Blending and Finishing Class

[bovinewines]

I took a blending and finshing class yesterday through the Texas Enology Outreach program and all I can say is WOW!


I was amazed at what you can do to 750mL of wine in bench top trials. For instance we doctored an off the shelf 1.5L bottle of a Cabernet.We ended up adding just a little bit of tannin (from Scotts Lab), some sugar, citric acid, and oak.


We then used a nifty filter (also known as a coffee filter)

to filter out the oak. Within that 10 to 15 minute period we had succesfully changed the character of the wine from something undrinkable to something decent and respectable that I'd have with an italian dinner!


So..with my new found skills, I raced home to see what I could do with a bottle of my Riesling. I added about 30g/L sugar (which for 750mL would be 22.5g of Sugar) and wow...it softened it right up!


All of this helps in making small changes on the bench and then increasing it to affect your larger batch.


Maybe if I get pretty good at this we can do a blending/finishing class at the next WineStock.


I'm off to play some more!!!!!

 

[NorthernWinos]

Neat tricks!!!!


Tell us more as you test your wines.

 

[jobe05]

How wonderful would that be! A way to make a so so wine into something enjoyable. A class on that would be of tremendous value.

I hope you can learn a lot about different techniques and offer a class at winestock, that would be very helpful.

Keep us posted.

 

[bovinewines]

Yeah..the other part of the class was how to make Sherry and how the professor setup his 20 barrel Solero System.


He said there was a professor out in California who taught at Fresno (you know..the other viticulture/enology program out there) who setup a two barrel Solero System in his closet!


I'm thinking that in a year or so (once I'm in a house and not in an apartment) I'm going to have to look into making Sherry.... No time like the present to start planning!

 

[Waldo]

what criteria was used to determine what was going to be added to the bottle of wine that was doctored up bovine?

 

[Jack on Rainy]

Bo,

I second Waldo's request ans tell us more about the tannin additive

 

[scotty]

Boy this is excellent information. Please continuepostibg more if you have time.

 

[bovinewines]

Let me start with this disclaimer:
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“Nothing is”

Our goal at the outset was to take three different wines (a white, a red (Cab) and a burgundy) and create 4 different style wines.

As way of an example, our third wine was to be a “dryeverydayfor heavier foods”

Without getting into to much detail (else this would turn into a book!) we finally hit upon a blend of 66.7% of the cabernet and 33.3% of the burgundy. This ended up being 1L and 500mL respectively for this bench trial.

Once the wines were blended we divided between two 750mL bottles. One is our “control” or untreated. After tasting the control the class tried to work out what we thought we could do with the wine to meet our objective.

The wine was a little thin and could stand a little stiffening that you would find from something that had been oaked. It had a bitter finish or aftertaste that we wanted to try and get rid of and we thought that the addition of some tannins would add depth to the wine.

While our objective was a dry red wine, we still wanted to smooth out some of the rough edges which we decided to do with sugar. This particular professor has a rule of thumb that for ever 20g of sugar added you should calculate 1.6g of citric acid to try and achieve balance. Remember….“nothing is”


We finally came up with:

2g/L Oak
.25g/L Tannin
30g/L Sugar
.5g/L Citric

All of the above was adjusted for a 750mL bottle of wine.

We then did side by side comparisons and discussed what if anything we would change and why.

It was interesting to compare side by side the “treated” and the “untreated” just to see what change we had affected on the wine.


That's just one example ofwhat we did.....

 

[NorthernWinos]

Guess I need to have some liquid oak on hand for such times...


Thanks for sharing the info...I am sure we will all consider this at some point.

 

[bovinewines]

Actually we just used straight oak chips... I can see where you could add this and let it sit for 24 hours to see the potential. We didn't have 24 hours since it was a 1 day class so we let it sit for about 15 minutes before filtering.

 

[Dean]

What tannin did you use? Tancor? Tannin Plus?

Was it the standard powdered "grape tannin"? What about the other standard powdered "Oak tannin"?

Obviously, your class had access to oenological supplies, so we are quite interested.

I've heard that both Tancor and Tannin plus can add quite a bit to a finished wine.

 

[bovinewines]

We used Tan'Cor for the tannin. He didn't have anything identifying the oak...it wasn't complete powder...it was a little coarser than that.

 

[NorthernWinos]

Bovinewines....Thank you for Posting this topic...You gave me the courage to add Liquid Tannin and Acid Blend today when I bottled a batch of wine. It took a nice wine and made it much better....


Thank you for the idea and giving me the courage to try this.

 

[bovinewines]

Very cool! Let me know how it ages out. I'm glad you were pleased with the results.


I have a VR World Vineyard Aust. Shiraz that I'm going to try and "tinker" with after Thanksgiving. Its in the clearing stabilizing stage and I tasted it last night. I was already thinking about oaking it; so I'm willing to give up 375mL or 750mL to see what I can do with it.


I'll let you know what I end up settling on.

 

[joeswine]

Ive been crafting my product whether adding flavor to front end or sofing the harrarnest at the back or takeing a 5gallon batch of wine that had no flavoe but good alcohol and creating a good products .I like to callit thinking out side the box,,,saying what if and reading about different wine creations happing in the wine inductrey itself///being creative is a good thing //

 

[bovinewines]

Yeah..I think what surprised me most about this class is that there are things you can do on a "bench top trial" at 375mL or 750mL to know what to do with the larger batch if you're so inclined.


Last night I took a 375mL of a Shiraz I'm working on, added 6g of American Oak (House toast) and let it sit around for about an hour. Out of that small bench test, I decided to go ahead and oak the Shiraz.


Of course, most home winemakers may not have the scales to handle things at 6g or even .05g, but (and you hunters out there will LOVE this!), our professor did a complete chart on converting grams to grains (grains being the scale typically used to weight out loads to pack shotgun shells)!


Pretty ingenious actually.....

 

[PeterZ]

Of course, most home winemakers may not have the scales to handle things at 6g or even .05g, but (and you hunters out there will LOVE this!), our professor did a complete chart on converting grams to grains (grains being the scale typically used to weight out loads to pack shotgun shells)!

A powder measure is an extremely accurate (to 1/70,000 of a pound, 6.5 milligrams) scale that costs less than $25. To convert grams to grains, multiply by 15.42. To convert ounces to grains, multiply by 437.5.


For heavier loads I have an electronic kitchen scale that reads in 1/8 oz increments and goes to 11 lbs. (5 gram increments to 5 kg when set to metric.) It cost about $40.