Fully Ripe Concord Grapes Await the Crusher

The 2003 Harvest is Here. NOW WHAT?

While bone-dry 2002 will likely be remembered as a great vintage in Virginia, this year, 2003, has been a struggle in the vineyard to bring grapes to ripeness. Wet spring weather caused buds to rot or fruit to set unevenly. A continually wet growing season meant little opportunity to spray or manage canopy, opening the opportunity for mildews and molds of all sorts to take hold. A drippingly humid ripening season has led to all forms of leaf, berry and bunch rots. As of this writing, we have had a relatively rain-free week, and there is some hope that we may be entering Virginia’s more normal, dry, late-summer weather pattern. There is still hope! But what should you do if the fruit you pick this year is less than perfect—as it is bound to be.

We winemakers are optimists. If the grape clusters are full of sour rot, we just cut it out and make wine with the rest. If the sugar levels are too low, well, we can always add sugar—just as the “country” winemakers have always done. If acids are too high we can dilute the juice a bit, and if it’s too low, we can add some acid in. And if the grapes are all eaten up by the birds, well, we’ll just buy some wine kits and see what we can do with those! We will make wine, by golly, and it will be good!

Here are some tips and novel ideas for how to make the best wine in a bad, or mediocre, vintage.

v     Don’t add sugar to bring your Brix level up, use wine grape concentrate! Weekend Brewer sells simple concentrates by the can or bottle, but you can also get a wine kit and use the concentrate in the kit! For this application, I would choose an inexpensive 4-week kit made from a similar or the same type of grape. Just add a little to your must and stir thoroughly, then read your Brix or specific gravity. Repeat until you are at the desired sugar level.

Keith Andrews Crushing Concord

v     Are acids too high in your under ripe grapes? Don’t water down your wine to reduce acid levels. Again, use a concentrate or kit to ameliorate the acids in your must. Choose a concentrate that was likely made from California Central Valley grapes, or which is in a low-acid style. Dilute to the proper concentration (according to the instructions with a kit, or to 22 degrees Brix in the case of bottled or canned concentrate). Then add small amounts and check TA, incrementing the amount of diluted concentrate until you reach the total acidity you wish. If you’re not into titration, use your taste buds, keeping in mind that the sweetness of the must will “tone down” acid, and you may need to reduce it further than you think for the finished wine to be balanced.

2003 Viognier Ripening (and Rotting) on the vine.

v     If acids are high, but the sugar is high enough to make sound wine (at least 19 degrees Brix), go ahead and make the wine. At the same time, make up a high quality (6- or 8-week) kit of the same or similar variety. Alternatively, you can choose a complementary variety. For example, if your fresh must is cabernet sauvignon, you might select a good merlot or shiraz/syrah kit, since these grapes blend very well. Make the two wines, but add a little less water to the kit. This will bring the alcohol level in the kit to a bit above normal. Allow the wines to bulk age normally. Before bottling, test blends of different proportions of the wines in small batches using a measuring cup. When you find a blend that works well, go ahead and make it on the larger batch level. Just make sure the final alcohol content of the blend is sufficient for the type of wine you are trying to make. Then bottle and enjoy!

Viognier in Lug…on its Way to Making Wine!

Here are some other things to think about when the vintage isn’t great.

v     Take the time to pick out the rotten, shriveled, or questionable berries from each bunch. The extra time can save your whole batch.

v     Plan on making fresher, fruitier wines rather than big, complex ones.

v     Assume that your wines may need to be drunk younger than usual. You can make decent wines from bad grapes, but it’s hard to make long-lived wines that are really worth waiting for.

v     If there is a lot of rot on your grapes, increase sulfite levels and decide to forgo malolactic fermentation.

v     Check Ph. Really wet seasons can lead to both high total acidity and relatively high Ph. Even if bringing down Ph means increasing total acidity, you may want to do that, because it is hard to make healthy, sound wine from must with a high Ph.

Pinot Noir on Picking Day

Here’s a novel idea worth trying!

If you are one of the many folks who likes to make wine both from fresh grapes and from kits, then here’s is a way to make a way-better-than-normal red kit wine this Fall. After you finish pressing a red wine, take the pomace cake and put it into a big plastic bag and stick it into a deep freezer (or, if there is room, in the freezer compartment of your fridge). Next time you want to make a red kit wine from the same or similar variety of grape, dilute the concentrate as per instructions, then add the defrosted skins and seeds (and maybe a few stems) to your primary fermenter. Punch down the cap a couple times a day. As fermentation slow way down, rack the wine out from under the pomace cap into a clean carboy. You have just made a red kit wine that will benefit from the extraction of color, tannins, and other phenolic compounds in a way that wine kits cannot duplicate. It’s bound to be a better kit wine by far.

Virginia Wines of the Month

Lake Anna Vineyard, in Spotsylvania County, just above the north shore of Lake Anna, wins my kudos this month. Their inexpensive, and widely available Lakeside Red is a real treat. It will not be to everybody’s liking, however. This wine is made mostly or entirely from Muscat Hamburg grapes, also known as Black Muscat in California and Australia. Muscats are probably the oldest cultivated grapes in the world. They exude a perfumed, spicy and fruity essence. These black Muscat grapes are used mostly for the table in Europe, but elsewhere, many have learned that they can make powerfully rich and enticing port-style liqueur wines. Lake Anna’s offering isn’t one of these. Instead, it is a simple, very attractive picnic wine that oozes ripe, exotic fruit and spice. It is lightly sweet, not at all cloying. This is a great wine to take, slightly cooled, on an especially romantic picnic that includes some really nice, flavorful cheeses and spicy meats. If you are someone who insists that you just don’t like any sweet red wines, you owe it to yourself to give Lakeside Red a fair trial. Lighten up. Loosen up. You might enjoy it. If not, send me the rest of the bottle, because I surely WILL enjoy it!

Wine Kit Review

I was really saddened to find out that Brew King has dropped the North Coast Monterrey Bay Pinot Noir from its Selection Estate Series offerings. I suppose the grapes were simply no longer available at a profitable price. I have made three different batches of this very fine wine over the past few years, It ages very nicely into a rich, fully fruited, complex, aromatic wine. This is surely one of the gems of the kit-wine universe. I don’t know if there are any left in the warehouse, but if you like top-notch California-style Pinot noir, try to find one of these kits.

Comments? Questions? Write me at dan.mouer@verizon.net