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 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!

On to MLF in the Winepod

Well, folks, we are now in a phase called Malolactic Fermentation; the cool kids call it MLF. It is admittedly a pretty boring phase for a wine maker, but a necessary step in the making of quality wine, particularly red wines. When the yeast has done its job and converted all the sugar in the grape must to alcohol, it is safe to inoculate for MLF.  

This involves adding some bacteria (yum!) to convert the harsh acids naturally present in grapes (malic acids) to softer lactic acds. We have the temperature set on our Winepod between 74 and 76 degrees and we are letting the bacteria do its thing. At this stage it is important not to let too much air in to the Winepod which can cause oxidation. We gently punchdown once per day and then sparge the surface area of the grape must with nitrogen to prevent oxidation.  

The wine is looking darker (a sign that MLF has finished is uniformly dark grape pips, or seeds) and it smells like, well, wine!  The taste is very acidic and somewhat tannic at this point but we have some ways to go before it is ready for the spotlight.  We are going to let the grapes sit for some extra time on the skins, called extended maceration, to develop some flavor and richness.

Stay tuned...

WinePod Punchdown Day One

We were happy to discover that, when we pulled the lid off the Winepod tday, a cap had formed -- so we actually had something to punchdown on our first punchdown day! We could smell the sweet fruit and alcohol as soon as the lid had been removed. The cap resembled what I can only describe as pretty pink and purple worms congregating at the top of the Winepod. We checked the temperature (around 73 degrees) and the brix (still a hearty 26 - whoa!) and then prepared to integrate the cap into the must.

Punchdown was relatively easy, although it was difficult to tell at times when -- or if -- we had reached the bottom of the must with the punchdown tool. I tried not to take out my aggression, resulting from a two-touchdown defiicit for Syracuse in the Syracuse v. Penn State football game, and push down ever so gently on the cap. Taylor (aka Winemonkey) took over to finish the job, both of us proceeding as instructed in the punchdown video.

Punchdown took all of five minutes and then we were ready to sample our wine during its early fermentation phase. The hay we smelled a few days ago has fallen to the back for the most part and today we smelled a little bread from the yeast but also fresh, darker fruit, and hints of olives. We both took a small sip and agreed that the juice is still young and sweet, but less sweet due to the growing presence of alcohol. Taylor adjusted the lower set Temp to 72 from 70 as wine maker John Kelly did during his first punchdown day.

Now we are ready for the daily punchdowns until we reach 20 brix. The question remains....will we ever get down to 20 brix?!?!

PS: What this high brix level means is that we are destined to be making a high alcohol wine. Not our intention but we will see what happens.

Making Wine with the WinePod: Fermentation

Fermentation Day 1!

So, earlier today we revised our upper temp limit to 70 as we allowed the must to gently creep up in temperature to be closer to what we were looking for when we wanted to add the yeast. The yeast is going to turn our grape must into alcohol/wine.

We realize the Winepod has a heater element, but we figured it would be better to let nature do its job. There was no hint of a natural fermentation so we were comfortable letting the temp rise on its own.

Jen and I ran out for another bottle of Fiji water (which is what we used yesterday to add the acid) so that we could be sure that the water was the same and that there was no chlorine in the water, which is no good for the wine. After heating up 200ml, we cooled the water down to 102 (putting it somewhere between wine maker John Kelly's 104 and the the WinePod software recommendation of 98.6).

Once the water was at 102 we added in 2 packs (20g total) of GoFerm Yeast Extract to help the yeast along. Ten minutes of fairly anxious waiting and we then popped in not one but two packs of UvaFerm 43 (16g total). This is more than the WinePod software recommends, but we had to trust John on this end as it is one of the most crucial points in the process and we did not want to risk a stuck fermentation. This is when things don't get moving in the whole process of turning grape juice into wine. Additionally, John's notes indicated that there was very little yeast 'finger print' with this strain so we felt comfortable adding in the extra.

We reset our temp limits to 70-78 and pulled out 50ml of must for proofing with our handy wine thief and set it aside. The must smelled sweet and perfumey, very clean with no off odors. Jen noted fresh blackberry and some sort of flower note and I noted some hay/greener flavors which is typical at this point. Honestly, it is entirely reminscient of the aromas in a winery during crush.

After another 10 minutes of letting the yeast settle, we mixed everything together and transferred the (sanitized) Pyrex measuring cup to acclimate with the must before pitching in. Surprisingly, our must is very juice heavy and we were concerned that the measuring cup might tip over into the must before it had time to cool down. So we walked on eggshells around the Winepod and after 15 minutes we prepared to proof the yeast mixture with the must we previously set aside along with a pinch of sugar like John described in his notes. Most probably this is a combination of both the WinePod and John Kelly's methods, but one with which we were most comfortable. The initial proof comfirmed the yeast was active and ready to go. The proofing also dropped our yeast mixture temp down to 79.8 and we pitched the mixture in.

Now we cross our fingers and hope for the best!

Bubble, Bubble, Toil, and Trouble!

Prefermentation Phase in the WinePod:

Today, after worrying about our temperature for a spell -- it seemed a little too warm but was finally deemed "normal" -- we decided on our additions to the must.

Our first decision was to add slightly more TA (tartaric acid) than recommended based on some of our favorite California Cabs (okay, okay, so we are acid freaks by nature!). We mixed the TA with some quality bottled water and into the Winepod it went! After a good mixing to a chorus of "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble", we were on to the next step.

Moving forward we made an executive decision to skip the the oak, grape, and grape/oak tannin additives. We gave the thumbs up to the Lallzyme enzyme, which helps to deepen color, as well as the Booster Rouge and Opti-Red which promote weight and texture on the palate.

After these packets were thoroughly mixed in to the must, we checked the aromas (smells like young grape juice!) and flavors. Everything seems right on and, although certainly not ready for a nice, juicy steak, our Cabernet is surely on the way to stardom.

Also, due to our temperature problems from earlier where we never got our must down below 55, we did a quick temperature limit update after reading Westwood wine maker John Kelly's process. With the imminent addition of the yeast and John's experience, we felt that turning the alarm off and letting the must settle in to a higher temperature was not going to hurt anything. We lifted our lower set point to 61 degrees and the moved the upper to 68 degrees. (John went 62-72)

Next stop Fermentation!