New winemaker seeking advice about making wine with Noirette, Marquette & Cayuga White Juice.

[maureengo2]

Hi Folks,
I own a small certified organic farm in Maine. I raise fruit & flowers. I've made ciders but not wine. I have planted 2 small vineyards and today just put the juice from Noiret grapes into carboys with yeast, etc. I'm going to ferment Marquette next week and Cayuga White the week after. Any advice from those of you who have worked with the juice of these 3 grapes would be much appreciated!

I have tasted homemade wine made by other folks who added sugar as a simple syrup after fermentation and I don't like it. The flavor layers don't taste integrated to me. How do you handle increasing the sugar of your wines slightly?
Thank you in advance,
Maureen

 

[BigDaveK]

Welcome to WMT!

Perhaps the wine made "by other folks" was sweetened to their palate. Everyone is different. That's one of the advantages of making your own - it can be as dry or sweet as you like. And you can play with other sugars for more interesting flavor like brown, palm, and coconut. And there are other means and other sweeteners out there.

I agree, though, that there's a point where the sugar is a detriment. Ideally everything is in balance...and delicious!

 

[VinesnBines]

I have Cayuga grapes and Marquette. My Marquette are still in the freezer due to an injury this summer. I just fermented the Cayuga with D-47 yeast and yeast nutrients. It came out clean and crisp. Actually due to my injury I fermented 1/2 the batch on the skins (I was too fatigued to press the day we crushed) and blended both batches.
I think you will do fine with standard practices.

 

[TechAdmin]

Welcome to WMT, Maureen.

Glad to have a new member before the year ends. Enjoy the forum and Happy New Year!

 

[Rice_Guy]

Welcome to WMT
You didn’t mention tools as hydrometer or pH. It is easier to talk how sweet with a total acidity number, ,,, TA on a beverage makes a linear function versus gravity, ie more acid takes more sweetening. As a contest judge we have acid blend that we can sprinkle in a glass to see if it improves.

 

[sour_grapes]

Welcome to WMT!

 

[ChuckD]

Welcome to WMT.

I have my first ever Marquette in secondary now. It was fermented
On the skins and still tastes a little “thin”. I’m going to add oak and let
It age another 6 months. I will probably back sweeten a tiny bit as we like off-dry reds.

After primary fermentation is done you are going to want to reduce that head space to an inch or so to prevent oxidation.

 

[GSMChris]

Welcome to WMT!

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I have tasted homemade wine made by other folks who added sugar as a simple syrup after fermentation and I don't like it. The flavor layers don't taste integrated to me. How do you handle increasing the sugar of your wines slightly?

Welcome!

For adding slight sweetness to your wines, you could start by doing a sugar addition bench test. Set up several samples with varying amounts of sugar, leave to integrate for a day or two (refrigerated if appropriate) and then taste them. Ideally, do the taste test double blind, ie neither the person making up the samples nor the person(s) tasting know which is which. The results are not always intuitive: you may, for example, prefer one of the low sugar samples and one of the higher ones, but not the one in the middle. The exact range of sugar to add will depend, as @Rice_Guy notes, on the acidity of the base wine and your target profile.

 

[wood1954]

Your Marquette will probably not have much tannin and a lot of acid. If you don’t correct the acid then back sweetening is a good idea, think of lemonade with out sugar.

 

[maureengo2]

I have Cayuga grapes and Marquette. My Marquette are still in the freezer due to an injury this summer. I just fermented the Cayuga with D-47 yeast and yeast nutrients. It came out clean and crisp. Actually due to my injury I fermented 1/2 the batch on the skins (I was too fatigued to press the day we crushed) and blended both batches.
I think you will do fine with standard practices.

I'm so sorry for your injury. I wish you a speedy recovery and health for 2023. How long did you ferment the Cayuga White before racking it? And at what temp? I'm going to start my Cayuga White juice this week. Many thanks in advance!

 

[maureengo2]

Welcome to WMT, Maureen.

Glad to have a new member before the year ends. Enjoy the forum and Happy New Year!

Thank you!

