I'm considering wine making. My wife and I drink a lot of wine... and beer. I have been brewing for a long time and it recently occurred to me with how much wine we drink that I should start winemaking. I have a couple of simple questions based on the little I know.. hopefully they'll get to other questions that I didn't know to ask.
Do juice kits have sulfites?
Is it possible to make good wine without using sulfites? I hate the headaches.
Currently, I enjoy drinking $8 to $12 bottles of dry red wine. For those that buy a lot of wine, you know what you can get in that range. Is it possible to make wine as good as this? What does it take to reach this mark? I ask because beginer homebrew.. well.. sucks. Until you learn the skills to make truly great beer. But not all of these things are without cost or lots of effort some people wouldn't go after.
My wife and I like very dry and full bodied red wines. If I understand correctly, I should probably consider using oak barrels for at least some of the aging to achieve some of the full body that I enjoy. But... looking back to my $8 to $12 initial objective.. is oak barrel aging required or are the use of oak barrels to hit the $20+ range?
What sort of aging facilities should I consider? With my homebrew... I need a chilly room to cold condition my ales for six months. Well.. I don't
*need* it but that's what I do because that's the quality of ale I'm looking for. Are there storage requirement equivalents with wine making for truly great wine?
I've looked at oak barrel prices. They are expensive. Can they be reused? How many times?
When I see a wine as being aged for 4 years? Is that aging time all in the oak barrel? Or is some of it in the barrel and some in the bottle?
How common is it for winemakers to press grapes? Do they grow the grapes themselves, or typically buy them from a local vineyard? Is it possible to order grapes or is that a bad idea?
Is there a common batch size that produces good results? The typical beer batch size is 5 gallons and scale doesn't affect it much as far as I am concerned. I guess I'm asking mostly about oak barrle sizes. Are some sizes better for good wine than others? Thus, distating the batch size?
Last one.. for those that grow their own grapes.... how long from starting until you get vines mature enough to produce enough fruit for wine? How much property does it take to grow enough grapes to produce say... 10 gallons of wine in a single season?
I'll take a stab at answering your questions, in-line below.
All of the juice kits I have purchased have included sulfites. The kit instructions from Winexpert (formerly Brew King) state that the amount of sulfites they include is for wine which will be consumed in the short term, and for longer aging they recommend adding additional sulfite to protect and preserve the wine.
It's possible that you have a sensitivity to sulfites. But it's far more likely that you do not, statistically speaking. Sulfites are commonly blamed for any headache after drinking wine, but unless you've been medically diagnosed with a sulfite sensitivity you might be doing yourself a disservice to exclude sulfites from your wine based on a self-diagnosis.
Yes, you can make perfectly good wine without using sulfites. And if you will be drinking it within a year of completing the kit, there's probably no real need for the sulfites. However, sulfites in wine could be compared to hops in beer. They protect and preserve. Yes, hops also have a flavor component, so the analogy isn't a complete parallel. But the use of sulfites will help prevent oxidation, and it has other benefits as well.
Absolutely.
If you make homebrew you already have the skills required to make good wine. The only component you may lack is patience, and if you've ever aged a barley wine or other high gravity beer you won't lack this either. To make a kit wine requires only that you pay attention to your cleanliness, something every brewer has drilled into them, and that you follow the directions. The most common departure from the kit instructions is to allow more time in most of the steps, as the kits often make a promise that you'll have your wine in a certain number of weeks, when the same number of months would make a large improvement in the results.
Being oaked and having a full body are two separate components of a wine. It's true in general that lighter bodied wines are not commonly oaked, but it's also true that it's not necessary to oak every dry, full bodied red wine.
No. Several manufacturers sell oak chips which can be used to oak a wine being bulk aged in a carboy.
You can bulk age your wine filled carboys right next to your beer filled carboys.
They can be re-used. But the care and maintenance of an oak barrel is a subject worthy of a far more detailed answer than I can provide. I use Stavin oak beads to oak my wine (and also my beers where the style is appropriate) as I have found this to be a quality product. There are other options, including buying an oak barrel, but this is my solution to the question of oak. Most wine kits will come with some form of oak if the style is appropriate to an oaked wine.
On 2/26/2006 9:14 PM, Scott Lindner wrote: > Forgot a few... >
It is typically time spent bulk aging, either in oak barrels or in stainless steel tanks, or in a combination of the two.
I can't answer the statistical question with any certainty, but as a guess I'd say that it's likely that there are a lot more home winemakers who use kits than who grow or buy grapes for their home made wine. I personally straddle the line. I make wine kits exclusively at my home, but I also assist my father-in-law in his yearly production of 200+ gallons of red wine made from purchased grapes. I also make about 40+ gallons of melomel mead yearly, most of that from whole fruit but not requiring a press.
The typical wine kit size is 5-6.5 gallons. The size wine barrel I see in use at most local wineries is 50 gallons.
Like the barrel question, this question has no good short answer. I'd suggest a web search for some good resources, or a browse through your library, or you might find that your local homebrew supply shop has some references. You might also consider contacting some local wineries for information, as they are typically very helpful and they may even be in the business of selling the vines.
Oak does not add (much) body. It may add some percieved body through tannins and vanillin but not much. You do not need a barrel, jsut use oak chips. If you do use a barrel you are absolutely going to need sulfite, unless you like Brett in your wine.
Chances are you will need sulfite anyway....unless you are using the 28 day kits.
Both, but mostly bottle.
Depending on region. If you have a source for locally produced grapes, then it is a bit more common.
most kits are 6 gallons.
Generally it takes 3 years. Ten gallons of wine would need about 5-6 vines or so. Planted in a single row you would need 4-8 feet inbetween vines...so anywhere from 20-50 feet long and a good 4 feet wide. Most suppliers like to sell vines in groups of 25 though.
