Wine duds— Do you dump or salvage?

[KCCam]

I’ll take it! You’d have no trouble shipping that across the border to Canada, I’m sure.

 

[sour_grapes]

A wonderful summer use is a granita (or sometimes called by the French granité). Basically, you add sugar-water and wine, then freeze it in a shallow pan. But while it is freezing, you take it out of the freezer and stir it up a bit once in a while. The result is an iced dessert, with a coarser texture than a sherbet.

 

[Ajmassa]

Sangria or some other fun summer wine recipe sounds cool. I might play around with different ones. We were at a mexican joint last week known for their homemade sangria. I was against it since i’m not much of a sangria guy. Well, long story short—- we left our car and über’d home

 

[sour_grapes]

Thank goodness for Uber!

 

[Ajmassa]

The dud wine was my 1st substantial all grape batch made on my own—a tuscan blend from ‘17 that i screwed up. All I can taste is my errors. I did no pre-AF adjustments. Then overadjusted acid post AF. Then possibly over-adjusted the over-adjustment.

But acid balance isn’t even the issue. It’s weird. The whole profile seems off. The tweaks seem to have taken over the wine. Even if landing on the perfect sweet spot the natural characteristics of the wine are overshadowed by my acid adjustments IMO. It’s difficult to describe. It just reminds me of tasting during k-bicarb bench trials. But maybe my taste buds are lying to me and i’m just tasting what my brain thinks it should taste. Thought another unbiased opinion might help.

Over 2 yrs ago I made plans to send some to a fellow wmt member for some insight. But then i skipped ‘19 and my ‘18 wines went quick leaving me with no decent wine to send along with it. And then it just sat. Forgotten about. Aging away banished to the corner. A carboy and a 30L barrel.

Then I think-
‘Is it even worth it for a ‘bleh’ wine?’
‘Would finishing tannin help at all?‘
‘even if improved some— am i gonna drink it?’ doubtful. I could always just pay it forward and hook up the local high school kids so they can have themselves a banger lol.

I think i’m going to try finishing tannin for the 1st time. See how it goes. Otherwise Sangria and some other fun recipes shared in this thread might be in order. 13gal is plenty enough to experiment with multiple recipes.

 

[Bossbaby]

Make a quick skeeter pee and blend them together and you might just come up with something you will make again you never know, that's the fun of what we are doing as wine makers!

 

[hounddawg]

make you a elderberry wine, i hear that helps grape wine ,,,
Dawg

no joke,,,

 

[dralarms]

I did a peach that took over 2 years to come around, I threatened to pour it out mul times but my wife would stop me saying “give it time”. After 2 years it had a wonderful flavor.

 

[reeflections]

I've been trying a lot of different kinds of wine over the one year I have been doing this. So far I have been lucky in that the wine types I didn't care for - SP, DB, and passion fruit, my wife loves. And those she didn't like - ginger and banana, I love. I did make a peach that was OK but pretty bland that neither of us cared much for, but adding some peach extract has made it definitely good enough to maybe even make some more.

 

[hounddawg]

I've been trying a lot of different kinds of wine over the one year I have been doing this. So far I have been lucky in that the wine types I didn't care for - SP, DB, and passion fruit, my wife loves. And those she didn't like - ginger and banana, I love. I did make a peach that was OK but pretty bland that neither of us cared much for, but adding some peach extract has made it definitely good enough to maybe even make some more.

peach needs to years to really fly it's colors, if you put some back for 2 years, you will swear you did not make it, peach i love, but not till 2 years is peach killer, give it a try, you''ll never believe you made it,, elderberry is another, 8 to 10 years, and yes well worth it, 5 to 6 lbs per gallon, 1.040 FG, it will not be sweet, it will be just right,
Dawg

 

[hounddawg]

I did a peach that took over 2 years to come around, I threatened to pour it out mul times but my wife would stop me saying “give it time”. After 2 years it had a wonderful flavor.

same for me peach has to have 2 years to come into it's own, like elderberry takes 8 to 10 years,
Dawg

 

[winemaker81]

The dud wine was my 1st substantial all grape batch made on my own—a tuscan blend from ‘17 that i screwed up. All I can taste is my errors. I did no pre-AF adjustments. Then overadjusted acid post AF. Then possibly over-adjusted the over-adjustment.

This is my '19 Malbec. It has an aftertaste that I tried to correct with cherry juice. It helped a bit and most people like it, but I can't stand it. But it works fine in beef dishes and spaghetti sauce, and sometimes for chicken.

 

[Ted Brumleve]

Bad wine? You need a friend with a small still.

 

[Darrell Hawley]

Just finished up a Island Mist - Raspberry/Dragon Fruit kit. (Working on wine skills before going to the better wines). After adding in the f-pack, we(wife and I) did a taste test and way to sweet. Also finishing up my first try at Dragon Blood's wine. We did not back sweeten it yet, so we did a couple of trial tests and found 1/3 Dragon Blood to 2/3 Raspberry Dragon fruit was the best. What's better then Dragon Blood wine then Dragon Fruit ? This afternoon I'll take 3 three gal carboys and put 1 gallon Dragon Blood in each, followed by 2 gallons of Raspberry/Dragon fruit in each. Next week bottle one of the 3 gallon blends and let the others age. Back sweeten the 3 gals of Dragon Blood, let sit for a week an then bottle. Nothing in the house to drink so we have to bottle some of it. Just put the skeeter pee to the carboy yesterday so that's not ready yet either. Still have 4 more kits to get going along with more Dragon Blood and skeeter pee for the summer.

 

[Obbnw]

If it's a dry wine, we add a little lemonade. If it's sweet soda water. Bit like a spritzer I suppose.

I also read that the Spanish will mix cheap wine and coke. I tried it with my bad batch wine and it was better than expected.

I still ended up dumping at least half of every bottle and all of the last 6 bottles.

 

[winemanden]

Red wine and Fizzy orange in Yugoslavia years ago. They called it Mish Mash, I wonder why?

 

[Ajmassa]

Bad wine? You need a friend with a small still.

sir

 

[NorCal]

I’ve made a second wine (added water, sugar to pressings and refermented) twice. I was disappointed in the results both times and dumped it. I also made a Grenache that I didn’t care for, but my parents love it....guess what gift they received.

 

[Rocky]

I’ve made a second wine (added water, sugar to pressings and refermented) twice. I was disappointed in the results both times and dumped it. I also made a Grenache that I didn’t care for, but my parents love it....guess what gift they received.

NorCal, when we made second wine at home years ago, we did not press the skins. We just let the "first run" flow out (this wine was separated and marked "Soltanto per la famiglia" meaning "only for the family"), added water and sugar and refermented. The second wine was not great but passable. My grandfather served it to not so good friends and people who over-stayed their welcome.

 

[winemaker81]

My experience with 2nd run wines has been the opposite. The result is lighter bodied than the 1st run, but very few would realize it's not a 1st run wine.

If you taste test the 1st and 2nd runs, the difference is obvious. Everyone will prefer the 1st run, but the 2nd run is good. Not great, but good.

I medium-press the pomace (stop when cranking the basket press starts to take effort). The original recipe said to add water that is 1/2 the volume of the 1st run, but the last couple of times I used about 40%. Then add sugar, tannin, acid, nutrient, etc based upon the amount of water added.