Getting Serious - Made Rose Blend

In my last post I wrote about a plan for the final blending and cellar work for the 2009 wines. So it was into the cellar last week to get to work.

The first wine I worked on was the Rose' blend. I planned to use a 4 to 1 ration of the "press" Pinot Grigio to Zinfandel. This blend tasted very good in late June when I made a trial blend and tested it with my WGWNN friends.

So I blended 10 gallons of the "press" Pinot Grigio and 2 gallons with the Zinfandel. This Rose blend went into 6.5 and 5 gallon carboys and a few bottles left over to sample....

I was surprised when I tasted the blend; it was just not as good as I remembered it from the trial in June... it did not have the same Raspberry/strawberry fruit flavor, and it had more tannin in the finish. What happened????

My guess is that one of the carboys of the "press" Pinot Grigio had more tannin than the other, and that the final ML fermentations changed the flavors of the Pinot Grigio and Zinfandel

slightly. While it was a perfectly acceptable blend, it was just not as good and lively as my trial blend.

One of the procedures I try to follow, is to blend all containers of a wine together to get a uniform wine. e.g. You don't want one carboy to taste different than another... so I guess I forgot my rule and got caught....

So in an attempt to get back some fruit and mask some of the tannins, I added a small amount of Malvasia and a little more Zinfandel. I also added a small amount of tartaric acid to bump the acid slightly to make up for the lost of acid from the ML fermentation. {1 gallon Malvasia and 1/2 Gallon Zinfandel to the 12 gallons of Rose blend, and 1 teaspoon tartaric acid.}

The Malvasia and Zinfandel additions got the Rose blend back closer to my trial blend from June.

I shared a sample of the final Rose blend with my wine making friends Mike and Holly and Joe and Sandy last night and I think it's going to be a very good wine....

I'll probably give the blend a week or so to meld and bottle it to enjoy the rest of the summer.

Here's the label I intend to use for the Rose'. The artwork for the label was created by Joni Tanis. The colors in the drawing are a perfect match for the Rose'.

{Yes, this is the proper orientation for the label... I wanted a long label for a clear Bordeaux style bottle...}

Time to get Serious!

OK, the weather has warmed up and the wines are going through their final fermentations...How's that you ask? Well I find that the Malo Latic {ML} fermentation may not really finish until the wine warms up in hot weather.....

I do have an air conditioner in the wine cellar, but the temperature in the cellar may reach into the 70s when the outside temp is in the 90s...and that's the kick the wines need to finish ML and the reason I wait till late summer to bottle.

You can tell that the wines are going through the final ML by observing the fermentation locks: e.g. the wine will push up into the lock, and there will be some CO2 bubbles along the edges of the wine when poured into a glass.

Also at this time, I need to make my final blending decisions, Mix the blends, add fining agents, and do acid adjustments. Blending now will allow me to rack the wines in July/August and bottle a couple of weeks later.

So, time to get serious. All the trial blending and early tastings must come to a close and I need to make the final decisions. So out to the cellar for final tastings and inventory.

The inventory is critical piece of the blending decision, as it is important to have full containers when finished. e.g. a make a blend of 50% wine A and 50% wine B works great using 5 gallon carboys of each wine that goes back into the 2 -5 gallon carboys, e .g. full containers. Factional percentage blending, e.g. 33% this and 12% that and 55% other, leads to problems filling containers.

My 2009 wine Inventory:

• 10 gallons of the "Tre Palme" blend {mentioned in my last post. }The wine is stable and waiting to be bottled.


• 10 gallons of Pinot Grigio (PG) "press" wine. slightly pink from harder pressing, a different wine from the regular "free run" Pinot Grigio.


• 14.5 gallons Sauvignon Blanc (SB).


• 8 gallons "free run" Pinot Grigio (PG)


• 12 gallons Malvasia.


• 17 gallons Zinfandel (Zin)


• 17 gallons Nebbiolo

I tasted all the wines again, did another couple of trial blends and some taste tests with my WGWNN {Wine Group With No Name} friends and came up with this plan:

Make a "Harvest Festival" blend of 50% SB and 50% Malvasia. I made this blend in 2007 and liked it a lot. The floral orange blossom nose of the Malvasia and its richness tone down the grassiness and high alcohol of the SB. Make 13 gallons {2-6.5 gallon carboys} of the blend.

This will leave a 5 gallon carboy of the Malvasia to bottle on its own, and a 3 gallon and 5 gallon carboys of the SB to bottle on their own.

Bottle the "non-press" PG without blending. It is a nice wine on it's own, not that complex, but nice pear nose, very clean, and with good acid.

