I have never made wine before. I made a Vintner's Reserve Cabernet. It says to let it age about 3 months. Does that sound right?
I bottled it today. When I sampled it, it tasted a little thin and mediciny. Is that normal if the wine hasn't been aged?
If you read in this newsgroup often, you will find thath those making kit wines don't reccommend bottling per directions. They wait six months to a year, re-racking (fresh clean carboy) several times. Then they would taste some, and put the rest away for another year or two.
Kit wines say four weeks 'til bottling, but that doesn't mean it will tase great after tha short amount of time. Good kit wine takes patience. Have some:)
John, COngratulations on your first bottleing! Welcome to the craft. I'm pretty new at it myself and make mostly kit wines. If you can stand to wait, your wine will without a doubt get better with every passing month. The problem at our house is, we usually cant wait.
We recently opened a bottle of "mystery wine" we couldn't identify. It had set in the cellar for a while a while. After uncorking, we traced the cork, and shrink top, and bottle (it was a 1.5 liter) back to one of the first we made. It was marvelous.
If you haven't already, get a journal and record everything about your wine batch in it- the bottles, the corks you used, the number of bottles, and type of shrink top. This will allow you to trace back any forgotten bottle you find later.
When making the BK kits, I also add tannin (buy at your local brew shop) and oak the $hit out of it. Its rough at first, but, as you have asked, it gets better in the bottle with age.
again, welcome to wine making and congrats on your first batch.
KB St. Charles, MO
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