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!