Dornfelder Harvest 2018

[JimInNJ]

Harvested the Dornfelder on September 22nd, four vines, one in each corner of my little vineyard:


My "Italian" Destemmer in action:


After Destemming:
Crushing:


Ready to Ferment:


...One week later...

Pressing 1:


Pressing 2:


After Pressing, before Racking off Gross Lees:

 

[Masbustelo]

Congratulations!

 

[GreenEnvy22]

Nice, dornfelder is pretty rare in N.A. I've made a couple batches of it. Our cousins are commercial growers and keep a couple rows of dornfelder for their mom.

 

[JimInNJ]

My mother is also a Dornfelder fan, either as a semisweet wine or as a table grape. We've never had a dry Dornfelder to try, but we will in a few months.

 

[ceeaton]

My mother is also a Dornfelder fan, either as a semisweet wine or as a table grape. We've never had a dry Dornfelder to try, but we will in a few months.

Let a few bottles of that dry one age a bit. I have a dry batch I made from local grapes (Southern PA) and it's improving with age. It's about to turn 37 months old, I think I need to open a bottle (and I owe a bottle to @bkisel, who I will attempt to see next weekend if he's around). Used BDX yeast and CH35 MLB. I still have 16 bottles left from the batch, glad I've saved that many. I'd like to take a few bottles up over 5 yrs old if I can, the aging potential is definitely there in my opinion.

 

[GreenEnvy22]

I think I still have 30+ bottles from 2016. It certainly has improved with age quite a lot.