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Making Wine: Reflections From a Homebrewer’s 2nd Wine Season – Part 1

Part 1: What to Do with 7 Gallons of Cabernet Franc?

Hello.

I’m Rob. You may have met me if you’ve wandered back to the Draft counter for CO2 refills or for help with your setting up, upgrading, or troubleshooting your draft system. I was a cook and a chef for 20 years before I switched over to working in the world of beer. I started working at Steinbart’s in June of 2019 after my position at a commercial brewery was downsized/eliminated for budget reasons. So 2019 was my first wine season at Steinbart’s

I’ve enjoyed drinking wine much longer than I have enjoyed drinking beer, which is funny, since beer became my career after I retired as a chef for physical and family reasons. I hated beer in college. It turns out that what I really didn’t like at the time was domestic lagers. I found that malty craft ales, preferably on the higher ABV scale, were much more my style and my entry into beer exploration. I’ve been homebrewing for seven years now, with a year and half or work in a professional brewery and going on a year and a half now as a Steinbart Draft Technician.

I started off drinking mostly white wine: Rieslings and and other sweeter varieties. I eventually transitioned into mostly drinking reds, with their added layers of complexity and body once I developed a pallet for their more tannic aspect. After meeting my wife, I was introduced to the weekly wine group she had been a part of for years. The kind of group where people would show up at the wine shop and order some food and the week’s flight of wines, and then line up several bottles brought from people’s wine cellars as “the extras” for everyone to taste. Between that opportunity to sample so many different wines each week (and ones that were a bit out of my own more limited price range), and nine years of working at an Italian inspired restaurant where I would run down the wine lists with the bartenders, owners, and the executive chef, my pallet and wine knowledge increased greatly.

But only from a consumer’s standpoint. I really didn’t know all that much from a vintner’s perspective on how the wine was actually made. I mean, I understood on a very general sense, but only very general. I had a wonderful French chef at culinary college, who was a Sommelier at one of the big downtown hotels in Denver, cover a lot of the background of grape varietals, wine regions, etc., but I didn’t really know much about the mechanics and the chemistry involved in the process.

Which meant that last wine season, when someone forfeited their deposit on 100 pounds of Cabernet Franc grapes, I jumped at the opportunity to switch from a more theoretical/book knowledge of how to make wine to try and actually go from grapes to bottle. I had some help from some other staff members that had plenty of wine experience. I ended up with over eight and a half gallons of juice after pressing, which I fermented with two packets of Vintner’s Harvest R56 – Full Bodied Red yeast. That turned into a 6 gallon carboy, two 1 gallon jugs, and a 1/2 gallon jug for secondary fermentation. There were some learning experiences along the way, like the fact that filling the carboys all the way up to the neck was great for limiting the surface area susceptible to air exposure, but not so great when you realize that you didn’t leave enough room to get two packs of malolactic yeast in with the wine before you got that far up the neck (if you didn’t add malolactic while the grapes were still on the skins). After racking off of the sediment, I now have a 6 gallon carboy full up to the vent bung, which means probably six and a half to seven gallons of wine ready to bottle. Most people bottled back in the spring or summer, but I have a one-and-a-half year old toddler, so my free time for fermentation projects is much more limited than I would ideally prefer. At last taste, it was quite enjoyable as a young, not yet fully ready, medium bodied wine.

Enter the wine season of 2020. We’ll just skip over the rest of 2020. Seriously. Can we move on already? What a year this has been.

Anyway. In talking to Tom earlier in the year, he told me that Cabernet Franc, which is typically a blending grape (this I knew), was usually served as a table wine if bottled as a single varietal, and typically is best within the first two or three years of being bottled (this I didn’t know). It just doesn’t have as much body and acidity as some of the other big red grapes to give it an extended shelf life. So I decided that to give myself more time to enjoy that seven or so gallons of wine (so I’m not drinking the same thing every week when I’m not drinking beer), I would try making another batch of wine this year, with more full-bodied grapes, and I would blend some of the 2020 grapes with my 2019 Cab Franc to be able to store it for a longer period.

