The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: wine kit

First Racking of Yakima Synergy and Starting Year-Old Kit

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 […]

Muller-Thurgau Bottling

Time to bottle!  I racked about half of carboy, then filtered the rest with my gravity filter and combined the wine before bottling – I was too impatient to wait for it to clear over an extended bulk aging. I really need to get an inline filter for the enolmatic, the gravity filter added an […]

Starting Yakima Synergy Cellar Craft Reserve

This is my first Cellar Craft kit.  I’m looking forward to this one for several reasons.  I’ve read a lot of good things about Cellar Craft on winepress.us.  Also, the description of this white blend sounds beyond yummy;  it’s a blend of Marsanne and Roussanne from Yakima valley in Washington state, two lovely rhone whites.  […]

Stabilizing & Clearing Argentinian trio

The Argentinian Trio was a bit full after racking, so I took out about 550 mL before degassing.  I’m glad I did, there was a LOT of foam!  It was foamy for the first and second set of stirring, then I waited about half an hour an stirred again to try to really degas the […]

Starting Argentinian Trio Reserve Kit

Time for another reserve kit!  This one is also from RJ Spagnols, and is an unoaked blend of Viognier, Riesling, and Chardonnay.  The starting SG is at 1.10, so I should get a final alcohol of about 14%.  It smells yummy already, I can’t wait to sip this one over the summer!

Racking the Muller-Thurgau and Barolo

Time to rack the Muller-thurgau and barolo.  Unfortunately, I got a little overzealous with the stirring of the elderflower tea bags in the MT, and punctured most of them.  Now there are cute little flowers floating all over the wine.  This became a problem as I was racking, the flowers were small enough to be […]

First Racking of Barolo

The instructions say to rack the Barolo when the SG reaches 1.040-1.050, and the SG today is 1.038.  I guess I didn’t expect it to go so fast, although after racking, it’s obviously still in vigorous fermentation.  The oak chips get added at this point, they can been seen floating in the foam at the […]

Bourg Rouge Tasting

The burgundy is now about a year and a half old.  Nose of cherry with traces of herbs. No fizz in this bottle, did not decant or vacuum pump, just splash poured. Flavors of caramel, plums, and light cherry. Getting more of the “bacony” and “smoky” flavors just now. Taste definitely integrated better, quite drinkable […]

Adding Raisins to Barolo

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 […]

Adding MLB to Merlots for Second Go and Starting Barolo

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.  […]