Here's the tale of last year's Chambourcin making. After a search on the internet to find a local source of wine grapes, I got my order in late to Vigna Del Monte Vinyard in Easton Pennsylvania
Jack lives in a big, wonderful white house with a long driveway and his vinyard surrounding it. He's the kind of guy that radiates good-natured affability from the minute you speak to him. We loaded up the Subaru with
75 lbs of the Chambourcin grapes, which we carefully packed into plastic trash bags set into cardboard boxes. I'd also purchased 5 gallons of DeChanauc juice and frozen skins ... and being clueless about how that would arrive, did not have an appropriate container (luckily I was able to obtain one from Jack). But, the DeChanauc is a separate story.The drive back home was a little more rushed. I'd prepared my equipment ... a plastic milk container sterilized to use as my destemmer, and my plastic primary fermenters pre-washed and sterilized. After unloading the grapes and hastily consumng a cup of coffee, I destemmed the grapes by rubbing them against the bottom of the milk container. This was uncomfortable mostly because the grapes were quite cold still after being kept refrigerated for me, and my hands kept going numb! I dashed over to the sink periodically to revive them with some warm water.
After totally destemming the grapes, I crushed them by hand in the primary fermenter, which resulted in even number hands. I had more grapes than would fit into one fermenter, so I divided into two batches. Having read about cold-soaking, and hoping to extract color and fruitiness to offset a planned malo-lactic fermentation later (which can reduce frutiness, or so I'd read), I then floated sterilized plasted soda containers that I'd filled with water and previously frozen into the must. For 3 days, I swapped these out, and kept an eye on the temperature of the must. This started out at 45 degress F, and at the end of 3 days when I was ready to pitch the yeast, had risen to 64 deg F.
Before starting the cold soak, though, I did some adjustments ... I measured the two batches separately, and one came out to 20.5 Brix and the other to
- Batch B seemed to be composed of siginificantly less ripe grapes than Batch A. I contemplated working with the batches separately, but in the end I combined the two, mostly because the acid levels of both were about the same : a quite high 1.2% TA. Higher than I 'd hoped for. To the batches, I added a total of 1lbs 13ozs of sugar, brining the Brix up to between 23 and 24. In retrospect, I think less sugar would have been called for. I also gave each batch a 1/8 tsp of potassium metabisulfite.
So, on wednesday morning I pitched the Red Star Pasteur yeast that I had first hydrated, added 3 tsps of yeast nutrient to each batch, and set the primary fermenters over heating pads to raise the temperature, which by that evening had risen to 70 degs F. At this point I added an Oenos Malolactic culture and "ACTI-ML Malolactic Nutrient." The malo-lactic fermentation is supposed to like higher temperatures and grape skins, and this seemed a good time to take advantage of both. Plus I alread had one obstacle to a good malo-lactic fermentation: a quite high total acid (TA) level. The malolactic fermentation was an attempt to reduce the acid level, but the irony of it all is that a too high acid level discourages the malolactic fermentation itself.
By evening the next day, the temperature was at 80 degs F! I removed the heating pads. By saturday morning, Batch A was a 2 Brix, and Batch B was at
0 Brix -- wow, a very fast ferment. I strained both batches through nylon, just squeezing lightly with my hands, and filled a 6 gallon glass carboy plus an extra 1 gallon. Over the next few weeks, and I started to taste some of the "buttery" taste and finally see the "littlier" bubbles that convinced me that the malolactic bacteria were trying to do their jobs.About 20 days later, there's no signs of fermentation (of either variety), and the Brix is reading well below 0. I racked both the 6 gallon and 1 gallon carboys, and added 1 1/2 ozs of untoasted american oak chips to the 6 gallon batch. About 3 weeks later, I was tasting the oak, so I racked again, topping off the 6 gallon carboy from the 1 gallon, and then topping off the 1 gallon with distilled water. I added 1/8 tsp more of meta while racking, and also 1 1/4 tsp of Bitartrate (just cream of tarter from the spice rack) in hopes that a last attempt at lowering the TA through cold stabilization would help out. You see, the wine was still quite acidic (about 1% TA after the malolactic fermentation) to my taste, and I hoped for a bit more reduction by seeding the wine with Bitartrate crystals which, at low temperatures, would encourage some more of the tartaric acid to crystallize and drop out of solution to form on the bottom of the carboy.
It's now well in to an unusually cold December in Philadephia's suburbs, and the night-time lows are around 32 deg F, so I lug the 6 gallon carboy up the basement stairs after replacing the airlock with a solid rubber stopper covered over with saran wrap and fixed in place with a rubber band. After a good 2 weeks of weather in the right temperature range, and after seeing an encouraging deposit of crystals form on the bottom of the carboy, I lugged it back inside to the basement. TA is still quite high ... about
0.95% now, which really is an okay reduction for cold stabilization.At this point, I give up on any further acid reduction ... I've never reduced acid chemically before, and I didn't want to start with this batch. So, I went ahead with fining, using a 2-stage Kiesel/Chitsan fining, which comes in little separated plastic packs. You add one to the wine, stir, and then a bit later add the other. This type of fining is supposed to leave a nicely compact deposit, which it indeed does, I guess the chemistry having to do with one fining ingredient being positively charged in solution and the other negatively charged, with the laws of attraction doing the rest. The 1 gallon topping off batch is getting pretty dilute, and after the final racking a couple of weeks after adding the fining ingredients, I discarded what was left in the 1 gallon.
About a month later, the vinometer reads 11% alcohol (but vinometers are notoriously inaccurate), the TA is still at 0.95%, and a Titret reading shows 70 ppm of sulfite, which is probably falsely low (Titrets read low for red wine) by up to 30 ppm. I added a packet of "Crosby & Baker Ltd. Super-Smoother" which is again 2 clear plastic packets, one with glycerin and another with sinatin 17 oak extract (I'd decided the oak as a little light, and the glycerin an attempt to balance the acid out a bit more). I then bottled, giving 26 bottles of wine. I have an Italian floor corker, and I want to sing it's praises over trying to cork with some hand-held plastic device -- so much faster, no broken or spilled bottles, and no corks inserted too high or too low.
Now, it's 8 months later ... there's some nice bottle bouquet to the wine, and the malolactic fementation while it may have reduced the fruitiness, left a lot. I do think the wine could have used a bit more tannin, and I wish I had pressed part of the grapes (I have a small, table-top wine press). I did that for the 2nd run I did on the skins from the Chambourcin, from which I made a rather nice sweet (1 Brix) wine with a right-on acid level, where the tannin added nicely to the flavor.
The main (1st run) wine is still quite acidic for me... certainly drinkable and enjoyable, but distracting. If I were to do it all again, I might try to reduce the acid chemically. I was reluctant to sweeten the wine more, as additions of potassium sorbate to retard refermentation in the bottle is a necessity for sweetening substancially with sugar, but unfortunately a malolactic fermenation and potassium sorbate don't mix well, producing (or, so I have read) a distinct flavor of geraniums in the wine. I suppose another alternative is to skip a malolactic fermentation, and aim for a sweet wine, but I don't enjoy that style of wine so much ... in fact, I prefer the acidic but drier wine I've in fact managed to produce.
So, that's the story of the Chambourcin. If any part of it helps you out, fantastic. If I've led you astray, I appologize in advance.