Cabernet Franc is often one of the grapes used in French Bordeaux wines, although usually as a smaller percentage of the wine, so I thought I would get other grapes that were typically in Bordeaux blends, ferment everything separately, bottle about a third to half of each grape as a single varietal, and then blend the rest to taste. After doing some research, and seeing which grapes our growers were going to have available, I decided I would get one 34 pound box of Petite Verdot, two 34 pound boxes of Merlot, and two 34 pound boxes of Cabernet Sauvignon. Petite Verdot is sometimes as little as only 2% of a Bordeaux blend, but I was limited to the preset quantities, and I wasn’t going to try and buy several hundred pounds of grapes to get the percentage of the blend lower.

It was a nice plan, while it lasted…

Join me next weekend for Part 2 in this series: Time to Get the Grapes and Start Fermenting Doing Math…

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Wine with Natasha – The Plan(s)

Once I’d decided on Sauvignon Blanc, and mysteriously convinced Chip (pictured below) to join me in this quest, it was time to figure out what the heck to do.

First, I had to commit to the juice before it sold out. From working here last season and paying attention when Tom, John, Mark, and other wine-makers talk wine, I knew I had to commit to six or seven gallons of juice if I wanted to end up five gallons of wine. I decided on six gallons. Juice is expensive, and I was willing to bet six was enough. So, like everyone else who wants/wanted grapes or juice, I put a pre-order in online. I probably could have, since I work here, just let my bosses know I wanted an order, but I really didn’t want to risk it being forgotten. Especially after both my previous disappointment over the Lemberger grapes and having committed to making wine publicly.

My coworkers saw my order come in online and thought I was a little weird. But only a little; we’ve been funneling all orders online to the absolute best of our ability for exactly this sort of thing. It keeps everything organized.

Once my order was in, I pretty much immediately reread Tom’s Tips for Techniques, only to realize that since I was getting juice and not grapes, none of that applied to me. Thus I went off to his post on choosing the right yeast for your wine. I also started reading anything I could find in Wine Maker Magazine that seemed relevant to my future undertaking. Then, I made my plan.

Chip looking at the camera sardonically as Tom explains wine to him.

My Original Plan

Here’s what I thought I was going to do: decide on yeast (with Chip) before the juice came in. When the juice arrived, I would take my six gallons of Sauvignon Blanc juice, treat it with potassium metabisulfite, pectic enzyme, and tartaric acid as needed, then separate out a gallon and freeze it. Only then would I pitch my yeast and ferment the other five gallons. My wine would spend two weeks in primary, then I’d move the five gallons of “green” wine to a five gallon glass carboy to think about what it needs to do for several months. If I needed to top up the carboy to make sure the juice was in the neck of the carboy, I’d add enough of the previously frozen juice to do so.

I’d rack to other carboys basically as often as Tom told me I should, topping up with juice as needed. And, based on a recent Wine Maker Magazine article, I would age all of my wine together and (hopefully) bottle in spring. I’d be drinking my own wine on my own patio come International Sauvignon Blanc Day!

What I Actually Did

First, Chip and I did not manage to collaborate on the yeast plan before the juice arrived. In part because, as I mentioned in the previous post in this series, the grapes ripened far faster than I realized they would and the juice appeared at F.H. Steinbart what felt like the day after the decision. (Time really has been extra fuzzy this year.)

Then, as Chip and I talked to Tom (both together and individually), we realized I’d been correct to buy (and advise him to buy) six gallons of juice, I’d been completely wrong about how to handle that juice. My expectation of freezing a gallon of unfermented juice for top ups was completely wrong. Apparently we need to ferment all the wine at the same time, and top up with the “extra” gallon of wine as we go. I knew adding unfermented juice would rev the yeast back up, but I thought that was the goal. Apparently not.

Phew! Newbie mistake avoided!

After that, we discussed fermentation temperature. Tom said we wanted to keep it fermenting fairly cool and slowly. Too warm a ferment will, apparently, strip the delightful fruity notes I love in Sauvignon Blanc. I’m not sure the biochemical ways the yeasts strip such things out when reproducing more aggressively, but I don’t doubt Mr. Thompson in this. Chip said his plan was to keep his primary fermentor surrounded by ice packs. I said my plan was to hope room temperature in my house was enough. We were aiming, it seems, for 65F-70F.

The acid levels in the juice were a bit low, so we needed to add tartaric acid in addition to our pectic enzyme and potassium metabisulfite. I have since lost the calculations, unfortunately, of how much acid we needed to add. So that’s fun. I mean, I added the right amount because Tom and I did it before I left that day, but I still don’t recall how much.

