1991 OnwardsPart 1 - 1961 to 1988
I started tasting wines at the age 12 Winzertanz, Lenz Moser and Paarl Roodeberg all decent.
I started winemaking at the age of 18 from a book I found in Toronto.
I made wine from concentrated grape juice e.g. Hidalgo from Wine Art.
These wines were consistently mediocre or even poor.
A huge mistake that I made was using PVC carboys with air spaces.
This is me as a winemaker in 1967. i.e. a total dummie.
Good news was I got to taste very good Algerian wines in gallons that I bottle for my father plus really good South African Paarl wines such as Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Pinotage, Cinsault and my favourite in the reds Paarl Roodeberg.
I also tasted my father's Mommessin Export (decent French Red).
The best wines that I tasted were the Paarl Chenin Blanc and Paarl Roodeberg.
1975
I drove a 10 speed bicycle with a friend to New Orleans from Toronto in fall 1975 after finishing a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering after a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1971.
My friend developed mono-nucleoisis in Nashville so I spent all my time when he was sleeping in the Nashville library looking at weather maps for Canada because I decided that I wanted to grow wine grapes in Canada after reading Philip Wagner's book Knowing and Making Wine
On a coin toss i.e. Ottawa River Valley vs Cloverdale BC, BC won and 2years later I had a job and owned a 2 acre property south of Cloverdale, BC
I planted 40 vines in 5 rows of 8 vines which I propagated and added to as a voluntary apprentice of John Harper a legend in British Columbia growing and vine propagation - He had a 6 acre vineyard with a gazillion varieties and grafted them on a variety of rootstocks. He was a gift to me and got me access to certified virus free plant cuttings (My vineyard today is 100% certified virus free - this is a big deal and a gift)
Muller Thurgau
Leon Millot
Cascade (Seibel 13053 hybrid)
Siegerrebe
Ortega
Madeleine Angevine
Madeleine Sylvaner
Muller Thurgau was tasty and fragrant but mildew sensitive. Leon Millot was tasty but jungle like (too vigorous with lots of small clusters and really tiny berries, Cascade had a flavour that I didn't like. Otherwise it was ok. Ortega was excellent in flavour but could suffer from botrytis. Madeleine Angevine was always good. Madeleine Sylvaner was tasty but soft berries that could split in a arainy harvest.
I ended up with 200 vines in my vineyard on a slightly south-facing slope at about 1700 Fahrenheit heat units and grew a gazillion varieties until 1988 when I moved to a smaller 1 acre property at the age of 39 with propagated cuttings from my 1st property.
Fast forward to 1988
I now had ~132 vines
Agria
Schoenburger
Madeleine Sylvaner
Reichensteiner
Dornfelder
Zweigeltrebe
Optima
Ortega
Siegerrebe
Wurzer
I ripped out Agria (beet flavour other wise ok red), Optima ( too dense wrt botrytis of powdery mildew otherwise very good flavour), Schoenburger ( good flavour but too late). Madeleine Sylvaner (too soft and attractive to wasps or splitting in rain, otherwise very tasty and prolific, Dornfelder - huge clusters, very healthy but not intense enough for me with low SG. Berries are too large to create intense wines. Zweigeltrebe - big crop, very tasty and healthy but hard to control on crop to get high quality. Wurzer, a Muller Thurgau/Gewurtztraminer cross is delicious when ripe but too packed in its clusters to avoid mildew or botritis.
I made better wines during this period but not consistently. Some of them were really good but it wasn't until 1991 that I started to really understand winemaking. When I have the time and energy to talk about that I will..
Good luck to all of you.
Klaus
I joined a local winemaking club in 1991 that had some really good fruit winemakers. They made some beautiful wines from skinned and pitted yellow plums, blueberries, blackberries. Around 1996 I got the best winemaking book I've ever read "Knowing and Making Wine" be Emile Peynaud and learned how to properly ferment and clear white wines so they wouldn't be petillant in the bottle. I bought high end grapes in boxes e.g. Martinelli Pinot Noir and some very good Petite Syrah. In 2009 I started getting high quality fresh grapes from Washington including Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. I stopped using EC 1118 on red table wines and switched to Pasteur Red or RC212 which gave me better malolactic fermentations. I made fig-raisin-plum sherry from my own pitted Italian prune plums which I baked in my attic over the summer. These we really tasty and used EC 1118 plus nutrient and medium toast American oak cubes. I've tasted 12 year old versions of these which were still in really good condition. The best white wine grapes I ever got were Sangiacomo Carnernos Chardonnay as juice (absolutely stunning juice and wine and probably my all time favourite white. I blended my own reds with the California red to improve their acidity. We made some delicious Grenache with a bit of Mourvdre and Syrah plus a spectacular Washington Malbec. All of our reds are hand-destemmed and uncrushed with no second runs. We make second runs from first run white juice sediment plus press skins soaked in pectic enzyme with a bit of sulphite with no extra sugar or water either alone or blended with homegrown russet/king and cox apple windfalls ground and pressed with sugar or unpasteurized honey e.g. cranberry, raspberry, blueberry. I like pyments, cysers and melomels and make them all. I have a walk-in foam insulated walk-in cooler that can hold about 340 bottles plus 30 carboys of wine. This year I'll make raspberry Chambord table wine, Tripleberry Chambord Port (raspberries, blackberries and elderberries), Siegerrebe, Reichensteiner, Ortega, Madeleine Angevine white grape wine, Marechal Foch and Regent red wine plus, blackberry, wild cherry red table wine, apple wine or cyser. I make about 300 bottles a year. I have about 130 wine grape vines planted with single guyot training 7 feet between rows and 4 ft between plants except Foch at 6 ft between plants. I allow 12-14 shoots per plant (some are 35 years old) and a mximum of 2 clusters per shoot in warm early blossoming and 1 cluster per shoot except Siegerrebe in a normal blossoming year. Foch is finishing flowering now, Regent is in full bloom and Ortega has just started. I spray vines with sulphur and potassium bicarbonate to control powdery mildew and use wasp pheromones to capture yellow jackets plus jam jars to catch all types of wasps e.g. black and white ones. I net to keep out birds and stop spraying at veraison. I make all of my fruit wines from frozen fruit or ground and pressed apples. I have even used Anjou pears which can make beautiful table wines. I don't use herbicides, mulch with grass clipping under my vineyard rows and rototill (early season) and hoe (late season) to kill weeds. I spray a bacteria (bacillus thurgiensis) into my apple trees and cherries to kill moth larva e.g. white maggots in cherries and apple maggots. I use a biodegradable fatty acid soap/pyrethrin spray to control leave hoppers that chew grape vine buds when they are at the "pussy willow" stage. I spray my fruit trees, raspberries and grape vines in later winter/very early spring with lime sulphur and dormant oil to kill mildew/botritis spores and insect eggs.
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