I'm finding that I like Rose' wine more these days, and the warm weather has me thinking of sitting in the shade with a nice chilled Rose'..... But I didn't make one you say! A trial blend of 4 parts "press" PG and 1 part Zin produced a nice Rose' wine...Nice color, clean, good acid and some nice stawberry/raspberry flavors from the Zin. {We should talk about how Rose is made sometime...}

I "tested" this Rose' blend on my WGWNN friends and it seemed to be a hit.

Use all the "press" PG {10 gallons} and 2.5 gallons Zin to make 12.5 gallons Rose'. I will probably put this into a 5 gallon carboy and a 6.5 gallon carboy, and bottle the rest {5 bottles}

This leaves about 9.5 gallons Zin. This Zin is a light, low{er} alcohol wine with good fruit and acid. The perfect "picnic" wine according to my WGWNN friends. Bottle this by itself.

And that leaves the Nebbiolo.... Quite a story behind this wine and I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet. I may want to hold over some for possible blending for next year. For now, bottle 1 case for tasting and evaluation. That leave 14 gallons in a stainless steel beer keg.

So after bottling I'll have:

4 cases "Tre Palme" blend {equal parts, SB, PG and Malvasia}

4 cases "Harvest Festival" blend {equal parts SB and Malvasia}

5 cases "Rose" blend {the "press" PG and some Zin.}

2.5 Cases PG

2 cases Malvasia

2 cases SB

4 cases Zin

1 case Nebbiolo and 14 gallon in stainless steel

Whew! Glad I got that figured out..... Now I just need to do it! So it is time for a few days of cellar work!

Bottled First 2009 Wine!

OK, It's now May and I have not posted anything for quite a while.....well, I did finish off and publish a few posts that had sat as drafts for some time....

One thing that happened during April is that I bottled one of my white blends. I know it's early in my typical yearly schedule, but I was out of white wine and needed some everyday white...

Back in Feb. I posted some "Trial Blends" information, and also had a tasting where we tasted the 2009 wines including the blends.... So I decided to make a batch of "Blend #3" which is 33% Sauvignon Blanc, 33% Malvasia, and 33% Pinot Grigio.

I have about 20 gallons of each white varietal, so my plan is to make a blend or two, and bottle some wine as 100% varietal. For this "Lot1" of "Blend #3" I used 5 gallons of each wine. Therefore I have enough wine to make a "lot2" depending on how well lot 1 turns out...

15 gallons of "lot1" will make 6 cases of wine, so that should keep me in everyday white for some time.

I like to use a container to mix all the wines together to get uniform blending.

I also prepared a mixture of a fining agent, bentonite, to add to the blend to help settle out any suspended particles and make the wine clear. I also added 1-1/2 teaspoons of tartaric acid.


After mixing well, the blend was racked into 3 carboys.

It took about 1 month for the bentonite to settle to the bottom of the carboy and leave a clear wine.

I racked and bottled one of the carboys on April 30.

Why only bottle 1 carboy?

1. The weather has not really turned warm yet and I don't want to bottle all the carboys in case a secondary fermentation {ML} should kick off. e.g. Don't want this to happen in the bottle. In the carboy is OK.

2. It usually takes two racking to get a really clear wine off of the bentonite at the bottom of the carboy. So I racked off 5 gallons of clear wine off of the top of two carboys and bottled that. The remaining wine in the two carboys was racked into a new carboy.

Here's the label of lot 1 blend#3 which I call "Tre Palme" because of the Capri tile I use in the label and of the three wines used in the blend.

Of course, I started drinking the wine right away.

At first the Malvasia was dominating the blend with some heavier body and the floral nose. However, the wine began to change after a week or two and is now the flavors are much more integrated. e.g. none of the 3 wines dominate.

At times different flavors do come out: floral overtones from the Malavasia, or pear from the Pinot Grigio. The addition of acid makes this a lively wine with a clean finish. It comes off like a white Rhone blend....

The early awkwardness of the blend I'll attribute to bottle shock.

I'm enjoying this blend very much....I've got to resist the urge to go out to the cellar and use up the rest of my white wines as blend#3. Got to stick to the plan...

I'll do another post later on about my bottling methods.

Tasting the 2009 wines; get feedback from friends

After a few trial blending sessions on my own, I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback from my wine making friends and also to see how their wines were coming along. So I had a tasting in late February of the 2009 vintage.

There were 6 of us at the tasting including my wine making friends, Joe and Sandy, Mike, and Harry.

None of the wines are ready to bottle, so this is just an early "barrel" tasting to see how the wines are coming along and perhaps see what may need to be done in the future.

I prepared 3 of my white trial blends, along with the 3 individual varietals, and 2 red wines.

With each wine maker bringing a number of wines, it was a tasting that could get out of hand easily....My tasting notes and memory of the wines started out pretty good, then got very sketchy toward the end. Luckily Harry made a voice recording of our conversations so I can try to decipher what was said about the wines....