Bummer! Newbie mistake activated!

Chip selected our yeast, Vintner’s Harvest BV7. I don’t know what drove him to settle there, but I am sure it’s gonna result in a tasty wine. Why did I not help select the yeast? Well, for the same reason I’m writing this post up. I work at F.H. Steinbart! I got called in to help with other customers when Chip and Tom started discussing yeasts. It’s cool, though, because I have complete faith in those two. (Chip, please comment and explain why we’re using this yeast. I trust you, but I’d love to know what we’re optimizing for.)

Anyway, I was able to add my tartaric acid, pectic enzyme, and potassium metabisulfite about the same time Chip did, I suspect. There was a short break in customers at the shop not too long after Chip left, and Tom and I were able to measure out my juice and add the appropriate chemicals.

I pitched my yeast the next day, and considered changing my plan to be more like Chip (have ice packs around my fermentor), but after consulting with Tom* I concluded that the weather had changed enough that my home’s temp was probably just fine.

A hand holding a prepared s-shaped airlock and a packed of BV7 yeast above a genesis fermentor.

Later, when I no longer had the ability to gather the items to chill the fermentor, the weather changed dramatically AND due to the fires I was unable to keep my window A/C unit in, so we’ll see. I may have ended up with a bummer of a wine due to an overly-warm ferment. I’ll let you all know.

I’m going to rack it out of primary in the next few days (probably Sunday). I’ll let you know what the vital stats are, and how it tastes once that’s done. I’ll also already have some “lessons learned” to share in the next post, and I’ll be able to give you an update on last year’s red wine.

Please keep your fingers crossed that my wine is still tasty after the unfortunate spike in heat!

Finally, please don’t forget that October 1st (TOMORROW) is the last day to convince me to ferment wine with you too! If that sounds fun, comment on this post or on our social media links by the first, and reserve your Barbera grapes or Reisling juice ASAP.

*I told y’all I’d be asking Tom a lot of questions.

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Wine with Natasha – The Choice

Wine juice delivery. Four men stand on or near a trailer loaded down with 55 gallon drums of wine grape juice and lug boxes containing wine grapes. The foreground is buckets and scales and things to divide the juice among a number of people.

I’m really feeling the maxim, “if you snooze, you lose” right now. I had been a little hesitant to launch this project, and when I finally decided to just commit…

The grapes I wanted were sold out.

I had to scramble to decide what to go with, as I didn’t really have a second choice lined up. I had been thinking an easy, fruity red for the project and Tom had suggested Lemberger for such a wine. Unfortunately, the Lemberger sold out while I was debating myself. None of the other grapes we had available seemed quite so approachable for a near-total beginner.

So, I went a totally different direction. I looked at our grape juices, and contemplated the possible white wines I could make. I have seriously enjoyed Gewürztraminer since I was introduced to it last year, and there’s nothing more delightful than a rosé* on the patio on a hot summer day. But Riesling can be delicious and is one of the latest grapes to ripen, which would give me more time to dive in and learn tons before I ever have to get sticky.

The Choice

In the end the crisp fruity notes of Sauvignon Blanc won out. It’s absolutely one of my favorite white wines; I’ve loved it from just about every region it’s grown. So why NOT try my hand at it?

I have to admit, I am a bit nervous. I don’t want to totally screw up something I like. But, unlike the Lemberger, I have had Sauvignon Blanc before, so the upside is that I’ll have a much better sense of how well I managed to make my wine.

Thus, it’s decided. I’m making Sauvignon Blanc and I’ll post about it here. Chip, who commented on the last post, is joining me.

Now, given agriculture (and my lack of wine grape knowledge), the Sauvignon Blanc grapes ripened and the juice arrived far before I expected. And due to a variety of other factors, I’m just now getting to share this announcement.

So, two things. First, within the next week, I’ll write up what is up with my Sauvignon Blanc and what yeast Chip and I used, and such like.

Second, since part of the goal here was to invite folks to ferment along with me, I thought I’d ask if anyone else would like to join in with different juice or grapes? I am considering making some of that Riesling, since I do enjoy it and it IS a late ripener. I’m *also* considering making Barbera, which I have never had before but will likely hit the same notes I was looking for when considering the Lemberger.

