Wine Kits and Wine Quality?

Hello all! I am new to this group, but I am not new to winemaking. I originally started making wine in 1990 after making a concord grape wine in my biology class in college. Later, I made fruit wines and melomels. At somepoint I migrated over to brewing and haven't really looked back ... until now.

Recently, I have been greatly enjoying read wines with my wife. We haven't ventured into really fine wines yet, but have enjoyed wines like Rosemount Estates Shiraz and Mark West Pinot Noir. Nothing really special, but OK for evening consumption.

Anyway, I decided to buy a wine kit. I bought the Napa Valley Stag's Leap District Merlot from Northern Brewer in St. Paul. Supposedly this is a good kit, but I have never tasted a kit wine to know what to expect. So, can anybody indicate the quality of wine I might expect from this kit as compared to the above wines mentioned (obviously, neither are Merlot, but I am asking about quality and not similarity). I have experience with brewing and winemaking and followed the directions very well. I used Starsan (surface spray) and Idophor for sanitization. Original gravity is 1.099. I intend to let this wine age for one year before sampling.

Thanks in advance!

Reply to
Thomas T. Veldhouse
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You should easily be able to make a wine with the quality of the ones mentioned above. That kit should work well. You may need to get a little bit of experience under your belt before you can consistantly make high quality wines though.

Your sanitation regime is noble, but you may find that with wine you can consistantly make excellent wines without all the trouble. The thing is that even if your equipment is exceptionally sanitary, the juices that you use may not be (they should in the case of kits, but definately not fresh grapes, or any fruits that you may try to use). I would instead point you in the direction of potassium metabisulfite (or campden) use as your primary mothod of microbial control. This is also the time to get good about using titrets to measure SO2 levels as well.

Good luck, and be patient. Kits generally mature faster than wines from fresh grapes, but you may need at least a year if not two or more to realize how good your wine is.

Reply to
Droopy

I know someone who made Stags Leap Merlot from WINEEXPERT. It was a limited edition wine 2 yrs ago. She won a Gold in a wine competition. Good luck in your winemaking and welcome BACK. Tom

Reply to
Tom

These are just my comments and others will report different experiences.

I have made several red wine kits from high priced kits (not the one you named) and have consistently been disappointed in them. Now white wine kits are a different mater. I am consistently impressed by what I get.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

I can't speak to the kit quality but would mention Idophor may not be approriate for winemaking; that is all I would add to Droopy's comment on sanitation which echos my thoughts exactly.

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

Idophor won't hurt winemaking, as long as no significant iodine gets into the wine. My fermenter was allowed to drip dry before use. I will add sulphites as is appropriate, but that time has not yet come.

Thanks!

Tom Veldhouse

Reply to
Tom Veldhouse

A friend uses an iodophor sanitizer, and I worked with him last week while he used it to clean racking equipment and carboys. Was surprised at how well it rinses (unlike bleach). Did thorough flush of wine transfer tubing, and triple-rinsed everything else. The only thing he doesn't sanitize with it is his oak barrels; used stronger potassium metabilsulphite for them.

I was intitially concerned with getting 'corked' wine from TCA (trichloroanisole) when using iodine sanitizer, but he's been doing this

5 years and no corked wine. His wines are VERY high quality. So, like all things, YMMV, but good rinsing seems to control the risk adequately.

Gene

Tom Veldhouse wrote:

wine. My fermenter was allowed to drip dry before use. I will add sulphites as is appropriate, but that time has not yet come.

Reply to
gene

He rinsed it? that is kind of defeating the purpose isn't it? Iodophor is a no rinse sanitizer.

Reply to
Droopy

Don't think this is defeating the purpose, my friend. Use the iodophor to knock out the bad bugs, then use K-meta to control regrowth without the risk of TCA. Iodophor is a more effective sanitizer than K-meta. Methinks there is method to his madness.

Gene

Reply to
gene

So you take a piece of equipment, rinse it out with water and you have (some arbitraty number) maybe 10^5 organisms in the water you have. You use iodophore and knock it down to 10^2. The you take the water you originally had (10^5) and treat it with sulfite (still 10^5, although they can no longer reproduce).

Instead, rinse it out with sulfite in the first place and have the same number of organisms that you started with. Since iodophore is more effective of a sanitizer than sulfite solutions, following a strong sanitizer witha weak one makes the whole process only as strong as the last sanitizer.

Of course,those numbers are not so significant if you are going to use fresh juice or fruit that is loaded with microorganisms (a quick google search yielded values of about 1X10^4 cfu/g (colony forming units per gram, a 23 liter batch would then have 23x10^7 or 230,000,000 microbes in it) on fresh fruit, but more extensive searching might find better numbers).

So you could completely sterilize your equipment and everything, but the limiting factor is the fruit. That was the original point I was trying to make.

Reply to
Droopy

Hi Tom, I did a Google search on iodophor and came up with some interesting results; this one echoes your thoughts:

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It does look like the amount of iodine remaining upon draining is minuscule; I will start using it myself for brewing. This level of sanitation isn't necessarily required for wine with it's lower pH, but it doesn't appear to be an issue either. (Of course I emailed National Chemical just to play it safe, I'll post the results.) I liked the look of that WLC too, Wine Line Cleaner.

Here is a link to the homepage for anyone interested.

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To your original question, if the grapes that kit started with really came from Napa you should be very happy with the results. I can't imagine someone starting with high quality grapes and butchering them; I think you will be OK. Waiting a year sound like the right thing to do, but plan on tasting regularly so you can track it's evolution. Just top up with some store bought as necessary. Reds really evolve quite a bit over the first year.

Thanks,

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

ahhhhh... I follow your thought now... You are right on for during crush. My brain presently stuck in racking time now. The 'whole process only as strong as the last sanitizer' seems to assume same bad bugs whole time. Are you sure that is correct assumption?

Gene

Reply to
gene

Well, the things that can infect your wine will be present in your winery microenvironment to begin with. The relative concentrations can change, like it has been established that you should not make vinegar in the same place that you make wine.....even if you have dedicated equipment.

But say you have a carboy that has some contaminant microbe in it. You wash it out with fairly clean tap water. Then you nuke it with bleach. Then you rinse it out with sulfite and lets assume that it is not in the water. Then you make up your must, pitch yeast and stir it a couple time daily.

Well whatever microbe was present in your microenvironment just got in to your wine. The only time I would ever worry about such strict sanitation is if it had becoma problem Liek a batch really got skanked up. Then I would pour the stuff down the toilet and bleach the crap out of teh carboy. Which is along the lines of what a winery would do. You can take action after you get an infection, but you cannot really prevent it from occuring by up front sanitation. You always get back to the fact that you are bringing in something that has the contaminating microbes on it. As long as your equipment is clean it will assuredly have less microbial contaminants on it when compared to the fruit. Especially if you use tap water, which has to be relatively clean.

Reply to
Droopy

Good points.

I'd not used iodophor myself before this time... so new experience for me... I'd only done K-meta. Is cross-contamination so rapid that re-inoculation guaranteed? I didn't think so if one keeps open top of container covered right after sanitize. Dunno. Suppose a lot depends on air circulation and general cleanliness of work area.

Gene

Reply to
gene

we've only used idophor for our smaller (carboys or smaller) wares for 9 years with no known side issues. we do RTFM and follow it . Our guru at our LHBWS recommended it exclusively back in '97 & we've used it ever since. We're not Felix Unger (nor Monk) when it comes to sanitation, but idophor seems to have done us well. We do, however use clorox on the crusher, press, and 90 gal primary tubs due to inordinate cheapness.

Reply to
bobdrob

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