It begins! Frontenac and Aromella

[Greg Corey]

I spent the morning harvesting at the Thanksgiving Point teaching garden that is run by our local ag University extension. They don't have too many interesting wine grapes but these two are high my list of "I'd like to try that". So, here we go.

Beautiful Aromella clusters. Stunning flavor. They have a nice tartness with a super fruit forward flavor already. We'll see how that translates.



I ended up with about 75 lbs of Frontenac and 50 lbs of Aromella.


This is the first time I have used a crusher/destemmer. I went to the brew shop to rent one and it was the best $20 I've ever spent. I'm surprised by how many little stems make their way in but it shouldn't be too bad. The bulk was spit out the back as expected.



The Frontenac is macerating au natural on the skins and I crushed/pressed the Aromella where it will do it's initial bloom (natural yeast as well) in two carboys and then I'll combine to remove some headspace. The juice is super green!

Aromella 19º pH 3.5 (maybe could have been longer on the vine but I was beholden to the University harvest schedule)
Frontenac 21.5º pH 3.7 (this seems about right if not a little low on sugar but the pH looks good)

I'll do TA measurements after I do some work at my Day Job. This all took a liiiiiiitttttle longer than expected. This is the biggest harvest I've processed in one go.

 

[Greg Corey]

Ok. TA results are in. I did them this morning

Aromella 8.0g/L
Frontenac 7.9 g/L

A little high in Acid for the Frontenac but I'm planning full MLF and most likely light toast oak.

We'll see how it goes! Punch down this morning is already off-gassing quite a bit so fermentation is happily taking old.

 

[Greg Corey]

I racked the Frontenac again yesterday (still some junk in there from pressing) and gave it a taste. MLF is well on its way and the wine tastes surprisingly good! I see the potential. It reminds me a lot of a more red fruit forward Syrah. Really smooth but bright. Exciting stuff.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Your crop ripened better than it does in its home state. I am used to TA of 1%.

Good to see your impressions, I would like to taste the finished to compare climates. To me almost all the reds here have “northern hybrid flavor”, ,, sort of flinty, ,,, and I scratch my head with what I could do to taste more like vinifera.

 

[Greg Corey]

I know the flavor you are talking about - it's not always bad but sometimes it's undrinkable. I did a road trip around Lake Michigan and tried a bunch of wines from different wineries and I had some truly lousy 'norther hybrid' wines that I had to dump. However, Northern Sun Winery in Bark River MI had the most beautiful expressions of Marquette and Lèon Millot. Just perfectly balanced, full of fruit, mild tannins and acidity and delightful to drink.

I'm more than happy to figure out how to ship some wines for some taste tests. Unfortunately it's illegal to ship alcohol into Utah (which really puts a damper on my ability to explore flavors that aren't brought in by the state approved brokers).

 

[Greg Corey]

Your crop ripened better than it does in its home state. I am used to TA of 1%.

Good to see your impressions, I would like to taste the finished to compare climates. To me almost all the reds here have “northern hybrid flavor”, ,, sort of flinty, ,,, and I scratch my head with what I could do to taste more like vinifera.

@Rice_Guy Dredging up an old thread because I remember you posting this. I've been thinking a lot about this both in context of my own tastes as well as the potential to go commercial and how to build a good brand.

I was on my annual Midwest road trip tasting hybrid wines and my impressions are thus:

I went to 4 wineries. All of the white wines were wonderful. Bright, fruity, floral and sometimes tropical. Typical Muscat type flavors for a lot of the white hybrids.

The reds all just tasted off. My own Frontenac and Marquette are delightful fruity drinkable reds with low tannins and high acidity with small if any hybrid character beyond that. I even oaked some of my Frontenac to good success. The Frontenac, Marquette, Foche, Chambourcin etc. I had on this trip all tasted....stepped on. They tasted overworked and over extracted, like ultra concentrated jam or something like that. My conclusion is this: Let vinifera be vinifera, let hybrids be hybrids. I think the horrible flavors I experience are people trying to turn their hybrid wines into a big bold vinifera wines - hence why the whites are all quite nice. Let the grapes shine for what they are, don't dump 8 different enzymes and additives to try and coerce them into something they are not. Anyway, I just thought I'd express that since I sort of had an epiphany recently.

 

[Rice_Guy]

At this point I am guessing that the tannins aren’t right. To test this I ought to have the wine club science committee buy a skins pack and treat some Marquette that is pressed like a white immediately after picking.

I have made a decent big red by juicing mulberry and the loading it up with grape tannin from the bottle. Petite Pearl seems to be an exception to “northern hybrid flavor” it does pretty good at matching vinifera tannic long flavor notes.