I met a gentleman the other night. My friends Dad. He is straight from Sicily and barely speaks English and he's known for his wine making in the family. I've had the pleasure of sampling some of his wine and it is indeed outstanding. Anyway, like I said, I finally got the chance to meet him and pick his brain for some advise on making better wine.
So we started talking and he gets grape juice in the 6 gallon bucket just like the ones we would buy. He said he stopped using actual grapes because he's getting too old to mess around with all the work that goes into it.
Here is the part that I don't exactly get. He doesn't add ANYTHING to the juice. He puts it in a 120 liter fermenter and lets it sit. That's it. He then racks it to a secondary and lets it sit some more.
I know grapes have their own yeast and sugar naturally but why does this method seem too simplistic to work that well?
By the way he said a long time ago back in sicily they didn't have the big plastic/glass fermenters. They used to use oak barrels for primary and seconday fermentation. I'm sure that added some kick *** oak flavor to it.
So we started talking and he gets grape juice in the 6 gallon bucket just like the ones we would buy. He said he stopped using actual grapes because he's getting too old to mess around with all the work that goes into it.
Here is the part that I don't exactly get. He doesn't add ANYTHING to the juice. He puts it in a 120 liter fermenter and lets it sit. That's it. He then racks it to a secondary and lets it sit some more.
I know grapes have their own yeast and sugar naturally but why does this method seem too simplistic to work that well?
By the way he said a long time ago back in sicily they didn't have the big plastic/glass fermenters. They used to use oak barrels for primary and seconday fermentation. I'm sure that added some kick *** oak flavor to it.