Murphy’s Wine

[dking193]

Murphy’s wine after Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong will go wrong).

The plan: My Vineyard is young and I will not get grapes next year but the year after should be somewhat productive. I went ahead and picked up a couple of 100L variable capacity tanks and decided to practice this year and next with large batches (26gal) of wine so that when my grapes come in I don't make mistakes and waste 3 years of hard work putting in the vineyard.

Plan A: Pick 400- 500lbs of Norton grapes at a local vineyard. Norton is not what I’m growing, but it was close by, 10miles away. Met the owners and walked the vineyard weeks ago. Made a deal on the grapes and waited for brix to get to 24. Well it never got over 21, we did have a lot of rain and when the day came to pick, I was disappointed in the quality of the grapes. Almost every bunch had 10-15% of the grapes that were dried out (not raisins) or starting to rot/ferment and I assumed I needed to pick the bad ones out of the bunches. First time to ever pick grapes so I didn't know how bad the grapes can be and still make wine, but the dried ones had bugs, flies, spiders, you name it living in there. I know insects are normal, but we did have some excessive critters. Needless to say this really added a lot of time to picking, and cleaning. I eventually gave up after only 60lbs of grapes were picked as I had shot about 4 hours picking out the bad grapes.

Question 1: Is it okay to pick, crush and ferment with all the bad grapes in there or should I have picked out the rotten ones like I did?

Question 2: If #1 is yes, then I assume you just double the Potassium Metabisulphite to kill all the critters and compensate for bad grapes?

Plan B: It was starting to get late in the harvest day, so I decided to pick Black Beauty and Nobel Muscadines in the afternoon, as I’ve made wine from these as well and have some of those vines growing. Picked about 40lbs of those.

I got back home and pulled out my crusher and just decided to crush all together. So 60lbs of Norton grapes, and 40lbs of Muscadine mixed together and put in primary. I felt I would not have enough juice, I wanted 7 gal minimal for toping off with, so I decided to also add 1 gal of welches grape juice I had on hand. Maybe I should call this Potpourri Wine? Brix was around 17 after all of this and got it up to 22-23 with sugar, TA was good, PH good and kicked off fermentation the next day.

Great fermentation kicked off, punched down and tasted each day. At the end of three days, last night, I tasted and knew it was time to get off skins and seeds. Starting to get some stringency. Of course Murphy was still at play. I hadn’t planned to rack and press in three days so I got started late. Ended at 2:30am after clean up with a 6 gal and 1 gal carboys. NOTE: When moving skins and juice around put down plastic. That's a story all by its self!

I was pleased with the taste and who knows this might turn out okay but big divergence from original plans and quantities. Any help on questions above so I know next year. Anyone else got a murphy story? I'll post on how it turns out.

 

[Cher]

Nice name for a wine

Sorry to hear the Norton grapes didn't live up to expectations. We got a bunch of Norton/Cynthiana grapes (pic below) 2 weeks ago from up in Manchester, TN and they were just perfect. Brix was 26 and pH/TA was as good as could be expected with Cynthiana. They went into carboys a couple of days ago and got their mlf culture this morning.


As far as which grapes to throw out and which to keep, I have always tried to toss out the bad looking or damaged ones. However, we got 100 pounds of Traminette last year and they were in rough shape -- quite a bit of bird and bug damage and it rained on picking day. Also very hot that day. By the time we got them home they smelled pretty bad and looked worse. Honestly, we contemplated just tossing the whole batch but in the end we crushed them all --they couldn't wait a minute longer -- and dumped in the kmeta dose for "fruit not in good condition." As soon as the fermentation got going the objectionable odor vanished, replaced by the lovely Traminette aroma. We bottled that wine last month and it is excellent. Clear as a bell and smells/tastes great. I still destem by hand and toss out all the obvious bugs, leaves and bird droppings, but most of the grapes go to the crusher now, even if they look rough or dried up.

Those muscadines look good. Should make a nice "Potpourri."

Cher

 

[dking193]

Thanks Cher. Those are some nice looking grapes. How long did you keep on skins before racking and pressing?

 

[Cher]

We crushed them late in the day on 9/13 and pressed on 9/24. SG at that point was 1.00. We would have pressed a couple of days earlier but life was in the way and the grapes just had to wait their turn.

I understand that some winemakers prefer to limit skin contact to a few days or even a few hours with Cynthiana grapes. We decided not to go that route, at least not this year. So far the flavor is good, except very tart, and color is lovely. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out after mlf and a little more time.