The Vineyard Report
October
candle winner: waltmanappraiser@comcast.net |
October,
2004 Vol 4, No. 9 |
Short crop in the Vineyard this yearOur vineyard season has finished quite quickly this year. The last two very cold winters have reduced our crop somewhat and we sold out of everything. .
The Vineyard is now closed for the season
October in the vineyard can be very beautiful. The color of the leaves on the vines start to change color slightly and drop off. After a hard freeze most of the leaves quickly fall off.
Many people mistakenly assume that you need a frost to ripen the grapes. This is completely untrue. Grapes ripen due to the sun hitting the leaves. If the leaves are burned off by a freeze and are no longer there - we have no increase in sugar levels in the grapes. The grapes just hang there on the vines and will start to deteriorate - Although they are much easier to see and pick!
End of Season Information - Quite often people ask us to return after we are closed to "glean" the rest of the grapes from the vines - looking for a discounted price. We do not allow this and usually there is nothing left. When the vineyard is closed (in Mid-October) we have to use all of our time to complete the rest of our Honey harvest and get the honeybees ready for winter. Please come early and pick your grapes.
Making Red Wine at Honeyflow Farm
Many people ask us how much wine we make a year and it varies from none to 50 gallons or so. I usually take what is left after the customers pick everything. This year the crop was short so I did not make any wine. Last year I made 10 gallons of a Foch-Baco combination. We started with about 4 bushels of 50% Baco and 50% Marechal Foch black grapes. These are crushed, de-stemmed and 15 cambden tablets were crushed and added to the must.
"Must" is the winemakers term for the mass of crushed grapes.
The grapes are put into a large fermentor. Almost anything will work except metal, although stainless steel is great. Many people use new plastic containers or barrels with the end off.
The sugar is now adjusted. The brix was 18 (specific gravity of 1.074) which would ferment out to about 9.5% alcohol and I wanted to correct it to make a 11% wine. Going to the sugar conversion chart it showed that I needed 3.9 oz per gallon of sugar to add. I estimated about 10 gallons of final wine = 10 x 3.9 = 39 oz or about 2.5 lbs. In this case I went over to our bulk honey tank, put 2.5 lbs of honey in a pail, added a gallon of the juice, mixed it together so the honey is dissolved and then added it to the must.
Then I checked the sugar level again with my hydrometer to make sure that it went up to the 1.090 or 20 brix that I was aiming for.
So, now we have the crushed and de-stemmed grapes with the sugar adjusted and sulphite (cambden tablets) added to kill wild yeast and to help keep the wine from turning into vinegar. At this point many people also check the acidity and sometimes adjust it. I did not do that at this point - it can be done later if necessary. The must is covered with cloth or a top to keep the fruit flies off.
I usually recomend waiting 24 hrs for the cambden tablet to weaken the wild yeast and then adding cultured wine yeast either directly or using a yeast starter.
As things happen around our place, I was so busy that I forgot the wine for a few days and did not add the yeast the next day. 2 days later when the light bulb went on I ran back and added 3 packages of Pasteur Red wine yeast (mixed in a cup of water to re-hydrate the yeast slightly) and mixed it in. The must may have started to ferment already - I wasn't sure.
Anyway, a few days later the must, either fermenting with wild yeast or my cultured wine yeast (or a little of both) was happily fermenting away. The cap, the mass of grapes on the top was pushed back into the juice every day. This keeps these grapes covered with juice and allows the color and flavors to be extracted properly.
After about a week of fermenting on the skins and pushing the cap down it is ready to press.
The grapes are removed with a pail and poured into our old press. We use fiberglass bags in it to help keep the pulp from going through the slats of the press.
The new wine is then poured into 5 gallon carboys with a lot of head space for the foaming wine. After a few weeks the fermentation slows down or stops and the carboys are now filled to the top to keep air away from the wine. Extra wine is left in smaller containers also filled to the top. This is as far as we have gone with this wine this year. In a few months we will rack the wine (siphon it off of the sediment on the bottom).
Maybe in 6 months to a year we will bottle it.
For further information view our downloadable "Winemaking Booklet".
