Pinot Rose' Pyment

[byathread]

Pink wine!!
Certainly more like a white in flavor and structure but with a pretty pinkish color from being made with red grapes. Though you can typically make a full on white wine from red grapes by giving it no skin contact time (blanc de noirs), though as I understand it, this is best if picked in a cool vintage or slightly earlier than the same grapes when used for a red.

 

[seth8530]

So, I decided I would bring this over here from my other thread. All in all it looks like this will turn out quite good in the end. It is just a matter of figuring out where I want to take it. I currently see two different paths to take. It appears I can either reduce the acid to balance the wine out or perhaps I could add a little bit of honey back to it to cover the acid. I am leaning more towards reducing the acid since I do not really want to have in my mind what I would call a candy like wine.

Even though it is off balance right now I still have a lot of hope for it. It seems to me the difference between making good wine and great wine is mostly in the fine tuning you do at the end.



Aroma
Smokey
Not Very Floral
Clear honey scent but not really a floral one. Think sort of a fresh hot honey smell. This is not an extremely strong scent but it is there.
Unsweet perfume ( GF says it reminds her of odile)

Taste
Fruity
Tanic
Slightly too acidic for the flavour profile that I am after but I will give it more time before I go messing around with it. Possible solutions include the addition of a base or possibly making the rose slightly sweet.
Candy Like. Most likely a result of the acid being out of place combined with the honey flavours and fruity stuff from the grape skins.

 

[SouthernChemist]

That's a very nice color! Have you measured the TA/pH of the pyment?

 

[seth8530]

Thanks! I happen to agree, earlier it was more of a fushia, but I think this is the colour it is going to stick to for now lol. I do not have one written down, but I plan on re testing it this fall with an SC 300... It will cost a pretty penny, but I think in the long run it will save me some money on test kits and reagents. Plus one tool that can do PH,TA,So2 and even MLF progress ( with an add on) seems pretty wicked to me.

https://vinmetrica.com/product/vinmetricas-sc-300-sulfite-and-phta-wine-analyzer/

 

[SouthernChemist]

It would be nice to have one of those. Perhaps one day!

 

[seth8530]

Just got done testing PH and TA on the Rose. Over all, I think it is pretty close to where I want it. One thing I noticed was that on the nose it has a kind of inviting smokey, fruity floral aroma. The taste, has potential, it is currently acid forward so I feel like instead of balancing by reducing the acid I will add some honey to it. I think that could also help make up for the lighter body.

Pinot Rose ( mead 2nd run) PH= 3.3 TA= 5.6 g/l

 

[seth8530]

So, yesterday we did a lot of work in the wineroom... a LOT.... one of the things we did besides racking around 35 gallons of cider, 15 gallons of sparkling wine blend, 15 gallons of funk mead and bottling 5 gallons of beer was to rack and back sweeten the rose. The initial gravity was around .998-.999. To it, we added around 600 grams of honey ( 300 ish grams) and around 300 grams of coconut and normal table sugar to backsweeten the whole 11 gallon batch. I planned this to bring the gravity up to around 1.003-1.004.

The sugar nicely balanced out the acidity of the rose, but did not leave it too sweet. It is kind of grape forward, but with nice honey aroma and taste. I would have written down better tasting notes, but it was a better day... However, thinking about things... I am going to add some lyzomes to it in case their are any MLB kicking around in it.

 

[chasemandingo]

Seth please explain the lyzomes as I was under the impression that ML bacteria can not be used with sorbate under any conditions. However, I remember you say that a lyzome addition will remedy this. However, a Google search yielded little results.

 

[seth8530]

If you are concerned about MLB and sorbate, you can kill or seriously degrade the viability of MLB by using lyzosomes. Thus, greatly reducing the chance that the MLB will eat the sorbate and create off flavors. You can improve on this by cold crashing and sterile filtering.

 

[chasemandingo]

True on the sterile filtering. However, I was under the impression that a .3 micron filter (i think this is the required size) is so fine that it can strip both color and flavor/aroma compounds out of the wine. Is this true?

 

[seth8530]

I have heard conflicting information about that claim. Something tells me though, that it if major commercial wineries are doing this practice, that it most likely is not way too determintal to the wine.

 

[chasemandingo]

Perhaps an experiment is in order. A single batch of red wine half of which should be sterile filtered and the other half through a 5 micron filter. Bottle and label both and after an appropriate time in the bottle both could be compared. I don't have filtering capabilities as of yet. So it is on someone else to complete this noble task! lol

 

[seth8530]

Lol yeah. Perhaps someone other than me too lol. Actually, I will likely be sterile filtering some cider, so I might give that a go.

 

[sour_grapes]

On the molecular scale, 0.3 micron is HUGE.

Not bad, but not dramatic enough. If the "flavor molecules" are the size of a ping pong ball, the gaps in the filter would be more like the distance BETWEEN THE SOCCER GOALS (on opposite ends of the soccer pitch).

 

[seth8530]

Good point,

I had clearing issues with my last mead that I made where stuff would decide to drop out on its own in the bottles. So, in addition to filtering I will add 15-16 grams of bentointe per 5-6 gallon carboy to help it clear out.

 

[seth8530]

So, I added the betoninte, and checked the SO2. It was around 3 ppm ( ive been lazy) so I went ahead and added 50 ppm of sulfite to hopefully keep this guy stable until I get un lazy enough to check the SO2 again.

 

[seth8530]

So, yesterday we had a good oll bottling party. I decided to go ahead and lay superklear on top of the bentonite to give me a good surface to rack from. Then, I let it sit in a deep freezer at around 33F for around a week before gravity racking, sterile filtering and then finally bottling.

With my two helpers we were able to get a yield of around 8 gallons out of two 5 gallon carboys in around 3 and a half hours setup and cleanup included. So, not too bad as fat as bottling days go.

We did a side by side of the gravity racked and the filtered and they turned out to be about the same as far as clarity goes. However, it did seem to be slightly clearer. However, the taste was definitely different, and in a better way. Perhaps some of those grape seed tannins I added in earlier got filtered out.. Or, I could just be full of it.. Not sure.. Either way, it was a success. I plan on sending this guy off the the mazers cup international. I will be sure to post the score cards good or bad.

 

[seth8530]

So, this guy did not end up placing at the MCI, however I am still eagerly awaiting the score card. I wonder if perhaps the grape flavor was not strong enough for what they were looking for in the pyment category. They gave good feedback last year, so I look forward to seeing what they have to say this year!