Ok, here we go with the Chilean juices! One of my favorate times of year!
First off, in preperation for the Chilean juices, I wanted some grape skin packs to enhance flavor, tannins, and body. Doing a search online revealed nothing. Grape skin packs used to be hard to find. Now, they're virtually unavailable, literally. What I ended up getting was a couple of buckets of what is marketted as "frozen must" or "Frozen Italian Wine Grapes". I got mine through Midwest Supplies, under the name of
Vino Superiore. I figured I would get mostly juice with some grapes, but what I got was two awesome buckets full of grapes and skins. Wonderful amounts of beautiful dark material in each bucket with some juice. I was very pleased at the appearence and smell of this product. These will be perfect for home made grape skin packs! I got a bucket of both Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It ended up being about $160 delivered for the two buckets, which took a couple of days sitting in the lab to thaw. A bit pricey, maybe? Let's see what I got for my money...
I stirred up the material and noticed some stems. Not too many, though. As I scooped out the skins into individual packs, I pulled out any and all sticks and stems. Don't want those in my packs, no sir! The measuring cup (below) shows all the stems I got from two buckets of skins. Less than I expected.
After I got it all devided up, here is what I ended up with. Six one gallon freezer bags (containing about 3/4 gallon each), with six more containers on the side about the same size, plus four big containers (about twice that size). Overall, I figure about 20 very generous grape skin packs for use with my wines! That's about $7.25US per pack! Far cheaper than the ones that used to sell on Ebay. I am very pleased! I kept five of the gallon baggies in the fridge for my Chilean juices, and commandeered one of our freezers for the remaining containers.
On to the Chilean juice buckets!
Ok, I returned home Saturday from Luva Bella with my aquired juice. Six buckets: Merlot, Carmenere, Malbec, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Gewurztraminer. I hauled them down to the Lab and left them until Monday (along with the baggies of grape skins) to reach room (Lab) temp. On Monday, I opened the buckets of juice and enjoyed the aromas. Perfect! I removed some of the juice from each of the red buckets to accommodate the skin packs and dumped this juice together into a three gallon fermenter (came up to about three gallons). I added two tsp of pectic enzyme to each of the reds, stirred and added the grape skin packs. The Carmenere, Cab Sav, and Zinfandel got cab sav skins, while the Merlot and Malbec got hearty packs merlot skins. The grape skins were placed into mesh bags and submerged in the buckets, gently stirred, and covered with their lids. The Gewurztraminer got a similar treatment. I removed some juice from it and put it in a one gallon jug to ferment separately, added some pectic enzyme to the must, and poured in a 96oz can of Vintners Harvest Peach Wine Base (juice and all, fruit in a bag). It smells great!
I clustered all the buckets together on the Lab workbench (sorry, no pics), covered the whole lot with an old electric blanket (to warm them up and kick-start fermentation), then an old comforter. It now looks like an ogre curled up, sleeping in the Lab. I also apologized in advance to my wonderful wife for the smell that was about to take over the house. I've never fermented this many buckets all at once. It should be epicly sinky!
My plan is to do some blending when these are done. A little research led me to some common ratios and some award winning blends using the wines I was making:
Smoking Cat: 66% Malbec and 34% Carmenere
Field of Poppies: 45% Cab Sav, 25% Carmenere, 10% each of Merlot, Malbec, and Zinfandel
Camelot: 50% Merlot and 50% Cab Sav
I'll do some more blends with what's left (any suggestions invited), and will bottle the remainder as straight varietals.
What a fun and rewarding hobby!!!
Stay tuned for updates!