I read somewhere that the evaporation and topping off helps to create a full body. Is this not true? No.. I have no interest in Brett in wine or beer. How do people make sulfite free wine? I don't want to get too focused on the sulfites though. I care more about great wine.
I did diagnose myself. How I concluded that my headaches are from sulfites is that I don't get the headaches from any other alcohol, I do get headaches from wines with sulfites, and when I was in Southern Italy I did not get headaches from the sulfite free wine made in the basements of the restaurants I ate at. How do they do it without sulfites? Take a huge risk and dump lots of wine? How long have sulfites been added to wine? This isn't a primary objective of mine so I don't want to focus too heavily on it... but if it can be done without sulfites and is reasonably convenient, I will. As an example, homebrewers are super anal about sanitization.. but if you tried to make beer without using any of our modern sanitizers you could with little risk of infective. People have been making beer and wine for thousands of years.
Interesting. Good points.
I have the patience. I like to cold condition my brew for 6 months before drinking.. but sometimes impatience does win over. :)
Just like homebrew kits. Totally lame. Those lies are what make people think homebrew/wine sucks. Thanks.
Thanks on all of the answers. Can't wait to get myself going on the wine... even though it will be a while before I start drinking any of it. More reason to start soon!
Maybe if you top up with more wine you could see an increase in body, I suppose. But if you have a 60 gallon keg and need to top up once or twice with a gallon or two, you really are not going to see much of an increase. Of course evaporation is much faster in a 5 gallon barrel.
The problem with not using sulfites in wine is that you cannot in any way control what organisms are going to get into your wine. you do not boil wine must. So whatever was on the grapes will be in the must. whatever is in the oak barrels will be in the must. Sooner or later you will introduce some brett into a barrel or into your winery. Every winery in the world has Brett in it. So if you do nto sulfite well, it will grow on you. In the carboy, in the barrel in the bottle.
The only caveat is to sterile filter the wine at some point (or add a chemical that is not available to home winemakers). Of course, that will remove some of the wine character as well as the Brett. And it really will not help in the oxygen available environment of an oak barrel, which gives Brett plenty of metabolites and places to nest.
I know you personally may not care, but there was a great article in the last issue of Wine Spectator magazine about Brett.
Did they market them as sulfite free? They could have sterile filtered or sold the wine as some sort of "nouveau" wine, which is drank very young. On big problem with contemporary wines is that the fruit is allowed to hang very long on the vine to reduce acidity, which allows Brett to grow. And while it it true that wine has been make for thousands of years, wine as we know it is fairly young. Until pasteur brought us microbiology wine was generally drank very young as most spontaneous fermentations quit at a low alcohol content, and until bottles were made wine had to ber served out of the wooden casks fairly quickly before it spoiled. Wine was also very acidic and for much of its history was mixed with water. the tendency of those casks to spoil after use led to the practice of burning a sulfur candle in them and treating them with what amounted to sulfite.
sulfites other main use as an antioxifdant will be particularly important if you want to make an age worthy wine. wine without sulfite tends to age prematurely.
By implication, if you can eat at a salad bar or eat raisins or other dried fruit and not get a headache, then sulfite is probably not an issue. Lum Del Mar, California, USA
It's commonly but mistakenly believed that sulfites are a common source of health problems. In fact, sulfites cause NO problems whatsoever for the vast, vast majority of people. One in ten thousand people, every single one of which is a severe asthmatic, cannot metabolize sulfites. If you do not have severe asthma (and by severe I mean you're under a doctor's care specifically for asthma and have to use a nebulizer on a daily basis),jit's physically impossible for you to have this problem.
Some on this newsgroup have claimed that tannins in general are the cause of most headache-like reactions to wine. I think this is also incorrect. Physicians have known for over 50 years that a protein called tryptamine, commonly found in aged cheese, chocolate, red wine, and other foods, is an extremely common trigger for migraines and other forms of severe headache. Tryptamine is a natural byproduct of aging and cannot be removed from the wine. This is why migraine sufferers can often drink new wines and white wines, but one glass of red wine will put them in bed for 24 hours or longer.
A less common problem but one that can be life-threatening is the use of food products in clarifying or flavouring wine. Isinglass contains fish proteins, egg whites egg proteins, and chitosan seafood proteins. People with severe allergies to these foods can go into anaphylactic shock from consuming wine made with these fining agents. If wine is fortified with Amaretto or Frangelico, those with nut allergies can have severe reactions. I once ended up in hospital for a couple of days after having a drink containing amaretto.
What are the quantities in those things? I tell you one thing, if you put wine at an all you can eat salad bar I'm going to shoot way over the salad bar in sulfites consumed.
By the way... I'm in San Diego. Not too far from you, other end of the 56 now that it's open.
I'm not an asthmatic in any sense of the word. But I do get terrible headaches from drinking red wine.
Interesting.. but I eat copious amounts of cheese and chocolate on a very regular basis without any headache troubles. I'll dig more into this protein.
I don't have problems with the foods you listed. I'm guessing that I'm not allergic to Isinglass then, right?
It is true to some extent. Water and alcohol evaporate through the staves of the barrel, rendering what remains more concentrated.
One needs to be much more careful about sanitation and topping up to make wine without added sulfites. Note that even these wines will contain some small measure of sulfite from the fermentation.
Maybe it's the amount of red wine you are drinking in one sitting that is giving you headaches. hehe
Seriously though, white wines contain sulfites as well, often more than most reds, so if white wine doesn't give you headaches then it must be something besides the sulfites.
PPM is parts per million, so it describes a concentration. In those terms, you'd need to drink 8x more wine than the weight of the stuff from the salad bar to get the same amount of sulfites in absolute terms.
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