Vineyard Season is over
Winemaking Pictorial

 

The vineyard season is over for this year, all the grapes are sold and most likely fermented by now. We have all the bird repelling balloons and alarms packed away for another year.

Many years we are so busy, and the grapes are sold so quickly we tend to take whatever is left for our own wine. This year I decided that I wanted some Baco-Foch red wine so I had some picked before our customers picked them first. We took some pictures and made a winemaking pictorial that I thought would be interesting.

	We started with about 4 bushels of 50% Baco and 50% Marechal Foch black grapes. These are crushed, de-stemmed and 15 cambden tablets were crushed and added to the must. "Must" is the winemakers term for the mass of crushed grapes.
The grapes are put into a large fermentor. Almost anything will work except metal, although stainless steel is great. Many people use new plastic containers or barrels with the end off. The sugar is now adjusted. The brix was 18 (specific gravity of 1.074) which would ferment out to about 9.5% alcohol and I wanted to correct it to make a 11% wine. Going to the sugar conversion chart it showed that I needed 3.9 oz per gallon of sugar to add. I estimated about 10 gallons of final wine = 10 x 3.9 = 39 oz or about 2.5 lbs. In this case I went over to our bulk honey tank, put 2.5 lbs of honey in a pail, added a gallon of the juice, mixed it together so the honey is dissolved and then added it to the must. Then I checked the sugar level again with my hydrometer to make sure that it went up to the 1.090 or 20 brix that I was aiming for.
So, now we have the crushed and de-stemmed grapes with the sugar adjusted and sulphite (cambden tablets) added to kill wild yeast and to help keep the wine from turning into vinegar. At this point many people also check the acidity and sometimes adjust it. I did not do that at this point - it can be done later if necessary. The must is covered with cloth or a top to keep the fruit flies off. I usually recommend waiting 24 hrs for the cambden tablet to weaken the wild yeast and then adding cultured wine yeast either directly or using a yeast starter. As things happen around our place, I was so busy that I forgot the wine for a few days and did not add the yeast the next day. 2 days later when the light bulb went on I ran back and added 3 packages of Pasteur Red wine yeast (mixed in a cup of water to re-hydrate the yeast slightly) and mixed it in. The must may have started to ferment already - I wasn't sure. Anyway, a few days later the must, either fermenting with wild yeast or my cultured wine yeast (or a little of both) was happily fermenting away. The cap, the mass of grapes on the top was pushed back into the juice every day. This keeps these grapes covered with juice and allows the color and flavors to be extracted properly.
	After about a week of fermenting on the skins and pushing the cap down it is ready to press. The grapes are removed with a pail and poured into our old press. We use fiberglass bags in it to help keep the pulp from going through the slats of the press.
The new wine is then poured into 5 gallon carboys with a lot of head space for the foaming wine.
	After a few weeks the fermentation slows down or stops and the carboys are now filled to the top to keep air away from the wine. Extra wine is left in smaller containers also filled to the top.
This is as far as we have gone with this wine this year. In a few months we will rack the wine (siphon it off of the sediment on the bottom). Maybe in 6 months to a year we will bottle it. For further information view our downloadable "Winemaking Booklet". This is a booklet that we hand out at our farm to help winemakers get started. The Vineyard Winemaking Booklet Home Wine Making in the East Mead Making Winemaking Resources