Both grapes should ripen in early October, so we have a little bit of time to decide. If you are interested in joining me, comment on this post, or on one of our social media channels, by October 1st 2020. But, since this is agriculture and the grapes dictate everything, please know that sooner is better for such a commitment. I could get unlucky again and have the grapes ripen faster than expected.

If someone does wish to make Riesling and/or Barbera with me, I’ll absolutely do some of the wine they are interested in fermenting. If not, I may or may not make more wine, but I won’t write up anything beyond the Sauvignon Blanc if I do decide to make something else.

No matter what, it’s bound to be interesting.

 

*Ok, technically not a white wine, but we’re selling it as juice, so that’s where it’s categorized.

 

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Wine with Natasha – Prologue

A bright & sunny vineyard with ripe red wine grapes. Under the grapes there is text saying "Learning Wine Season 2020."

Introduction

It’s wine time and I work in one of the world’s most amazing wine supply shops in one of the world’s most amazing wine regions. I enjoy wine. So, reasonably, people think I have extensive knowledge of making wine. They assume I make great wine. And they are, sadly, not totally correct. I’ve only attempted to make wine once so far, and I am not confident that wine will be good, much less great. 

I don’t really know how to make wine. Yet.

Last Year

My only experience making wine came last year, when I lucked into enough grapes to make about three gallons of a Malbec and Cabernet Franc blend. I carefully punched down the skins twice a day for ten days, then racked it into a three-gallon glass carboy, and then sat back to wait for the next step. I was pretty sure the next step was malolactic fermentation (“MLF”), but I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t know when to start it if that was the next step.

Then my life got rather topsy-turvy, and in all honesty I didn’t think about that wine again until about January of this year. And our expert, Tom, told me to rack it into a new carboy, sulfite it  and not expect too much. I followed his directions, and (as one always should) I sampled the wine as I moved it.

It isn’t vinegar*. I think that’s the best thing I can say about what I made. I currently have not quite three gallons of flabby, insipid, alcoholic grape juice. Some of this, undoubtedly, is that Cabernet blends require a substantial amount of aging**. But no doubt some is the result of my forgetting the wine for months. (I still haven’t managed the MLF.) Finally, I also think some of that is that I didn’t so much choose a yeast basically because the person who gave me a few grapes shrugged and said, “Use this one,” handed it to me, and wandered off. (I used Red Star Premier Classique.)

Three wine glasses on a stark white backround. The middle is on its side and has red wine gently lying in the bowl of the glass. It is not spilled. The image says "Goals!" in handwriting.

This Year

This year, I’m going to do it differently. This year, I’m going to do it intentionally. This year, I’m doing some research (mostly picking Tom’s brain and reading the things he writes and our copies, new and old, of Wine Maker Magazine) before I buy grapes or juice. Then more research as I work and things ferment. (Tom will be fielding questions from me for months, and I’ll be reading Wine Maker Magazine or the various books we carry) And this year, I’ll document the technique(s) here on the F.H.S. blog. Hopefully this year will be a great deal better.

But I’ll be learning publicly, and so any successes or trip-ups will be documented here.

Socially Distant Together?

I’ll announce the grapes I’m buying next week. I’ll post If anyone wants to do a ferment-a-long, comment here. Anyone who wants to do so is welcome, newbies and experts alike. And it’d be fun, I think, to hear how others’ fermenting is going. Maybe we can build a little wine community and stay safely socially distant. (Thanks 2020.)

Join or not, I hope you’ll follow along. If you have comments, feel free to share them. Or let us know your thoughts on FacebookInstagram, or Twitter.

*This is of extra concern for me because my favorite thing to make is actually vinegar.

**I did not know this when I started this project.

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Why Does Cork Stain?

Three used wine corks side by side. The right cork is clean, the middle cork is highly stained with red wine, and the third cork has no staining and has markings from a commerical winery.

Welcome to a new series, “Tom Talks Wine.” Last month we introduced Tom, who has been making wine for 50 years! Figuring all that time has to lead to some useful knowledge, we have wrangled him into a once a month column on wine. He starts with a question about cork stains and corking.

Dear Tom,

Over my life I’ve been lucky enough to befriend many home winemakers. This has resulted, of course, in my receiving numerous bottles at various points. I have begun to wonder about the process from grape to glass. Enough that I’ve started my first batch of red wine myself.

