Since I've started brewing meer about 18 months ago, the Mrs. has been asking on numerous occasions if I would like to use my fermenters to make her some decent wine. As she is more of a white wine then a red wine drinker, I am looking at making her a Chardonnay that will have a commercial quality.
The BK brochure describes several different Chardonnay's but I would like the opinion of a knowledge base like this forum which one would be better then others.
Buy the most expensive one and use StaVin oak cubes (medium+ toast, French) in the fermenter, and save them when you rack and put them into the secondary. Be sure to maintain the sulfite after fermentation and keep the carboy topped up. How much oak to use is strictly a matter of taste, but a heaping handful won't kill 5 gallons of juice.
My wife is also a white wine fan, while I'm more into the reds. When I started getting into home wine making last year, I thought I'd try some whites first. The reason was twofold. First because whites don't need the aging that a red does and second...I was doing a little appeasement for the Mrs.
We've compromised a few times at restaurants by getting a white merlot. She loves it. The BK White Merlot was my first ever kit. A little too sweet for my liking, but still definitely drinkable. She was very pleased. I asked her to pick my next kit and she chose the BK Chamblaise kit. She's been very happy with it and I like it better than the white merlot.
And since I now have a decent inventory of whites, I'm able to devote full attention to what really matters...some decent reds!
Arjen, It doesn't sound like you have much experience with wine and if your real interest is with beer then you may not want to spend alot of time researching the pros and cons of a variety of techniques used here.
Depending on how discerning you wife's tastes are I would say that you should buy a good quality but not the top of the line white kit. BK would definitely be one of the lines. Follow the directions to the letter except perhaps let the wine sit under protection of an airlock until it is definitely dry and then toss the potassium sorbate packet away.
After doing a middle of the road kit, which your wife will almost definitely appreciate after 3 months in the bottle, go on to a higher end kit.
If you go into the Google groups search utility you can pick up alot of answers to any questions you might have by searching this newsgroup.
Don, I have been following this thread and am interested in the "toss the potassium sorbate packet away",. Would you please elaborate on this and perhaps "defend" the statement. I am always interested in new ways to improve my wine making.
KB, This has been discussed many times in this group and a Google Groups search on potassium sorbate will give you alot of reading to collaborate. Basically, sorbate has a slight but definite taste that many find discernable and slightly disagreeable.
Kit makers include the chemical (and others) in order to help make their kits more fool proof and to hold to the time periods outlined in the instructions ie. 4 or 6 week kits. Should the kit not truely be fermented out to dryness then the sorbate will ensure it will not referment in the bottle.
If you leave the kit for another couple of weeks under the protection of an airlock before stabilizing with potassium meta and using a zero'ed hydrometer to check that it is dry, then the sorbate is not needed.
From Jack Keller's site:
"A few words of caution about potassium sorbate are in order. It does impart a taste to the wine, however slight, and you might want to avoid it if you intend to enter your wine in competition. Also, avoid sorbate if you intend to keep your wines a very long time. The "slight" taste tends to get stronger over time and after several years can be quite disappointing."
Thanks for the reply and the link to Jack's Extended Instructions- I learned not to use distilled water from the site. I was using water i bought at Wal-Mart- I believe it was RO water. Anyway, thanks again for the reply and link.
Just one problem: the advice to avoid distilled water is nuts, just plain nuts, as is the reason given for it (because it doesn't contain trace minerals needed by yeast).
The reason this is nuts is that you don't know what's in tap water, well water, spring water, or anything else. The minerals that they contain may or may not be beneficial to the yeast; in the absence of a detailed analysis of the mineral content, you have no way of knowing. Well water and spring water are often high in iron, which is definitely harmful to the taste of the wine.
The *only* way to *know* what you're putting in your wine is to use *pure* water (i.e. steam distilled), then add yeast nutrient if you want to make sure that the yeast have the minerals they need.
You're correct, I don't have any experience with wine (yet!). My main focus has always been beer over the last 18 months, purely for selfish reasons. But I must admit reading this newsgroup over the past few weeks has fuelled my interest. That is why I finally accepted my wife's plea and promised to make her a wine. I do enjoy homebrewing as a hobby so I suppose having wine in the fermenter instead of beer for a change can't hurt and who knows, I may start to enjow wine more in the process as well
Thank you for your feedback, I'll give the BK Australian Chardonnay a go and see how it tastes in 6 months time.
Arjen, Having grown up in a mining town in Canada's north, I'm a beer swiller from birth but I've grown to appreciate wine, especially with food. Not that I'd admit it in rec.crafts.brewing but I sometimes now prefer a glass of wine to a beer. I'm actually approaching both of these hobbies from the opposite direction from you - wine first and brewing next. Wine kits are easier than beer but truely great wine pressed from grapes is more difficult than all-grain brewing. My opinion of course.
I would say state of the art beer kits (eg BrewHouse) are now easier than wine kits, and will produce a better product (relatively speaking) to boot. IMO the process of making wine kits (at least the current technology used in North America) is injurious to the quality of the wine whereas that is not the case with ready-to-pitch worts. There are certainly factors to take into account in preparing a concentrated wort for dilution, but the process is basically the same as when you brew beer from scratch.
As to the grapes vs all-grain matter, you will have to expand on your reasons. First of all, we have to be comparing apples to apples. Truely great wine vs truely great beer. Both require knowledge, attention to detail and access to top quality materials. I don't think there is any doubt that accessing top quality grapes in peak condition is a challenge for many people, although it is still a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. ;-) Does cost prohibitive (for many) mean more difficult? I wouldn't use that as a criteria.
I think I was just trying to do a seat-of-the-pants comparison of kits vs fresh product for both beer and wine. My experience with beer kits has been with all-extract ones and some extract/sugar ones that friends have done. I generally put them down as OK swill but definitely not good. A mid range wine kit is definitely OK table wine. It's not a real apples to apples comparison and I don't think you could really do one between beer and wine in kits or otherwise.
DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.