Lazy, inept, ignorant (and lucky) = avant garde, apparently

[StandardIdentifier]

Hi everybody,

New forum guy here. I have 3 cases of bottled 2009 blueberry wine still aging nicely. It's more than a bit weak, but at least there's nothing disagreeable about the taste.

Last fall, my wife and I picked 200 lbs of syrah grapes down near Roseburg, OR, and I destemmed, stomped, fermented, and pressed them into 2 six-gallon carboys, where they have remained for nearly a year.

Now, I am a born klutz and my technique is shoddy at best. I did so many things wrong while making the blueberry wine that I'm amazed it is even drinkable. As a result, I have been mainly letting my syrah do its thing with little or no "help" on my part.

At the time I put the stoppers/airlocks on the 2 carboys, the wine was very acidic and tasted terrible to me. Then, nearly a year later, I realized that it should undergo malolactic fermentation to tone down that acidity. To that end, I bought some liquid culture from my local supplier, drew some wine out of each carboy into 2 glasses, added the ML bacteria, and topped off the levels with some decent syrah from Trader Joe's.

I then tasted the wine in the glasses. It was, to my naive tastebuds, really good! I am figuring that the malolactic fermentation actually occurred all by iteself in the carboys, using naturally occurring bacteria. So much for the dire warnings about uncontrolled ML. Furthermore, I have to conclude that -- since I have not racked the wine at all since putting it in the carboys -- having it sit on the gross (and fine?) lees has not ruined the wine, either.

I've been checking the air level in the air locks several times a day, and after a week there is basically no movement. I guess that means there was no malic acid for the little bacteria to eat. Now I'm planning to add some medium-toasted French oak chips for a month or two, and then either rack the wine to fresh carboys or bottle it. I'm thinking that because of unavoidable temperature fluctuations (probably about 55 to 75 degrees), the wine should stay in carboys as long as possible.

Anyhow, reading around the internets recently, I found that what I am doing is all the rage in some places, especially in Italy. There is an increasingly popular "natural" wine-making movement where you basically just let the wine do whatever it's going to do and call it bene. Happily, the name I've chosen for my wine is in perfect tune with that philosophy: it's "Okay Syrah". Whatever will be, will be ...

Comments? Advice? Ridicule?

 

[pjd]

I am not convinced you are "Lazy Ignorant Inept and a Klutz" It sounds like you are a comedian and the wine sounds like it is very good!

 

[joea132]

Awesome job. That's the beautiful thing about wine making at home. Its always an adventure!

 

[StandardIdentifier]

I am not convinced you are "Lazy Ignorant Inept and a Klutz" It sounds like you are a comedian and the wine sounds like it is very good!

My wife would disagree with you about the humor, but I'm hoping the syrah continues to improve. If so, it'll be a keeper ... or a drinker, I guess.

Here's what I mean by being klutzy. Preparing to put the ML culture into the carboys, I found that my iodophor bottle was nearly empty. So I headed out to the local brew shop, but they sold me some other product I'd never used. I read the label carefully, alarmed by the language about what to do if you stop breathing after inhaling the stuff.

Determined to be careful, I began to painstakingly measure the small amount I needed for my 1.5-qt container, using a combination of tiny measuring spoons. During the last step of this process, the bottle somehow launched itself from my grasp into the air, firing its contents in random trajectories.

I heard somebody scream -- then realized it was me. Next, I noticed that a large glob of the liquid had landed on my arm. Immediately I immersed my arm in cold running water and continued that until I lost all sensation in the limb. Meanwhile I looked around to see what else needed to be done.

That was when it dawned on me what a bad idea it was to have a deadly poison that, to the eye, was indistinguishable from water. I hadn't been too fond of iodophor (which is how I got talked into trying something else), but at least it had the virtue of being so yellowish that you couldn't help but see where it had been used or spilled.

Anyhow, I spent another hour or so and used all of our cleaning rags to try to sop up the chemical mess. Since my laboratory is actually our kitchen, it seemed important to eradicate all traces of the poison, if possible. I must have had some success, because a week has now passed, and we're still alive. The little remaining disinfectant got tossed out and I have apparently succeeded in even forgetting what it was called.

Well, I used the last drops of my iodophor to complete the originally scheduled mission and, thankfully, did not run into any more snags that day. However, please note that this episode was not particularly unusual for me. That's why I think my most valuable character trait is being lucky.

 

[StandardIdentifier]

Awesome job. That's the beautiful thing about wine making at home. Its always an adventure!

Yes, it is.