As it’s getting on to bottling time, I have been noticing that some corks in homemade wine look soaked through and some do not. Since I never see it in commercial wine, I’m assuming this is one of those things that homemakers do “wrong” somehow. I’ve attached a photo to show what I mean.

What’s going on to cause these stains, and how can I avoid them when I bottle?

Thanks!

Wondering about Winemaking in Washington

Hi Wondering,

You are correct. Something the winemaker did at home caused this. I have a few ideas of what probably happened, but first a little cork history.

Cork is the spongy bark of certain oak trees (typically Quercus suber) that are twenty-five years old or more. Q. suber does not take well to cultivation so the plains of Portugal, the largest producer of cork, are not covered with tidy rows of cork trees like a palm oil plantation. They are haphazard and therefore production is limited. Demand for cork is not. Almost everyone making wine wants cork. The screw cap is gaining in popularity and may help reduce demand in the future. The best corks come from old trees whose bark is the densest and thickest with few flaws (gaps, holes, etc). These are the most sought after and expensive.

Home wine makers rarely get the best corks simply because we don’t want to pay for the best corks. So we use corks with a lot of flaws. We can also be sloppy about how we fill and treat our wines at bottling. Overfilling (less than an inch of wine below the cork) can result in barometric pressure pushing the wine out. Not letting the bottle rest upright for at least 24 (but 48 hours is better) after bottling is also important, as it lets the air pressure within the bottle equalize with the air outside. This rest period also allows the surface of the cork to dry, which prevents wicking of the wine through a wet cork.

Thus, the answer to your question is three-fold. The bottle of wine was overfilled and the compressed air inside was not allowed to equalize, pushing the wine through the cork. Further, the freshly inserted cork did not get sufficient time to dry out before being laid on its side and wine began to wick out. Finally, the winemaker used too narrow of a cork. The less expensive hand corkers do not handle the larger corks very well.  The wider the cork and the less flaws the less wicking and tighter the fit.

Notice how many gaps, slits and holes are in the stained cork. The other two do not show these faults. All too often bottling a wine is the last thing home winemakers do and it’s where they decide to be tight with their money. Quality corks cost.  Even commercial wineries spend as much as $1.00 – $1.50 for a single cork.  If this cost is too high for the home winemaker there will always be some risk of leaking or even wine loss.

Tom

Have a wine question for Tom? Send an email to info@fhsteinbart.com and we’ll work on wrangling him into answering it.

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Meet Our Staff: Natasha Godard

What Do You Like To Make?
While I enjoy brewing beer and I’m looking forward to learning to make wine, my current fermentation obsession is vinegar. I had already decided to attempt beer vinegar long before I started at FHS, but this job definitely accelerated my experiments, since we sell vinegar mothers. It wasn’t too long before I’d started red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, and apple cider vinegar. Since then, I’ve been given other beverages to vinegar-ize, and those are definitely going strong too. I am most looking forward to my marionberry wine vinegar finishing up. For those who are interested and can make it into the shop, I leave samples of my red wine vinegar and my beer vinegar behind the counter.

What Do You Like Most About Your Job @ FH Steinbart?
It’s a tie between helping customers with their problem-solving, which is incredibly satisfying, or all the new knowledge that’s being crammed into my cranium just by virtue of being here. This is pretty convenient since one leads to being more effective at the other.

How Do You Like To Spend Your Free Time?
I have a number of pastimes. Some are rather seasonal. I love being outside in nice weather, for example, but the grey and rainy Portland winters drive me indoors almost completely. Luckily, things like reading can be done in both locations. I also enjoy board games, cooking, and engaging in new hobbies to see what sticks. As you can read above, vinegar stuck. I’m now eyeballing our cheese-making kits to see about that…

What’s the Life Arc That Brought You To Portland?
I grew up in New Mexico and find myself in Portland by way of D.C., Baltimore, and Chicago. I got myself a M.Sc. in Biology while I was living in D.C. and Baltimore, and landed in Chicago to continue that path. Somehow, though, I ended up a Certified Cicerone® rather than a biologist. Though, to be honest, that biology education comes in handy on a regular basis. I landed at FHS because Mark mentioned a job opening. I had brewed a little bit of beer back in Chicago, but I got out of the habit. I figured a good way to get back in the habit and learn more about brewing as I consider studying for Advanced Cicerone® was landing the job here. I had nooooo idea how correct that was, and I’m extremely glad I’m here now.