February Wine of the Month Club

[Stressbaby]

Update:
Calamondin Passionfruit is ALL PASSIONFRUIT.
This is bad news for for the calamondin in this batch but great news for the future of Stressbaby Passionfruit Wine because it really didn't have that much passionfruit in it to begin with. I'm hoping to be able to grow enough this year for a 3 gal batch...we'll see.
Anyway, this February wine so far is fantastic.

 

[Stressbaby]

Bottled calamondin-passionfruit today. Originally I had backsweetened with 50g sugar. Then accidentally I bumped it to 75g. No harm done, the wine is great. The passionfruit comes through much more than I thought. My wife's favorite wine so far. Now I'm anxiously watching my little passionfruits to see how much wine I'll be able to make this year.

 

[Jericurl]

I was doing a little maintenance and racking to all my carboys and I decided to go ahead and taste my two February experiments.

I really, really like both of them. The mead is absolutely fantastic! I was a bit worried about it early on. Maybe I just read too many fantasy and sci fi books or I'm too much of a romantic but I really wanted to like mead. The first time I tasted this mead, it was pretty bad.
I'm glad to say that at almost 10 months old, it's shaping up very nicely.

The rose/cherry wine is interesting.
It is very dry. The rose was pretty predominant at first. It has mellowed quite a bit. It does add both a floral note and a slight bitterness to the wine. I'll be bottling these in about a month and I'll be considering a little backsweetening here.

The lighter colored liquid is the mead and the darker is the Ars Amatoria wine. They are both clear and gorgeous colors!

 

[Jericurl]

Holy Hannah those are huge pictures.....any more computer savvy people able to tell me how to shrink those things?
I pulled them directly off my phone.

 

[the_rayway]

Looking good Jeri!

I'm so glad you like the mead!! (not that I was pushing or anything)

 

[cmason1957]

Holy Hannah those are huge pictures.....any more computer savvy people able to tell me how to shrink those things?
I pulled them directly off my phone.

You can probably shrink then by putting them on a computer and editing them. Long term you can tell your phone to make smaller photos, it might be called resolution or something like that. Smaller numbers make smaller files.

 

[Jericurl]

Thank you!

I went into my phone settings and changed it.

 

[Stressbaby]

Drank a bottle of calamondin-passionfruit a couple of nights ago and the passionfruit has subsided some, now it is pretty balanced between the two and tastes good. This recipe will be made again in a 3 gallon batch.

 

[wineforfun]

Update:
Chocolate covered cherry wine is about 9mos. old now. At the 3-6 mo. mark, it was good but nothing to write home about. Just tasted it last weekend and the additional 3 mos. has really helped. Now I often wonder if it is just me, the time of day, what I have eaten, etc.
Nevertheless, it has a nice hint of chocolate in the beginning with a finish of the cherry from the chocolate covered cherries. It is too sweet for me to drink more than a glass, at best, but my wife really likes it. It is a fair amount of work, but will probably give it a go again when they go on sale after Christmas.
I also made a chocolate covered blueberry wine a couple of month ago. Have not tried it yet.

Also, the Awesome White turned out well, according to my wife. It is a very basic Welch's Niagara recipe listed in the recipe section of WMT.

 

[Jericurl]

Getting ready to bottle the mead.

 

[the_rayway]

Added invert sugar to 1.008, 1/2 tsp of vanilla, and a 1/4 tsp acid blend. The vanilla was really needed to fill in the mid-tones of the wine. I'm still considering a bit of concentrated jasmine tea to up the flavour, but am worried it will end up being too floral.

 

[the_rayway]

Bottled this one last night also. It ended up in dark green bottles because the Tart Cherry was so pretty

Pics to come once labeled!

 

[Jericurl]

I finally bottled my other wine experiment...
a year and 8 months after starting it!

At some point I added bar chocolate to this batch, a handful of medium toast cubes, and backsweetened it with regular sugar.
I racked it twice more since the last update.
It tastes pretty good. I'll make this one again for sure.

 

[the_rayway]

It looks stunning!