With all the wines to taste, and my duties as host, I could not focus on the wines as much as I wanted but here are my impressions:

2009 is a very good wine year and I'm generally happy with my wines.

I'll need to make some different red varietals next year... as I'm ending up with too much light red wine...

Mike, Joe and I all made Sauvignon Blanc {SB} from juice picked up the same day from the same tank and it was very interesting to see the differences in the three wines.

I like Joe's higher acid, non Malo Lactic fermented Sauvignon Blanc a lot and I may re-think my strategy regarding ML fermentation.

Everyone said my white wine blends were good: Blend #1 was 50% SB and 50% Malvasia.

Blend #2 was 33% SB, 33% Pinot Grigio and 33% Malvasia.

Blend #3 was just blend #2 with the addition of tartaric acid.

It was very interesting see how the addition of the acid made blend #3 more lively. It as my favorite blend.

Joe's Grenache Rose was very good. But it contained 3-4% residual sugar and has since kicked off a fermentation.... so it will be interesting to taste it again later on... See my blog entry on Residual sugar.

By the time we got to the reds, I had reached my tasting limit, but I do remember that Mike had a very nice Dolcetto.

A very fun day!

Testing for Residual sugar in a wine

One of my wine making friends was talking about his 2009 Sauvignon Blanc and how it tasted a little sweet. He was wondering about how much residual sugar was left in the wine and if it would be stable in the bottle.

Two wine making sayings came to mind when talking about this topic: If you taste sugar in the wine, there is usually more than 1% there since that is about the normal tasters threshold for sugar, and if you want to re-start a stuck fermentation, just bottle the wine! { wine with residual sugar will very likely ferment in the bottle, that's how sparkling wine is made!}

So it's better to know if the wine has residual sugar before bottling.

If you like the taste of the wine with a little residual sugar you may need to take some steps to make sure the wine does not kick off a fermentation in the bottle. Of course a few bubbles in a Rose is not necessarily a bad thing to happen... but not in a white wine that you are proud of...also a fermentation in the bottle can lead to cloudy wine and off odors.

You cannot use the hydrometer to measure sugar once fermentation is done since the alcohol is lighter than water and that's what the hydrometer is measuring; the specific gravity {SG} of the solution against the SG of water {1.0}. When there is more then 10% alcohol and only a few brix of sugar you can get a negative number reading on the hydrometer.

e.g. 1 brix = .00388 SG. So a wine with 6 brix of sugar will have a SG reading of approx. 1.023 not counting the alcohol!

If we take into account the @ 10% alcohol which has a SG of @ .78 the resulting SG reading should be: ( .88 * 1.023 + .10 * .78 = .9782) a negative number!

One method I use to measure residual sugar is to use a Urine sugar test kit. The kit is very easy to use and will measure sugar in the range : negative sugar up to more than 4%.

I purchased my "kit" years ago. It's called Clinitest Urine sugar test kit. It consists of a small test tube, a eye dropper, reagent tables, and a color chart for reading the results.

I don't think you can buy the kit any longer, but the reagent tablets are still available so you can put together your own kit.

A friend that is a nurse said they {hospitals} don't use the tablets anymore and the reagent tablets are inventory that is being sold off.... Amazon carries them...

Clinitest Reagent Tablets

Add you own test tube and eye dropper and you will be set for measuring residual sugar in your wines.

Note that there are residual sugar testing kits available from wine making supply stores. One kit available is the Accuvin Residual Sugar Test Kit.

One reason I like the urine sugar kit more than the Accuvin kit is that the test strip colors are very bright and easy to read...e.g. they are not all some shade of blue as in the Accuvin kit....

Here's a video of me measuring residual sugar in a few of my wines.

Trial Blending Session

In my last post I wrote about creating "Trial Blends". In that session, I blended my 09 Malvasia Bianca with the 09 Sauvignon Blanc {SB}. A 1 to 1 blend seemed to be on the right track.







In this session, I'm going to throw in my 09 Pinot Grigio {PG} into the mix.





The techniques outlined in the last blog post still apply...e.g. mix small amounts {20-40 ml of wines} in a glass and taste.





One reason to do multiple trail blending sessions is to be able to focus on a subset of wines and combinations to avoid getting hopelessly confused.





For this session I want to see if adding my Pinot Grigio to a blend with the Malvasia and Sauvignon Blanc will yield a better wine than the 1 to 1 Malvasia-SB blend from my last session.





the wines....


PG: light straw yellow, hints of pear fruit in the nose, tart and clean. Slight bitterness in finish.



Malvasia: Nice floral nose, thick in the mouth, tart with fig-like flavors. Very nice.



