| MAIN PAGE |
| The Wine Page |
| Ingredients |
| Wine Equipment |
Dan’s Cellar Notes
If you are interested in joining with other Richmond-area winemakers to form an informal club or interest group, please send me your name, phone number, and e-mail address. Send it to dan.mouer@verizon.net
, or call me at 804 233-2824. Please leave a message if I’m not there to answer the phone.
Wine kits have improved by a very large measure in recent years. Last month, I hope I convinced you that wine kits can make very good wine! I also mentioned that I remain somewhat skeptical about making wine by explicitly following the directions that come with the kits. This month I would like to elaborate on that statement a bit.
When I first discovered wine kits, I used them pretty much as simply a source for grape juice to take the place of my previous source of fresh grapes, which had dried up! The idea that I could get juice from grapes from wine-growing regions throughout the world was (and still is!) exciting to me. When I could, I bought those five- and six-gallon buckets containing frozen or sterilized juice, but sometimes I simply bought a kit, diluted it, and treated it like straight juice. That meant making a test of total acidity with an acid-test kit, and checking brix (sugar content) with a hydrometer. I then balanced acids and sugars by adding acid blend or dissolved sugar, as needed, and as suitable for the style of wine I had in mind. If acid were too high, I would ameliorate by adding sugar water.
I then pitched the yeast of my choice--rarely the one that came with the kit--and let primary fermentation go to completion. Then I would rack to secondary and, if I wanted a wine with the benefits of sur lie aging, I’d leave it be for several months, simply stirring the fine lees from time to time. If oak aging seemed appropriate, I added either French or American oak chips. The next racking took place when oak or lees aging or clarification was complete. In fact, I still treat the vast majority of my kit wines this way. No matter that the raw material begin as a :”four-week,” “six-week,” or “eight-week” wine kit, my whites generally don’t make it into the bottle in less than nine months. Reds generally age in bulk for a year-and-a-half to two years.
But then I began reading columns and articles by Tim Vandegrift in WineMaker Magazine. WineMaker is an excellent bi-monthly aimed at the amateur winemaker. Vandegrift is Technical Services Manager for Brew King, a major manufacturer of kits. He often stresses the importance of following precisely directions that come with wine kits. Well, thought I, I am way too good for slavish adherence to written instructions! I would throw away the envelope of bentonite that came with the kits, along with the envelope of potassium sorbate, a preservative. I was not interested in vigorously stirring my wines to de-gas them, because I knew damn well that proper bulk aging would take care of that. Sometimes I would (and do) use the isinglass or chitosan final finings, but not often. Again, I learned that fining is meant to clearing wines only if you are too impatient to wait for gravity, or you have a problem wine that needs extra help.
Well, call me foolish. Tim Vandegrift’s writings, and my own flubbed efforts, have taught me that I cannot treat diluted kit juice simply as though it were freshly pressed grape juice. Instead, it is a well designed—one might say engineered—material designed to make a very specific product. Among the hard lessons I learned was this one. My total acidity titrations often gave readings that seemed inordinately low—even though my taste buds suggested there was ample acid in the juice. On a couple occasions, I “corrected” the juice, only to end up with over-acid wine. Later, I read one of Vandegrift’s columns, which stated that false readings should be expected when making TA titrations on wine kits. Hmmmmm.
A little over a year ago I made a kit wine—a high-end 8-week kit of Washington State Riesling. The wine came with all the usual add-ins: bentonite, metabisulfite, sorbate, and a strange extra bag of juice to be added after fermentation was complete and the wine had been stabilized. This “sweet reserve,” I gathered, contained sweet Riesling juice, along with more stabilizers (sorbate and meta). I tossed all these extra things in the trash, except for the meta, which I would use anyway. In trying to make an authentic German-style Riesling, I carefully watched the gravity, and when it fell to about 1.012, I rushed the carboy to a refrigerator and “crashed” the temperature down to about 32. This is a traditional technique to kill the yeast, stop fermentation, and leave residual sugar in the wine. After careful cold-stabilization and racking, I bottled my wine. It was delicious. In fact, it won a gold medal in WineMaker Magazine’s Amateur Winemaker competition,
However, the wine, which I allowed to bulk age for nearly a year before bottling, was all given away over Christmas, When I realized I had none left, I was heartsick. I ordered another kit, and, since I was in a hurry (and, frankly, curious) I decided to follow the instructions. I used the bentonite. I followed the prescribed racking schedule. I de-gassed, stabilized, fined, and added the sweet reserve as instructed. The wine cleared beautifully. I bottled it inside of six weeks! A few weeks later I cracked open a bottle. It was just as good as the first batch! The directions had produced an excellent wine.
Since then, I have produced several more wines by following the kit instructions, and each has been very good. What’s more, they have reached the point where they can be bottled much, much more quickly than I am used to. And so I will concede two points: the better kits (premium products from top-notch manufacturers) make very good wine, and they make it quickly. All you have to do it follow the directions. Second: If you don’t understand what goes into the kits, deviating from directions can lead to less-than-optimal results.
Having said that, I am still very happy with most of my more conventionally made wines. I have often added tannin, or additional oak, or used my own choice of yeast, or provided for lengthy sur lie aging, or blended wines before bottling, and, as a result, I have made my wines from the kits. As a generalization, I think that the kits are designed to make good, young-drinking, well-balanced wines, not grand crus estate-bottle quality wines, or even simple “keeping” wines meant to mature for several years in the cellar.
In summary, I would say that, unless you learn a good bit about what goes into kits, just following directions is probably the safest and most expedient route to good results. On the other hand, if you take the time to learn what goes into the design of wine kits, and you have pretty good experience making wine from juice or fresh grapes, you can—within limits—treat kit juice like “real” grape juice, and make it into whatever sort of wine suits your fancy. Do feel free to experiment with wine kits, but, to avoid some serious problems, I recommend you follow the writings, past and future, of Tim Vandegrift and other wine writers with ample kit-wine experience and technical expertise.