Niagara from Start to Finish

I bought my juice at Debonne Vineyards. www.debonne.com








09/24





10/24








11/16






11/20



11/22






11/25






12-02








12/07








Now it's bulk aging in the corner, covered up.


Just thought it might be good to see how it progressed in one post.

That's a work of art Martina! Have you tasted it yet? Do you generaly like Niagra?

Very nice Martina. lovely color. I might have missed it on an earlier post but was this 5 gal pure juice, what was the PH, acid. etc from the vineyard. and had you planned to Cold Stabilize from the start. Sorry for all the ques. Oh, what does the juice come with? ie. Yeast. etc.


Bill

Nice job Martina and great pictures as always!

Super job on the wine and the posts Martina. How was the wine?

Waldo,


well, I will be honest, it's sour-tasting to me. I am going to try to bulk age it for a few months and see in which direction it goes. I think I'm going to sweeten this one up a bit.





Bill,


the wine was from pure juice I got at a local vineyard. I started with 6 gallons, ended up with 5. I did not plan to cold-stabilize it from the start. It was more of an experiment than anything. I'm glad I did it. I bought the juice only. It didn't come with anything else. I added some sugar at the beginning to get the SG up a little, and I unfortunately did not check the pH until a while into the fermentation. I will ask the vineyard, though. It'd be good to know. I used Lalvin 72B-1122 yeast.





Rule_G,


this is my first try at Niagara grape wine. I had the vineyard's own ferment, and it was very sweet, fruity and wonderful. That's sort of why I'm leaning towards sweetening it up. I want to see in which direction it will go before I do so. I know quite a bit of my wines have had very different tastes to them after a year of aging (usually in the bottle, not carboy). I want to do this one "right."





Masta,


thank you as always for your kind comments.

Did you taste the wine throughout the process????Do you think cold stabilization changed the flavor??? Would be interesting to know....the Wild Plum Wine [Plum Wild] that I cold stabilized has to get sweetened, it seems very tart, but those wild plums are very astringent....You would think that Niagara grapes would be fairly sweet.....but some wines barely taste like the fruit....Would you ever consider putting oak in it??? Or not at this point???
Keep us posted..will be interesting to see how it mellows.

Sorry, NW, I just saw your question now.





Yes, I did take nip now and then throughout the process of the wine.


Tonight, due to your post, I did as well.





I cold stabilized roughly a month ago. Yes, I think the cold-stabilization process changed the taste - for the better, though. It was very sour before I put it out in the cold, and now it seems to have mellowed out a little. It's not so harsh as it was one month ago. This, however, could be due to the longer aging. I started this wine at the end of September, it was finished fermenting about a month later. I used Lalvin-72B-1122 yeast. I still think I will sweeten it up. If I can wait til Feb (my goal, ultimately March, but I know myself), I will probably taste and sweeten then.


Would I put oak in it? I don't know. I'm not too knowledgeable about oaking wines (i.e. how it changes the taste), but I think if I had the choice, I might do it with oak next year. Just a few cubes, or a handful of chips maybe. I have yet to (conciously) taste an "oaky" wine, so it's hard to say.





I will keep you posted. Thank you very much for the inquiry!





Martina