SB: Grassy nose and flavors with a slightly hot and bitter finish. This sample was pulled from a different carboy than was used for the last blending session. This one does not have the aggressive SB nose like the previous sample!





Note: at some point it is a good idea to blend all containers of the same variety to get a uniform wine, unless a container has something bad or good going on as a reason to keep it separate. Also you won't have to wonder why one bottle tastes different than another later on....

I blended up the favorite blend from my last session, the 1 to 1 Malvasia and SB, to taste the new blends against.

First I tried a 1 to 1 PG and SB:

The PG pear nose comes through and the bitterness of the SB is toned down, but still there. Only OK.

Next I tried a 1 to 1 to 1 PG, Malvasia and SB blend:

The Malvasia adds some floral component to the PG pear nose and the thickness of the Malvasia helps to further smooth out the SB. Very good acid and complex flavors though no variety stands out...e.g. it will be hard to tell what variety you are tasting later on...Very Good blend. I like it better than the 1 to 1 Malvasia and SB.

I tried a few more blends that were dead ends... and finished off the samples with dinner. Woke up this morning with a headache from too much sampling....

I have one more trial blending session planned for later in the month. My fellow home wine making friends will be coming over to taste everyone's 09 wines. I plan to pour my two favorite blends at that time and get everyone's opinions... should be fun!

Slow Time in the cellar --- redeux

It's cold out there! So I'm not real motivated to do much in the cellar. But here are some suggestions of things to do, where you don't spend all your time in the cold...

• Taste your wines and create trial blends



• Visit tasting rooms, make new wine and grape contacts



• Repair Equipment



• Do a Inventory of your cellar



• Plan a dinner to drink those wines you have been saving, or old bottles discovered during inventory



• Make sure your wine making notes are up to date



• Throw a party to celebrate last year's vintage

Today I'll talk about creating trial blends.

Your new wines are now far enough along in their development so you can taste them and get a good idea of what they will be like when finished.

I like to taste my wines whenever I rack them to check their progress and make sure there are no problems developing. But now is a good time to be more critical of a new wines strengths and weaknesses, and plan to address those issues. I believe strongly in blending as a means to address a wines weaknesses and produce a wine that you want to drink.

Blending is a topic that deserves it own entry to cover it in more detail, but here is a brief description on what I'm doing to create trail blends.

Technique:

Pull a small sample of each wine that may benefit from blending, say 1/10 bottle.

Taste each wine. Do you like it? Does it have characteristics that you don't like as much? Does it have a component that needs a little tweaking, e.g. low acid, nose, etc. What are it's strong points. Take Notes!! You can get hopelessly confused if you don't!

Formulate a blend of two or more wines to address weaknesses noted when tasting each wine. I do this with a 40 ML beaker. e.g. 20 ml of wine A, 20 ml of wine B poured into a glass for a 1 to 1 blend.

Taste the blend. Take notes! Did the blend work or not.. do another blend, repeat. It is unlikely that a blend will magically be great at this point, but the idea is to point to the direction that will work in the future for the final blend.

My trial blending of Sauvignon Blanc and Malvasia Bianca.

To be fair, I'm not starting at zero here... in 2007 I bottled a blend of 50% Sauvignon Blanc and 50% Malvaia that I liked a lot. So that seems like a good starting point for the 2009 vintage.

I pulled 1/10 of each wine and tasted them:

Sauvignon Blanc {SB}: Good color, light straw yellow, very strong aggressive nose initially of herbal and grassy character. Good fruit flavors, but a hot finish of higher Alcohol?

Malvasia Bianca: Good color, light straw yellow, Nice nose with floral components, thick in the mouth, good flavors and good acid. Clean finish.

So I like the Malvasia more than the Sauvignon Blanc... so my blending strategy is how to make the Sauvignon Blanc better.

I think it's easiest to think in terms of portions instead of percentages for blending...e.g. 1 to 1, 2 to 1, etc.

I try the 1 to 1, blend mixing 20ml of each wine in a glass. I like this blend. It seems that the Malvasia floral components mask some of the aggressive grassiness of the SB and adds some interesting components to the flavors and smooths out the rough finish.

I wonder if the addition of some acid will help? I add a few grains of Tartaric acid to the glass and taste... seems the acid makes the blend taste thinner? anyway this does not seem to be a good direction to go...

Next I try a 2 to 1 blend of SB to Malvasia. I think this blend is OK, but not as good as the 1 to 1 blend... The idea would be to see how much Malvasia it takes to get a good blend. {It will always be the case where you have a good wine and question how much you are willing to add to a lessor wine to make it better...}

So for now a 1 to 1 blend seems like the right direction, but I have one other white wine, a Pinot Grigio to try in a blend... So a few more trail blending sessions are needed before any decisions are made.....

....And the left over blending wines were consumed with dinner!