I bottled both the Cellar Craft 2010 limited edition Marsanne-Viognier-Roussanne and the Winexpert Spanish Rose today, getting ready for summer sipping.  The MVR wasn’t quite clear, which I think might be due to my use of marbles for topping up my wines.  When wines with marbles are moved at all from their place of rest to the racking table, it seems to disturb the fine lees to a point that they never settle back in and clear out.  It hasn’t happened with every wine, but seems to happen a lot; or, I just happen to need marbles in wines that won’t clear very well anyway.  Either way, I ended up filtering the MVR with my Buon Vino minijet filter and a #2 polishing pad, and since I had it all set up I filtered the rose after the MVR also.  As usual, there were partial bottles of both at the end of the day, so I tasted these.

Tasting notes for the Marsanne-Viognier-Roussane:  Huge aromas of fresh apple, peach, and apricot. This wine was filtered, so very clear, pale gold in color. Actually very drinkable today, very balanced, with flavors of crisp red apple, melon, peach and citrus. Long, luscious, mouth-filling finish. Definitely more integrated already than the 2009 version of this limited release.

Tasting notes for the Spanish Rose:  Bottling day tasting note from partial bottle. Very faint nose, barely any aromas. This wine was filtered, so very clear, lovely rose color. Flavors of strawberry and guava with light spice, though very closed up.  It did open up later in the evening, so I’m very much looking forward to having this wine around for summer cookouts and sunsets.

A few more Limited Edition wine kits have come in.  I posted previously about starting the Cellar Craft Chateau du Pays; I’m going to bulk age this wine for while, but I did do an extra racking about a month after stabilizing and clearing to take out the second addition of Hungarian oak cubes, so it wouldn’t overoak.  The Cellar Craft rhone white blend of Marsanne-Viognier-Roussane and Winexpert’s Austrian Gruner Veltliner arrived and will be bottled in a few weeks.

The limited edition I’m most excited about right now is Winexpert’s Spanish Rose, “a blend of red and white varietals, including popular Spanish Tempranillo.”  It has a super-cool bright magenta color and yummy fruit-laden aromas.

In the meantime, we’re thoroughly enjoying the Pacific White Limited Edition from Winexpert.  It’s too bad I only made one of these kits, and now they’re sold out!

Tasting notes without aeration: Heavy “kit” aromas, even though the sorbate was left out. Wine is a lovely garnet in color with clear rim (though cloudy). Actually a pretty mild kit taste, with big bold fruit flavors and good balancing spice. Brambles, blackberry, currant, and hint of eucalyptus. Very nice already.

With aeration through a Vinturi, the kit aromas are muted significantly. Flavors are mellowed and nicely integrated, very fruit-forward with good balancing spice and oak. This wine is going to be quite amazing in a few years, but quite amazing right now!

On the topic of Cellar Craft wines, I also recently started the February Limited Edition “Chateau du Pays” red rhone blend. This kit is really amazing, a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre juices from France, with California Syrah and Spanish Garnacha in the mix. The really amazing part of this year’s limited releases, though, is the crushed grape “Super Pack”, 2.6 Liters of Crushed Red Mountain Syrah grapes, made from over 17 lbs of whole grapes. The Red Mountain Syrah is a clone sourced from Chateauneuf du Pape, and this blend is basically a clone of that famous wine. I am just a few weeks into this wine kit and will likely bulk age it before bottling. Again, this red will want about 2 years of bottle aging.

I also have some great white kits going. Besides starting another Chamblaise kit from Winexpert and bottling my first French Chardonnay wine kit, I also have their January Limited Edition “Pacifica White” blend getting close to bottling. This blend is very similar to the “Pacific Quartet” released in 2008, which I loved — in fact I made 2 kits, and was still very sorry to see the last one go! I’m sure I’ll be making at least 2 batches of this kit this year, in spite of all of the other winemaking, just because this wine is so very nice.

Those are the wines I’ve started, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming Winexpert Limited Releases of Austrian Gruner Veltliner and Portuguese Douro Tinto, plus the white rhone blend of Marsanne, Roussanne, and Viognier from Cellar Craft.  Time to stock up on whites for the summer!

bin o' zin

Time to get the syrah started.  I met Dave at the office, and he set up the “server room winery” with plastic sheeting while I revved up the yeast.  I heated up some water and dissolved in go-ferm, then added ICV-D254 yeast and let it wake up for about 15 minutes.  Then I added some must to let it acclimate to the sugar and acid levels for another 15 minutes.  While that was hanging out, we checked the total acidity with our quick test, and it read around 10, which fit with the pH.  We stirred in some pectin enzyme and then the yeast, then let it sit for the night.  The must was a little cooler than desirable (~65 degrees F), but it should get going anyway.  I had weighed out everything at home before heading over, and I realized there that I probably overestimate the must volume by using weight since I did not discount the stem weight.  Oh well, we’ll see if it foams over I guess!

Since it was Labor Day, I continued my laboring at home.  I bottled the Cellar Craft 5-week Old Vine Zinfandel kit.  I thought the kit might benefit from blending with a little bit of my barrel merlot, and did a little trial with 1:6 or 1:3 merlot:zinfandel.  My hubby and I agreed that the kit was pretty good on its own, so I bottled it as it was.  Should be a good house wine, it was already really good — only a slight kit taste, very fruit-forward with light spice. Very likely this wine will be outstanding in as little as 6 months of aging, and probably won’t last long!

I was racking off my Cellar Craft 5-week Old Vines Zinfandel kit today and noticed this yucky-looking white residue at the top of the wine, sticking to the side of the carboy as it was racked off.  There was a lot of lees at the bottom, too.  I have an extra liter or so of that wine in a separate bottle, but that bottle also has a big layer of lees.  I guess I’ll have to wait to see if this residue is indicative of something bad, it smells OK today.  So, I added the sorbate, Kmeta, and stabilizing/fining agents, then topped off as much as I could with the surplus wine.  It wasn’t quite enough, I ended up adding about 200 mL of water to top it.  I did decide to keep about a liter of the lees from the bottom to see if it would settle out more, then I can add it when I rack for bottling.

I finished bottling the “Bahia Belle” blend and Merlot B (“Embarcadero” merlot) today.  Then I finally started another “easy drinker” red kit that I’ve been excited about, a Cellar Craft Lodi Old Zinfandel.  I wanted a good, easy house zin to have around for grilling and whatnot, so I did a lot of research on winepress.us to see what other people thought were a good pick.

I was excited to see the crushed grape pack included with the kit.  I’m sure I read that this kit had it, but I forgot.  The instructions said to warm up the crushed grapes and then “pour” (I squeezed) them into the mesh bag, included with the kit.

So, I get to stir this every day for the next week to extract all of the goodness out of the grape mess.  As I was finishing up, I was pushing the airlock into the hole in the lid of the bucket, and the black gasket around the hole fell into the bucket.  You would think something rubber might float, but no, it fell to the bottom.  So, I had to plug this one with cotton.  I hope the ants don’t find the shower, they’ve been a problem lately.  At least it should be a little easier to pull the lid off to stir.

The SG on the Yakima Synergy is at 0.994, although it’s still bubbling away in there.  After racking, it’s not very pretty!  But, it’s early in the game, there’s still plenty of stirring ahead before it’s expected to clear.

In the meantime, Dave bought a cabernet sauvignon kit last year, at the same time that we started making wine from grapes.  I remembered he still has it sitting at the back of his closet, and offered to make it for him.  I checked everything out, and it seemed fine – it wasn’t quite at its expiration date yet, and the color and aromas were fine.  The starting SG was 1.075, exactly where it should be.  No problems!