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Guess I don’t have to worry about bud break for a while.

I picked up a $50 15 gallon used bourbon barrel and didn’t like the flavor it imparted to my wine after about a month so I decided to take it apart, bandsaw off the inside of the staves and sand the inside of the heads to remove the char. The barrel was a number three char which was about an...

Today I tasted the Marquette wine in the used 15 gallon bourbon barrel. It’s been about a month in barrel. It has a mild ashtray taste . No ashtray taste is ever good. Very disappointed. I’ll rack it all tomorrow to carboys and hope the taste goes away over the next nine months. Anyone want a...

My cranberry wine restarted fermentation and the pectin is settling out now. Sg is 1.010 and bubbling away. However there is a lot of pectin sitting in the bottom of the carboy. I’m thinking it’s probably too late for enzyme. I don’t remember what I did last time I made cranberry from berries. I...

I calculated the alcohol percentage in my cranberry wine as 9.9%. Should I try to restart the fermentation to get above 10%? Or will it be microbially safe with so2 added? I will bottle in the spring and drink it over the summer, so it’s not going to stick around too long.

Here's my latest iteration, so far so good. Cranberry wine is one of my favorites.

I’m looking to share a large purchase of wine bottles with any Wisconsin wine makers. Berlin packaging has good prices on bottles and caps or corks, the shipping is as much as the bottle tho, unless I spend $300 or more. I need about $200 worth of bottles and caps so I’m looking for someone to...

Got my used bourbon barrel Friday, the distillery had pounded in the wood bung nice and tight so the barrel was still pretty air tight. I filled it with warm water and let it sit for 24 hours, no leaks. The water soak removed most of the bourbon smell so I’m hoping for a fairly neutral barrel...

My 2021 Marquette wine didn’t go thru MLF and the result was very acidic almost undrinkable wine. Last year I unbottled it all and added sugar and so2. Tonight I opened a bottle and it has gone from a dark red color to a pale red almost rose color. It didn’t have any fizz so it didn’t go thru...

The wine making club I belong to has an annual wine competition with two other clubs in northern Wisconsin, the club that gets the most points has bragging rights till the next year, my club was second , we missed by 1 point. However my barrel aged Marquette wine won a blue ribbon in its class...

Come December my local store is closing. The nearest store is 2 hours away. I supported them as much as I could but I guess Amazon is putting them out of business. Their brewery and restaurant is making enough money they don’t need the store anymore. Looks like I’ll have to go back to corks in...

Just got back from a local winery where I had a marechal Foch/ Marquette blend, it had a good, interesting aroma on the back end. The wine maker said neither wine had that aroma before blending . Just thought it was interesting how two wines combined can make something quite unlike how they were...

I’m on vacation in California this week and have visited many a wine tasting room in Sonoma and Calaveras county. I know at my age my taste buds aren’t what they used to be, but there is almost no difference between any red wine I’ve tasted. All the red wine is 14,5% alcohol,lots of acid and...

Does anyone use chitosan to kill bacteria and wild yeast? I’ve been reading about it’s use as a biological control in conjunction with so2 to control Brett mostly, but pretty much all bacteria and wild yeast.

My 2023 Marquette is at about ph 3.85 and TA of 7.5 g/l. Should I be worried about the high ph? I like low acid wine, but I also want it to for a few years.

Yesterday and today I harvested all my Marquette grapes. Great harvest lots of big clusters, no bugs, no rot, best harvest I’ve had. 30 six gallon buckets all told from about 50 vines. Ph was 3.28 and sg around 1.096. I had to buy another 32 gallon Brute container. Pitched yeast tonight and...

Recently i started some plum wine and some itasca white wine. I inoculated with Avante yeast. Both wines started out fermenting fine than stopped about halfway. eventually added Red Star yeast and got them going again. Yesterday i tried to start some Avante yeast in some warm sugar water and...

I picked 110 lbs of itasca today. The vines are three years old and just two vines accounted for 46 lbs. The sg was 1.102 and ph 3.35. Some berries were golden some were green, the must is a sickly green color. It also has a very unappealing vegetable smell. I picked today because of the sg, I...

My tree was loaded with plums this year so I picked 40 lbs of plums for wine. The plums are a nice pink skin with yellow flesh. After mashing them in a container using my boots I put the mush in paint strainer bags and added 6 gallons of water and 16 lbs of sugar along with pectin and amalase...

I was planning on harvesting my grapes September 16th, but they are pretty ripe already, the Itasca grapes are a little sweeter than the Marquette right now. The Brix is about 20 on the Marquette and 22 for the itasca.