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Junior
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2011
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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?
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?