wine has little "body"

[sour_grapes]

Makes sense...

 

[porkchopmessiah]

Define PITA?

 

[sour_grapes]

Sorry, didn't think that was obscure. PITA = Pain In The ***.

 

[porkchopmessiah]

well I have a couple of things at play, I don't currently have all the tannin I need for all 4 batches, im waiting for Malo to end and I only transferred from the buckets last week...
throw in the holiday season and im gonna have my hands full for a bit...given the time frames of the manufactuer saying as long as its in there for six weeks, I had a lot of wiggle room, want to do my next round of tests/ adjustments and such around January.....

 

[sour_grapes]

well I have a couple of things at play, I don't currently have all the tannin I need for all 4 batches, im waiting for Malo to end and I only transferred from the buckets last week...
throw in the holiday season and im gonna have my hands full for a bit...given the time frames of the manufactuer saying as long as its in there for six weeks, I had a lot of wiggle room, want to do my next round of tests/ adjustments and such around January.....

I understand -- sounds reasonable to wait. This IS supposed to be fun and all!

 

[askins3097]

I’ve made juice buckets that turned out great with a decent amount body that won first place at a local blind tasting competition, and some that were disappointing. Im going to guess a lot probably depends on the quality of grapes used that year, how much skin contact the commercial winery allowed, quality of additives, etc.

I wouldn’t write them all off tho. Try the varietals known for having more body like Cabernet Sauvignon, Old Vine Zinfandel or Syrah. Merlot is known to be on the lighter side even with grapes. Buying a lug of grapes to get some skin contact in your juice will definitely help too. One lug is manageable to destem and crush by hand if you don’t have the equipment. Anymore than that and it turns into a very long process. Don’t ask how I know lol. I won’t be attempting that again without a crusher/destemmer.

 

[baron4406]

askins I did a hot pressed Walker juice bucket of Noriet with 3 flats of Chilean Cabernet grapes and my significant other says its one of the best tasting whines I've ever made and its only about 6 months old. My guess is since Walker is using grapes from their own vineyard the quality is alot better than your typical juice bucket. Still the commercial buckets you get at your local LHBS are good for refining your process or just making an "everyday" wine. I think you have a good point in picking varietals known for heavy body (Like the Noriet) rather than lighter body wines. Right now I have two packs of grape must coming from Musto Grape company that I'm gonna add to other experiments-I can do extended macerations with them much easier.

 

[Jal5]

Great ideas all. Thanks. I will definitely add some skins or fresh grapes next time.
Joe

 

[baron4406]

Jal5 also look up Musto Wine Grape co. They sell a grape pack like you get with top end kits for $20. Put those in a hops bag and do your fermenting in a big mouth bubbler and then it opens you up to doing EM (Extended Macerations) which REALLY help your wine out. In fact here is the link below. They tell me the grapes are 99% Cabernet and 1% Merlot.

http://www.juicegrape.com/Mosti-Mondiale-All-Grape-Pack/

 

[Jal5]

Thanks

 

[RonObvious]

I think you said you have "enough" alcohol, but I'm wondering if you might want to tease that statement apart a little bit. Arguably the most important component of a wine's "body" is good old fashioned alcohol. You could try adding a little sugar to nudge the finished alcohol content up a bit next time. That may give you what you're looking for. I remember reading somewhere (maybe on these forums, I can't remember, so sorry if I'm paraphrasing someone else's story) about someone who had a few French guests staying with him/her. He asked the guests what they thought of his wine and they said it was good but lacked body. When pressed what they meant, they said alcohol, and prescribed adding more sugar before fermentation than he was used to. They said it's very common all across France. Anyway, that's how I remember the story, sorry if I got it wrong. Since reading it, I've always been generous when chaptalizing and thus far I like the results!