Pressing Wine in the WinePod

Well, folks, if you have been following along with our WinePod adventures, yesterday was press day.  Pressing extracts juice from the grapes by pushing down on them and squeezing the liquid out. (It's kinda like stomping on grapes, which is not done much anymore.)  

The liquid that is squeezed out is called Press Wine, or Press Juice.  Press Wine is basically the dregs of the juice which may contain remnants of seeds, skins, etc.  It looks cloudy and is thicker than the juice that comes about naturally just by the weight of grape on grape. This natural, highly coveted juice, is called Free Run Wine.  Sometimes wine makers choose to add some Press Wine to the Free Run Wine to add structure and depth but it is purely a matter of choice.

Winemonkey and I had a little trouble with our WinePod press, which is supposed to do all the hard work of pressing down the grapes and bringing up the dregs in the press basket.  Alas, this was not to be as we seemed to have stripped a piece of the press.  Instead, we pressed the wine manually -- which is to say by hand -- which requires some patience, a good deal of muscle, and a lot of paper towels to clean up the grape mess that results. 

We did it, but not without trouble, and then siphoned the wine into two 5-gallon jars and two 1 gallon jars.  The wine looks good -- a deep, dark Cabernet Sauvignon color -- and it tastes like, well, young wine!  It is still a bit harsh (it is not through with Malolactic Fermentation, or MLF, yet which is the process of changing the harsh malic acids naturally present in grapes to softer lactic acids) and needs some ageing, but all in all we are pleased.

The wine will sit in these jugs (pictured) for one week until we run another MLF test to see if the process is complete. Once that stage is over we can move the wine in to our freshly steam cleaned French oak barrel for ageing. We still have a little clean up to do today but we are almost there.  Oh, and if anybody wants a giant pale of grape must (it's supposed to be good for your skin you know!) just let us know.  We've got one! ;)

Cheers.

Wine Hilarity of the Day: Crap Wine

Vino Girl was  catching up on the wine news this morning when she came across a hysterical little story on the website France24.com.  I was drawn to it because it was a story about "crap wine", a term frequently used in wine circles to describe, well, crappy wine. 

 A wine from the Languedoc region in France, which has long been considered contemptible by more illustrious wine regions such as Burgundy and Bordeaux, has marketed a wine labeled " Vin de Merde," which translates literally to "wine of crap."  This snarky tip-of-the-hat to the critics of the Languedoc's still under appreciated wines sold out within days. Seventy-five hundred more bottles are being marketed to keep up with local demand.

 As the article points out, it is going to take more than this one success story to lift up the wine industry in the region, which has been floundering over the past 10 years despite marked improvement in quality. If the farmers keep at it, however, and retain the irony, who knows, the wine world may get more than a laugh out of it.

 

Wine At Your Fingertips

Please excuse this interruption of blogging as usual...

I have to admit to shameless promotion, but how often does a gal get the opportunity to say that her book is now available on Amazon.com? It's true, Vino Girl is a published author! I worked hard writing a comprehensive wine reference last fall and all that drudgery has finally come to fruition in the form of my first book.

Wine At Your Fingertips is published by Penguin Publishing's Alpha Books. I must say, they really kept on me to produce a thorough, well-organized, and concise reference on wine that includes everything from growing grapes and making wine to buying and collecting it. All the world's top wine regions make an appearance as well as all the big grapes. Check it out if you like!

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program....

Winemonkey and I plan on pressing the wine in our WinePod this weekend. Instead of basking in the glory of my authorship, I have been meticulously washing out our French oak barrel so that our wine can be siphoned in there without fear of overoaking. Stay tuned on that front.

Cheers!