with zinfandel and muscat in the past I grew up with that in my house.

Bubba, sounds like our families used the same recipe! We made a blend of Zinfandel (or Alicante, depending on the grapes when they came in) and Muscat in a 3:1 ratio. The grapes were crushed and mixed in the fermenting barrels (sort of a "field blend"). We would normally use Zinfandel but in the rare years where the California Zinfandel was sub-par, my grandfather would choose Alicante. It made a great table wine. All of my ancestors were from the Campania region of Italy and a small village near Caserta. I am guessing that is where the recipe started but with some grape other than Zinfandel, which is largely an American variety from Eastern Europe.

 

[Bubba1]

Bubba, sounds like our families used the same recipe! We made a blend of Zinfandel (or Alicante, depending on the grapes when they came in) and Muscat in a 3:1 ratio. The grapes were crushed and mixed in the fermenting barrels (sort of a "field blend"). We would normally use Zinfandel but in the rare years where the California Zinfandel was sub-par, my grandfather would choose Alicante. It made a great table wine. All of my ancestors were from the Campania region of Italy and a small village near Caserta. I am guessing that is where the recipe started but with some grape other than Zinfandel, which is largely an American variety from Eastern Europe.

My father was from Margiliano Caserta and he would crush then ferment in one barrel he called it the working barrel after ferment press then in a separate barrel that had a spicket on the bottom that he would fill gallon jugs with when he said the wine was done. My brother and I would have to run down the basement to fill it for him.

 

[Rocky]

My father was from Margiliano Caserta and he would crush then ferment in one barrel he called it the working barrel after ferment press then in a separate barrel that had a spicket on the bottom that he would fill gallon jugs with when he said the wine was done. My brother and I would have to run down the basement to fill it for him.

That is just the way we did it, Bubba. We had working barrels with open tops and a hole in one of the staves near the bottom. There was a rounded peg pounded into the hole to plug it while filling. We placed the crusher on top of the working barrels and crushed the grapes (red and white) into the barrel. The kids (my cousins, brothers and I) would strip the grapes from the bunches into buckets and pull out extraneous material like leaves. An adult would take the bucket and dump it into the crusher. The fermentation would start in a day or so and it was my job to break up the cap a few times a day (we used an old piece of 2 x 4 for this). After about 10-14 days it would be time to move the wine into the finishing barrels (lying on their sides, with spigots and bung hole up). My next job was to watch the finishing barrels and keep the level of the wine to halfway up the bung hole and to clean off seeds and skins that bubbled up out of the barrel. This all took place in the first two weeks of October. By early December, the wine would be ready to seal with the bung. It would be drinkable around Easter.

We used gallon jugs to "bottle" the wine, sealed with a cork, wax, tape and just about anything else we could find to keep air out. We buried the gallon jugs in sand in an inside corner of the basement and pull the wine from there for drinking.

Great memories. We made about 200-250 gallons including first and second wine (4 or 5 53-gallon barrels) per year. First wine was for the family and good friends. Second wine for cooking, vinegar and everyone else.

 

[Bubba1]

Rocky we did it the same way old school no yeast we made usually 3 53 gal barrels a year I think they were old whiskey barrels he didn't separate first run and press just mixed all together. We used it for everything from drinking to cooking soaking fruit in it he even dunked his cigar in it. Good memories thanks.