Mutliple use, barrel for port and wine

[Univox360]

I have about 60L of zinfandel wine. I want to oak the base wine and make about 20L of port. My plan is to oak 20L of wine. Age the 20L until I like the taste by mixing 50/50 with unoaked. Then to combine the 20L oaked wine with another 20Lunoaked to achieve what my tasting panel was set to (40L total final volume of oak to taste).

Next I plan to put the remaining 20L or so (less actually cause of brandy volume) into the Oak and age for awhile to make a vintage port.

I could imagine I only need a few months at most oaking in such a small barrel for the wine. Longer for the port obviously.

I'm not experienced with oaking in any way. Is this a good plan? What am I not thinking of.

Thanks!

 

[CDrew]

My advice is to go very light with the oak with zinfandel. If you use the calculators on the stavin site, aim for maybe 20% of new oak, or even less. A more robust wine can take more oak, but be careful with the zin. I'd keep things simple and oak it all at once, assuming you want oak in the base wine. Then carve out your 20L of oaked zinfandel and make your port.

I made a port this year that is quite good out of 5 gallons of left over Syrah. You can use fermcalc to tell you how much everclear to add to get alcohol content to 19% or so, and add sugar syrup at 80-100 grams per liter of total volume. This will make a highly acceptable "port".

Good luck, my "port" turned out better than I thought it would be. I'll bet you'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Univox360]

Thanks CDrew. Sorry, I forgot to mention I have a 20L barrel I want to oak with. Thus breaking things up as I did.

 

[winemaker81]

Sorry, I forgot to mention I have a 20L barrel I want to oak with. Thus breaking things up as I did.

How new is the barrel?

@CDrew's advice is spot on. If the barrel is under 3 years old, go carefully on the time in barrel, as especially in the first year, a lot is leached into the wine. Oaking the wine intended for port longer may not be a good idea, as oak can easily become the overriding flavor.

 

[Univox360]

How new is the barrel?

@CDrew's advice is spot on. If the barrel is under 3 years old, go carefully on the time in barrel, as especially in the first year, a lot is leached into the wine. Oaking the wine intended for port longer may not be a good idea, as oak can easily become the overriding flavor.

The barrel is brand new. So I am going to have to be very careful with how much oak. I do not intend to oak the port longer, per se, other than it will be the second wine that the barrel sees since i cannot fit all the wine in at once. Should I buy a bigger barrel instead?

I don’t have a feel for length scale though. My impression is that I should stir and taste every 2 weeks or so and it should spend maybe 1-3 months in the barrel.

Should I oak before I fortify? I was thinking to fortify in the barrel.

 

[winemaker81]

My suggestion is to ignore "port" for the near future. Focus on not over oaking the wine. You can age the wine, as-is, a long as you desire before finalizing it.

The wine in your new barrel may only last 4 to 8 weeks before needing to cycle out. Each succeeding batch will last longer as the barrel is depleted. You may consider buying a Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot kit to put in the barrel initially.

If you over oak a wine, save it for blending into future wines.

Here are my notes on a port I recently made.

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/2021-port/

 

[CDrew]

My suggestion is to ignore "port" for the near future. Focus on not over oaking the wine. You can age the wine, as-is, a long as you desire before finalizing it.

The wine in your new barrel may only last 4 to 8 weeks before needing to cycle out. Each succeeding batch will last longer as the barrel is depleted. You may consider buying a Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot kit to put in the barrel initially.

If you over oak a wine, save it for blending into future wines.

Here are my notes on a port I recently made.

https://wine.bkfazekas.com/2021-port/

Interesting Port method. I went strictly by grams of sugar per liter. Most Port has sugar around 100gm/liter, so the calculations are easy. Same with the spirit. On fermcalc, if you go to "fortification" and plug in the numbers, it spits out an immediate answer.

I think in the future I'll reduce the sweetness just a bit-to maybe 80gm/L and see how I like that. My wife is very fond of the port experiment and I may have to hide it! It was just over 2 cases and there's just a case and a half left!

 

[winemaker81]

@CDrew, I always backsweeten to taste, as each wine is different. I'm not comfortable with the idea of adding a preset amount of sugar. However, if it's working for you, good.

I've got an experiment for you -- next time you make a port, make a gallon with 80 g/l, a gallon with 100 g/l, and a third one by taste. Then a month later blind taste them.

Although it seems reasonable that the one by taste would be your favorite, it's possible it won't be after melding.