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Both products are grape tannins designed to color stabilize the wine. My aim is to color stabilize my Frontenac per the recommendations of the first contributor here. He recommends 500-600ppm of the Scott product. As he acknowledges in the article, this is double the label recommendations which...

I've been collecting this fruit for several years, and today I'm starting the wine. Because this is the Definitive* Jaboticaba Wine Thread, some background is in order. Jaboticaba is a tropical fruit from Brazil. The latin is Plinia cauliflora; it is sometimes known as Brazilian Grape or...

I have what I believe to be crown gall. The vines are 3 years old. I inexplicably lost ~12 of my 40 Nortons over the winter and early spring-time period - they didn't leaf out or they barely pushed some leaves then just wilted and died. Of the vines that are left, several this year looked very...

I got my vines from AA three years ago. In the row of Frontenac I have one vine that is clearly different. Grapes are lighter, almost bronze colored. The juice looks like a straight-up white after crush, but got just the faintest pink color at the end of pressing. Pics to follow.

I have 190# of Foch from my vines. Despite netting, raccoons and birds were consistently getting 10% per day, so after losing 1/3 of the crop to critters I went ahead and picked on Saturday. 68l must. Briefly: Crushed, destemmed, KMS per winemakermag.com calculator; submaximal calcium carbonate...

It feels like it's cooler than usual so far in June, and my Norton really seems to be sort of sluggish. So I started watching my GDD numbers. Through 6/12 using bud break 4/16, I have 869. I don't see a way to compare that to average starting on 4/16, but starting 1/1/2019 the site confirms we...

For some reason this year we had a huge crop of pears. I had people bringing me bags of pears, my freezer was full. So I made two batches of pear wine. I'm posting my experience so far just to see if anyone has encountered similar issues. Batch #1 used about 35# of pears, 2/3 Bartlett and 1/3...

I've been reading and learning more detail regarding SO2, trying to take a more thoughtful approach to SO2 management. One thing I've learned is that "gentle racking" introduces oxygen at 1-3mg/L. Splash racking introduces oxygen at 3-7mg/L (wine is considered saturated at around 7mg/L). So in...

Got my usual 110# of OVZ this year and changed some things up. In the past I've done MLF sequentially: AF, press, let things settle for a couple of days, rack, then inoculate with the MLB. This year I elected to co-inoculate. Additionally I did an extended maceration. Today I pressed, got 5+ gal...

There has been debate in other threads about sanitizers, contact time, and rinsing. I went to Amazon and bought 20 tryptic soy agar plates to test some of these ideas myself. This is the thread in which I'll post my experiments and results. Feel free to suggest experiments. I'll run the tests...

Sunday morning WMT musings. Advice? Rant? Call it what you will... Before you create a new thread, ask yourself: Is this thread-worthy? Do I have a question, useful observation, or interesting discussion topic? For questions, have I included all of the information needed to get an answer? We...

I've been really good about keeping up with my spray schedule. Vineyeard looked great a week ago. Went out of town for a week and applied a bit of Sevin before I left because I saw a handful of Japanese beetles. Came back to severe damage. I'd say 1/3 of my vines are completely 100%...

I've made elderflower wine once a few years back and it was OK, drinkable but not distinctly elderflower. Trying it a second time now, using elderflowers from my patch here at home. The elderflower aroma can be appreciated some distance from the patch. You are supposed to stick your nose into...

I installed 125 vines last year. Had decent growth on most vines, excellent growth on Vidal - all hit my top wire and most developed 4-8' cordons and had to be tipped because they were growing across the vines to either side. Canes as thick as my thumb. I have 100% survival on Foch, Frontenac...

I'm planning out my spray schedule for the year. After looking around I found this schedule from the University of Kentucky. Sample spray schedule #1 seems to be most appropriate for hybrids. I have the Mancozeb and Captan. I have the remainder of the stuff in my shopping carts but I haven't...

I bought a small 10l barrel and the spigot is problematic. The barrel sealed up just fine after I got it. However, the spigot leaks a lot every time I fill it or top it up. Is there a way to seal it? Or do I just need to remove it and seal with a cork or other stopper? Same question for the...

A few years back I planted some pawpaw trees. 'Mango,' 'Shenandoah,' and several straight species. Deer rutted the grafted 'Mango' back to a stub but all the rest fruited this year and I got 9# of pawpaws. I was on the fence about making wine. Keller, paraphrasing, calls it life-changing...

I planted 126 vines this spring, majority Vidal and Norton, but also about 10 each Foch, Frontenac, Chardonel, and Traminette, 8' x 10'. Right or wrong, I was under the impression I didn't need to spray this first year. I did spray a few times for Japanese Beetles, but that was about it. The...

A neighbor of mine didn't get around to pruning his Vignoles last year. As a result, he can't mechanically harvest them, and so has offered me as much as I want. He texted this morning saying he thought they were about ready, ~21 brix, no other numbers available, and the birds were already...

I'm looking at sprayers for my new vines and I'm struggling a little bit knowing what size to get. I have 135 vines. I want to be able to mix it up just once per spray session. Either backpack or tow-behind type is fine. Is there a rule-of-thumb? Is it possible to say that 1 gallon of spray...