Ruby Cabarnet Grapes

Ruby Cabernet is a Carigan X Cabernet Sauvignon cross designed to bring Cab Sav style Flavours to a vine that would like Central Valley Ca Conditions IE hot and overcropping. It can produce decent wine. It is the most successful of the Davis -California Red wine crosses. Gallo has Vartietial on the market.

Try treating the finishing like a Cabernet . Oaking with French oak dominate might help. A Malolatic Fermentation in Second Fermentation would help as well . Also blending with real Cab or Merlot for a Sort of Mertiage can help .

A few quick suggestions... I hope this helps.

Thanks, I definitely plan to add some oak chips. It has pretty much fermented to dryness, SG of .995, measured in the free-run juice, but pressing seems to have released a bit more sugar, so it is still burping through the airlock a few times per minute now.

This is my first attempt at a dry red wine, most of my previous wines have been a bit sweet. It should come in about right at 12 percent alcohol based on my starting SG. I just hope I avoid the H2S problems I am having with my Chardonnay in the neighboring carboy. Never really had a problem with my reds and H2S, but I left the white on the gross lees for about a week after it went dry. Live and learn, and I am trying to work out the stink as I speak.

I stopped by my favorite seasonal grape vendor and picked up a box of Cabernet Sauvingnon grapes to blend with it.

My son was helping me cranking the crusher/de-stemmer when after 9 cases of Zin I tipped in the last one and he choked all up. I even tried to help turning the blasted wheel. Then I looked at the lug and found it said Ruby Cabernet. Good bless anyone that is into that kind of wine. These small tough grapes make little juice and are a pain in the "cranking" to use. So that is our batch on Zin composed of this year, I hope for the best. Usually I blend with Syrah but this year we have this one lug of black "sheep grape" as well.

SG Brix

Actually, my Ruby Cabs seemed easier to handle than the Zinfandels I did last year. A qualification: I have been stripping them from the stems by hand, then crushing them with my feet (a bow to tradition!) and they seemed to come off the stems easier by hand than the Zinfandels. I'm not sure how they would handle in a typical stemmer/crusher though. Only made about 4 gallons of juice from 2 lugs, but I did not have a press available at the time. Squeezed the pomace in a mesh laundry bag by hand till my hands ached, and decided it was worthwhile to put some of my weldings skills (what they are) to work and build a press out of some allthread and some scrap iron I had laying around. It's functional enough to work with an improvised press basket (wire mesh trash can) and the lid off a plastic storage container to catch the juice and direct it into a bucket, but I plan to refine it a bit more.

I am oaking the Ruby Cabernet right now while secondary fermentation winds down, and will try a mix with some of the good stuff. In 2 years, hopefully I will have all the Chambourcin and Seyvals I can handle from my own backyard, but in the meantime I am trying different grapes as I educate myself. It might not turn out half-bad after all

Bruce, I have made Ruby Cab a few times and the only thing I noticed was the acid was a bit higher than the others I made that year. Olmos crossed that one; it makes good wine. I crush by hand also and am not sure what happened on SG Brix's last lug, I can tell you the Merlot was much thicker skinned than Syrah this year, not that that means anything. The color on the Syrah was outstanding.

Oak and any dry red are made for each other as far as I am concerned.

I get more out out of my lugs of grapes as a heads up. I will rebuild my press some day but I still just use 3 pails, one with a ton of 1/8 inch holes as a press basket, one to catch the press fraction, one to press. It fits two lugs with ease and I get over 5 gallons from 72 pounds of grapes (which is not out of the ordinary for a real press). I got the idea from Lum's book when I broke a junk press at 7 PM on a Sunday... I used 6 gallon juice buckets. It's free and takes about 20 minutes to make. I place a quart jar in the base bucket to stand off the press bucket. You can use anything for wieght.

Joe

Bruce_Nolte_N3LSY& wrote:

the lug and