Good wine from bad grapes?

[NorCal]

We all know the saying, you can make bad wine from good grapes, but you can’t make good wine from bad grapes. We are going to test this hypothesis.

@4score and @Busabill and I crushed 1600 pounds of Chenin Blanc. We lost a full 1/3 to suspended muck that each of us isolated. We each have taken on the challenge to see who can make the best wine from this muck.

Pressing, settled 24 hours, racked good juice, put discards in these two carboys, let settle another 24 hours, this is what it looks like.

 

[Johnd]

We all know the saying, you can make bad wine from good grapes, but you can’t make good wine from bad grapes. We are going to test this hypothesis.

@4score and @Busabill and I crushed 1600 pounds of Chenin Blanc. We lost a full 1/3 to suspended muck that each of us isolated. We each have taken on the challenge to see who can make the best wine from this muck.

Pressing, settled 24 hours, racked good juice, put discards in these two carboys, let settle another 24 hours, this is what it looks like.

View attachment 56746

Unless the muck is from bad grapes, you’re not really testing the hypothesis, are you?

 

[stickman]

Well I have to say, it will be interesting to see what you can make from vineyard dirt, pulp, and sulfur spray residue. May the best man win.....

 

[balatonwine]

That is really a lot of suspended particles. But, they are still in suspension. Personally, I always run my white wine must from the press through a fine mesh strainer filter (requires repeated cleaning during the press cycle). Doing that and you will find there is much less material there by volume than you see in suspended in those carboys. I see no reason to separately ferment that filtered juice.

 

[NorCal]

Unless the muck is from bad grapes, you’re not really testing the hypothesis, are you?

I gave the grapes a C+, B- grade, but what was really strange is how much juice we lost due to all the muck that stayed suspended. Normally I would take the first racking, let that settle for a day and I would recover 50%. This time it didn’t budge. Everyone was disappointed on how much wine they lost due to the grapes.

 

[4score]

We had enough"sludge" to fill three carboys. We left them to settle. Juice was sulfitedto 50 ppm earlier. The next day came into the winery to find they had errupted! They were going like gangbusters! Dumped them in a brute and added a pinch of Avante.

 

[CDrew]

Interesting. So you're fermenting the sludge anyway to see what happens. Awesome.

Why the Avante? I realize yeast is yeast but it's optimized for red wine, and this is Chennin Blanc if I recall.

Please keep this experiment updated.

 

[4score]

Interesting. So you're fermenting the sludge anyway to see what happens. Awesome.

Why the Avante? I realize yeast is yeast but it's optimized for red wine, and this is Chennin Blanc if I recall.

Please keep this experiment updated.

Yeah, it started out as a project to just see if, through settling, if there may be any usable juice to add to the primary fermenter. Then we saw them chugging away (like crazy) on their own! I wanted something to see if I could keep the wild yeast at bay and the Avante was just the weapon. I wasn't planning on fermenting separately, just settling. Plus, there's a pretty good chance the the "wild" yeast in my winery is what started this - and that may very well have been Avante since I've been using it a lot lately. My primary container is using Rhone 4600 and this is a very good match for Chenin Blanc. I have a side project of Chenin going that I started with Prelude as well. On this one, it was a slow start, but Prelude has now cranked about 7 or 8 Brix through the Chenin.

But, back to the sludge. Again, it was supposed to be non-fermented juice, but since it started on its own, we figured adding a little Avante to clean it up and bring it home. Avante is a red-wine yeast, but it should still work fine. It's aggressive yeast and that's what I needed for the war! Plus, @NorCal plunged us into yet another competition, so we have to make ours "different"!

 

[NorCal]

I've got to believe the muck will be done fermenting this weekend and right now it has changed from mucky juice to mucky wine.

I'm not sure I see any signs of it settling and I've already tossed some fining agents in there. I'd hate to waste a filter, knowing it would probably be immediately clogged up. What to do.

 

[stickman]

Lallzyme C Max is just what you need for fast settling and clarification of white juice before fermentation. At this point you probably have to treat like a red wine, just let it ferment and rack accordingly.

 

[NorCal]

I threw in the towel. The mucky grapes made mucky wine. Too many other things to do with the Chenin Blanc and the Cab Franc going dry at the same time the next few days to fool with this.

Not sure if my winemaker buddies are going to do the same, but I let them know that I dumped mine and apologized to my fermenting container.

 

[buzi]

Sounds like the sludge is just getting resuspended from the fermentation co2. I would let it ride for a day or two after ferm is complete. No matter how it tastes...you win since @Johnd threw in the towel!