I thought this article made for good reading. The U.S. wine and grape industry contributes $162 billion (USD) annually. Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/17/BUGSMNK5807.DTL
I’ll admit that I’m no expert (yet) when it comes to making wine. But here’s one lesson that I learned that I felt was worth sharing with others.
When it comes down to pressing your grapes, you may not need to buy or rent a press. In the fall of 2005 I made my first batch of wine from fresh grapes. I purchased about 100# of Frontenac grapes from a local vineyard and got them started fermenting sometime in late September. A few days later, I happily plunked down something like $60 to rent a grape press. It was one of the ratcheting type presses. I took it home and proceeded to scoop the grapes and skins into it from the primary fermenter. What I soon realized is that there was not nearly the volume of grapes/skins there for the press to actually be able to do it’s thing. After a few frustrating moments (and thoughts about pouring $60 down the drain), I began to scoop the skins back out and into a cheesecloth bag that I have. I then squeezed the bag over the primary for a while alternately opening the bag up, fluffing up the pomace and squeezing again. This worked just fine and I now know I won’t be renting a press for any small volume batches of wine I make.
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This past weekend I pulled out a bottle of one of my favorite wines - a 2000 Benziger Old Vine Zinfandel. Back in 2001 I bought a case of it and have been slowly working my way through it. Saturday evening I opened the bottle at a friends place and right away knew something wasn’t right.
First off, I noticed the color seemed to have a very slight bronze or brownish note to it. Then when I tasted it I immediately could tell that this bottle was past it’s prime. The over the top jammy spiciness of the wine was gone which revealed too much alcohol and not much body. To say I was bummed out would be an understatement.
The first thing I did once back home Sunday night was to grab another bottle of the same case and happily this bottle was much better. It had certainly aged but at a much slower rate than the bottle from Saturday. So I guess I’ll be working my way through the rest of that case this fall.
Some of you might be wondering - what is grapelog? Well, it’s the result of my experiences working on www.bluedoorvineyard.com combined with the great people that have used that site over time. When it came right down to it, most site users want to read new content whether it be in the form of updated pages, new issues of my newsletter or anything else. NEW content has always been the key to the site.
Grapelog is my way of combining my love of grape growing, winemaking and wine into one destination for myself and the legions (;-)) of loyal followers that www.bluedoorvineyard.com had. So bookmark the new url - www.grapelog.com and keep coming back for more. Oh and if you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter - you can do so on our Newsletter page.
Don
