Can this "Mixed Marriage" work?

Can this marriage of European grapes and American grapes cross the cultural divide to achieve harmony? Stay tuned!



Added my yeast starter this morning to a must for a wine I'm calling "Mixed Marriage" - two 2-year-old WineXpert white wine kits hydrated to 10 gallons, plus 35 pounds of Black Beauty muscadines. AND the remains of a sampler jar of elderberry wine base I was sent as a tester. It should finish at about 13 or 14 gallons.

The yeast is two 2-year-old packs of RC-212 out of my fridge. That's why I made a starter - to be sure they lived! And they took right off. I chose the 212 because it has excellent color stripping abilities, to better work on the muscadines and darken up the wine, and it will stop short of eating up all the sugar. That's good because I am bouncing around at 1.100-1.110 after adding the muscadines, with no chaptalization required! No need to make a rocket fuel.

One of the kits has an f-pac with it, and I plan to divide it up among the carboys after stabilization.

This cleans out my freezer of the last of my stored fruit stocks and gets those two kits out from behind my favorite chair.

So, that was Job #1 today ... Now to go get ice to prepare for my beer boil, a personal Extra Special Bitter ale recipe I call Red-Headed Stepchild.

Well it should be interesting, if nothing else! @

I have a high degree of confidence, Angelina.

BTW, here's Red Headed Stepchild: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49486

Jim, I think you are on to something!

You got yours all cleaned out and I stumbled across a bag of elderberries, a bag of cherries and 2 gal. of fresh apple juice in the freezer. You have a name for yours, I am still kicking around what to do with this stuff. Arne

Arne said:

You got yours all cleaned out and I stumbled across a bag of elderberries, a bag of cherries and 2 gal. of fresh apple juice in the freezer. You have a name for yours, I am still kicking around what to do with this stuff. Arne

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Mix and ferment! I remember when we were kids, we'd fill a cup at McDonald's with a little bit of every soda pop, and call it a Suicide.

There's your name!

Looks happy in there today...

unrelated question: Do you leave the mixing spoon in the fermenter?

LeChat said:

unrelated question: Do you leave the mixing spoon in the fermenter?

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I do, personally. I figure that has to be better than resanitizing it each time.

Jim, Keep us posted, I'm intriged!!

Did I send you that elderberry sampler?

wineforfun said:

Did I send you that elderberry sampler?

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Nope, DJ.

I'll say this: That entire end of the house smells wonderful!

jswordy said:

Nope, DJ.

I'll say this: That entire end of the house smells wonderful!

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Ok, couldn't remember. If it I was, I was going to lose faith in you getting your daily intake of "fruit".

I can't wait to see what this does!

We are getting to the end of primary. I'll have to transfer tonight or tomorrow night... be neat to see the FG on this stuff.

It went into carboys last night at 1.010 to finish out. Slight bubbling this morning. I'll snap a pic and post it tonight or tomorrow. Pinkish color, smells great and tastes promising. 13 gallons.

A lot pinker than when it started out. We'll see what happens!

Lookin good, Jim. And now we are down to wait, wait wait, til someday in the future it is sample time. Arne.

Sample glass of Mixed Marriage, pre-bench testing. It needed quite a bit of back sweetening, mainly due to the flabby grapes used for the coastal white kit. The muscadines stood right up but were not numerous enough to win the battle entirely. I had the old f-pac from the kit, too, and divided it up. Tasted fine but looked kind of brownish from age. We'll see how bad that screws it up! LOL...



It is now ready for bottling after it sits a bit more and gets run thru the fridge to precipitate a bit. 13 gallons of goodness!

Jericurl said:

I can't wait to see what this does!

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Hahaha, well I finally got around to bottling this wine today, so I resurrected the thread!

It turned out to be a semi-sweet, accessible and slightly flabby wine that won't win any contests but my friends will lap it up by the gallon. Interesting color. A glass will get you there, good alcohol content but is not taste-forward. I got 53 750-ml and 8 1.5-liter, a good yield.