 

[maureengo2]

Welcome to WMT
You didn’t mention tools as hydrometer or pH. It is easier to talk how sweet with a total acidity number, ,,, TA on a beverage makes a linear function versus gravity, ie more acid takes more sweetening. As a contest judge we have acid blend that we can sprinkle in a glass to see if it improves.

I do have and did use a hydrometer on my Noiret before I began fermentation. I didn't test that on the homemade wines I tasted. Which ph meter do you recommend?

 

[maureengo2]

Welcome to WMT.

I have my first ever Marquette in secondary now. It was fermented
On the skins and still tastes a little “thin”. I’m going to add oak and let
It age another 6 months. I will probably back sweeten a tiny bit as we like off-dry reds.

After primary fermentation is done you are going to want to reduce that head space to an inch or so to prevent oxidation.

This is very specific and helpful. Thank you. I made six 1-gallon bottles out of my 5 gallons of Noiret juice. I added differing amounts of oak chips to each bottle because, after all, we must experiment. I marked each bottle and noted the hydrometer readings in a notebook.Your comment about reducing the headspace was a question that I had.

I plan to do the same thing for the Marquette. Have you added anything else to Marquette juice besides oak chips that you thought was helpful - such as juniper berries, rose hips, etc? (Sorry if these sound like crazy things to add but I've been watching Moonshiners. I know, I know, not the same thing.)

 

[maureengo2]

Your Marquette will probably not have much tannin and a lot of acid. If you don’t correct the acid then back sweetening is a good idea, think of lemonade with out sugar.

I just don't want to sweeten it in the way that I've tasted in the homemade ferments. Wasn't skillfully done.

 

[maureengo2]

Welcome to WMT!

Perhaps the wine made "by other folks" was sweetened to their palate. Everyone is different. That's one of the advantages of making your own - it can be as dry or sweet as you like. And you can play with other sugars for more interesting flavor like brown, palm, and coconut. And there are other means and other sweeteners out there.

I agree, though, that there's a point where the sugar is a detriment. Ideally everything is in balance...and delicious!

Does anyone ever add corn to sweeten wine during ferment? Very pretty white cat, btw. I had one once upon a time. A sweetheart he was.

 

[ChuckD]

Have you added anything else to Marquette juice besides oak chips that you thought was helpful

Mine is still undergoing malolactic fermentation. When it’s done I’ll cold stabilize it then add an oak spiral during bulk aging. I also have carboys of petite Pearl and Verona at the same stage. I will likely do some blending when I bottle.

I cold stabilizees and added oak to a very sharp wild grape from last year. That, and time, improved it greatly.

 

[VinesnBines]

I'm so sorry for your injury. I wish you a speedy recovery and health for 2023. How long did you ferment the Cayuga White before racking it? And at what temp? I'm going to start my Cayuga White juice this week. Many thanks in advance!

Thanks for the kind words. I had a severely broken leg in mid August but I’m healing and walking almost normally. Picking grapes on a walking frame is challenging but crushing and pressing on a walking frame is tougher.

I fermented my juice Cayuga under airlock for two weeks at room temperature then blended with the skin fermented batch. The first racking off the gross lees was on October 15 and I racked it again on December 7. I won’t rack it again until I bottle in another month or two.

 

[BigDaveK]

Does anyone ever add corn to sweeten wine during ferment? Very pretty white cat, btw. I had one once upon a time. A sweetheart he was.

Do you mean actual corn or corn syrup?
Haven't used corn syrup. As with everything else, got to watch those ingredients and preservatives. Of course, white and brown sugar are much cheaper.
With actual corn there may be an issue with starch. Adding a bit of amylaze enzyme should take care of that.
I currently have a corn cob wine in secondary that surprised me with it's flavor. Yes, corn cobs and, no, no corn flavor.

I have a weakness for cats. Currently have 3 black ones, only one has a white spot on the throat. It's a challenge to find them sometimes that's for sure.

 

[montanarick]

You'll want to add sorbate if you're going to back sweeten with any form of sugar so as not to cause refermentation in the bottles. since sorbate and MLB don't get along well together with a resulting geraniol odor, you will need to also add lysozyme to kill the MLB before adding sorbate. good luck