The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Time to stir in the raisins.  They’re kinda cool, big and fat.  I’ll need to stir the grapes around in the bucket every day until the primary fermentation is done.  It smells great already, I’m excited about this kit. Too bad I probably won’t drink it for at least 2 years, I want to give […]

I started my second reserve wine kit today, a barolo.  This is my first kit from Mosti Mondiale.  It’s “all juice” (read as:  even heavier than the muller-thurgau yesterday), and has all sorts of fancy stuff, including “select oak” a bag of “red raisins.” Bentonite was stirred into the juice, and no water was added.  […]

Time to rack and check the home merlot.  I splash racked again, and tested/tasted it.  The Free SO2 seemed to be below 20 ppm, so I’m going to try to restart MLF with the dried bacteria I got in December.  I’m not optimistic, because I’m pretty sure the bacteria is no good after this long, […]

Nose of raspberry and cherry, with hint of the soapiness. Still foamy. Tasting very young. Sour cherry and oak. More integrated and tasty, but not ready yet.

One year tasting of the rhone blend. Decanted for about an hour. A little bit of the weird soapiness I get with the kit wines in the nose, also notes of plum and oak. Foamy. Sour flavors of black cherry, blackberry, and raspberry with strong oak and soapiness also. Long finish, but quite sour and […]

I stopped by the office to check out the barrel wines to make sure they’re not over-oaked.  They both taste great, and we don’t think they’re too oaky yet.  Let a sleeping cab lie ….

I rationalized that I needed a bottling pump, since we would have SO much wine to bottle from the barrels, and also then I could bottle solo and not pester my hubby.  This is one of those investments that I really hope pays off, because I have high hopes for it.  I did a lot […]

The merlot has been on my mind.  I’m bothered that the MLF didn’t finish, although the MLF in the barrel batch did not complete either.  But, since the Cab MLF went great, I feel like there should be something proactive I can and should do to try to make it work.  I’m worried that it […]

Did not decant, probably would benefit from decanting at this stage. Not foamy, seem to finally have that under control. Big nose of red ripe fruits with sour edge. Very clear, dark garnet in color. Slightly fizzy on the tongue, with very tart flavors of sour cherry and pomegranite. Mainly fruity, very light spice, medium […]

Just checked the malic acid levels in the cab, and it’s at the bottom end of the strip test, reading ~50 mg/L.  So, we know the strip tests work, the MLF in the merlot just didn’t.