This is a booklet that we hand out at our farm to help winemakers get started.The Vineyard
Winemaking Booklet
Home Wine Making in the East
Mead Making
Winemaking Resources
Winemaker Magazine - Links & More
I just received the lastest issue of WineMaker magazine, and then receive an extra bonus - a copy of Beginner's Guide to Winemaking and Beginner's Guide to Homebrewing.
I highly recommend this magazine to anyone interested in home winemaking.
Here are some things that caught my eye:
Keeping your fermenters cool during warm weather
The right amount of yeast to use
Calculating how many fresh grapes you will need for your batch
Keeping fruit flies at bay during fermentation
Boosting sugar content
Time for Apple Wine
Northern Viticulture
Tips from the Pros
Wine Wizard
Varietal Focus - Chambourcin
Wine Kits
Backyard Vines
Intro to Winemaking
Grape Wine
Country WineGo to their website and subscribe - www.winemakermag.com.
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Here are some other interesting wine related links I found this month:
Wine Cellar Creations - Need a wine cellar, check them out. Pine and Mahogany wine racking systems, Free standing cellar's - Cooling units, Redwood racking - Accessories, Custom wine cellars.
FairWine.com - A collection of home winemaking links
The Fruit Growers News - Table grapes make themselves at home in Idaho!
Wine.com - A great place to purchase wine on line.
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I would like to thank Kathy Lewis for sending us two jars of wonderful grape jelly.
The over twenty varieties of grapes that we grow can make grape jelly making as interesting as grape winemaking. Kathy asked us what she could use to make an exceptional jelly. I recommended trying various varieties and she sent us a jar of a very rich tasting Price/NY Muscat jelly (red) and a Seneca (white) jelly. They were great.
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A plug for 103.1 fm in Flint, Michigan area!
A friend of ours, Carl Coffee stopped by the vineyard last week to pick some grapes to take to a farmers market. Carl is the host of "Coffee Time" on 103.1 fm in our area from 6:00 to 9:00 am. Listen to him on the way in to work every morning.
Pat and I met Carl and his wife at an MSU extension class in small business that we took a few years ago. Carl also sells old varieties of tomatoes at a local farmers market.
October Grape Recipe - Wine Marinated Country Style Ribs
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon dried rosemary leaves, crushed
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 pounds pork country-style ribs, cut into serving pieces
Directions:
1. Heat oil in 1 1/2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Cook rosemary and garlic in oil, stirring frequently, until garlic is golden; remove from heat. Stir in wine, sugar, salt and pepper.2. Place pork in glass dish. Pour wine mixture over pork; turn to coat. Cover and refrigerate 4 hours, turning pork occasionally.
3. Prepare grill, arranging charcoal around edge of firebox. Place drip pan under grilling area.
4. Remove pork from marinade; reserve marinade. Cover and grill pork over drip pan and 4 to 5 inches from medium coals 1 hour 10 minutes, turning occasionally and brushing with marinade, until pork is tender and no longer pink in center. Discard remaining marinade.
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Do you have a great grape recipe - please send it to us and we will put it in our newsletter.
From our readers
This is a section for comments/questions/recipes from our readers. Please read the comments & feel free to put your 2 cents worth in.
Visit the Readers Comments page to view all the content of these messages. Here are samples of this months e-mails:
Grape jelly, •• Shipping Grapes, •• Grape questions, •• Organic Grapes, •• Delaware, •• Wine supplies, •• No Vidal grapes, •• Juice questions, •• Wine using brown sugar, •• Nice website - see you soon!
Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month
Congratulations!
October candle winner: waltmanappraiser@comcast.net
Will this months w*nner,
waltmanappraiser@comcast.net
please contact us and so that I can ship your candles.Our list of previous candle w*nners.
Click below for something silly to end this newsletter with.
Laugh of the month: The System is Down
See You Next Month!
Last Months Newsletter - September, 2004 |
Honeyflow
Farm
4939 Mill Rd. PO Box 275
Dryden, Michigan 48428
(810) 796-2344 (Phone & Fax)
Comments or questions concerning Honeyflow
Farm
should be addressed by clicking on the link: