Making wine is very relaxing for me, there is something therapeutic about taking grape juice, adding yeast and turning it into wine.  Although it does take some time and with kit’s it’s fairly fool proof.  The fool proof part about kits is why I really want to practice the entire procedure as much as possible before the next harvest.  Next harvest I want to dive into using real grapes. Either way making wine is a great way to forget about everything else and get lost in the moment. 

Maybe it’s the part of the process that once everything is finished and bottled that the only thing left to do from there is to drink it, with friends and family.  I think this is the part that is most enjoyable for people.  Taking the fruit’s of one’s labor and sharing them with others.  People tend to have a good time when they are drinking wine which in turn makes them feel good when they think about having a glass of wine.  It’s not so much the wine that you are drinking at the time but being in good company.

The Holiday’s are on their way and this is a great time of year to open a bottle from 2008 and enjoy.  I could definitely go for Thanksgiving dinner right about now along with a bottle of wine, nothing specific comes to mind just something that I can enjoy with those around me. 

I am looking forward to spending the Holiday’s with my friends and family and I hope you are too.  So before you go to your next get together go to the store or your wine rack and grab a bottle to enjoy with everyone!

Fermentation went quite well and if I remember correctly we ended up with an FG reading of .996 or something close to that which is exactly what the instructions called for.  I had faith because in my opinion it’s pretty hard to mess up fermentation unless you really try to.  The yeast naturally want to eat all the sugar and make it into delicious wine. 

I actually have not checked on the wine in a few weeks but I am assuming it’s still the same as the last time I checked…hopefully.  After fermentation stopped roughly 14 days, we racked the wine out of the primary into a glass carboy as the secondary.  It went well, the grape skins were easier to deal with than expected, they all stayed in the primary and didn’t clog the drain too bad.  After moving into the secondary we added the stabilizing agents and clearing agents that came with the kit and degassed it for a good 15 minutes.  We used the vinuvac and brute strength to get as much gas as we could out the wine.  We will probably degass a little more once the wine has finished clearing.

There is about a 2-3 inch layer of sediment in the bottom of the carboy and the wine has a deep purple color which is looking great.  I don’t have my notes in front of me so I don’t know the exact date that we will be racking it off the lees and into another carboy to bulk age. 

The kit came with 2 hungarian oak staves that we are saving for bulk aging, depending on how the wine tastes after secondary.  I have heard that some have had trouble getting the staves out after aging with them as they swell up when they are put in the wine, but we will see.

Anyways, check back soon, we are going to try and do some updates about wine in general while we are still in secondary fermentation.  We promise to get pictures up soon.

Mike and David

The last time I used a kit,  it did not have skins and I was and still am fairly dissapointed with how it turned out.  I would like to think that I made everything right but it seems a little light on the body.  But that is old news and the new news will be the wine that is fermenting now.

We took our time and made sure that we did everything we could to ensure great results.  After mixing the water (4 liters) with the bentonite, we only had to add alittle bit of water to bring it to 6 US gallons.  After mixing everything for a few minutes we took the SG.  Our SG was right in the target area at 1.106 which should result in a wine with just over 14% ABV. 

I have not tinkered with any of the kits I have made in the past but for this one I made a starter with some of the must to get the yeast going.  That seemed to help out tremendously.  After about an hour in the starter the yeast was going crazy so I poured that into the must and everything got off to a great start.

Of course we had to be drinking some wine while we were making wine so we picked up an inexpensive bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz.  I actually have never had a grenache before and I couldn’t find any right off the bat while at the store so we settled on the shiraz since we were using shiraz skins with the grenache.  I compared the nose of the shiraz to the must and it seemed fairly similar.  It was very fruit forward and a great drinking wine.  Of course I expect our Grenache to be a higher quality than the Yellow Tail. 

We also took a little sample of the must and tasted it.  Of course it tasted like grape juice for the most part but there were also similar notes in the must as the shiraz, so that was very encouraging.  I could even detect some tannins in the juice even before it has had any exposure to the grape skins. 

I have been punching down twice a day now and everything looks great.  The cap on it is getting bigger each day and it should be going strong for another week or so, I think, considering we only just started day 3 of fermentaion. 

We’ll be back with another update in a few days so please check back soon.  We’ll also be adding pictures of this adventure!