First time trying red wine from own grown grapes using wild fermentation

[MrCart]

Hello folks :)

Before the kids were born (11+ years ago) I regularly made wine and beer from kits.

Only last week we tried a bottle of beer that was found in a cupboard in the garage - not a great taste - but drinkable!

Anyhow, the wife bought a grape vine about 8 years ago which spent 4 years in a pot, doing nothing and 2 years in the ground doing nothing. Last year it had a poor attempt at supplying grapes but never got bigger than peas, and not many of them. This year it went a bit nuts and gave 8.5kg of grapes.

The wife thinks it was a Pinot Noir - and it does look like it.

So I decided I ought to turn that into wine and quite like the idea (challenge/risk) of a wild fermentation.

I have been winging this a little - reading up on it sometimes after I have already (possibly) done the wrong thing.

Here is so far...

• Pick the grapes.
  
• Quickly rinse the bunches and let drip (mostly) dry
• Destem - discarding any that were not the best quality
• Put into a fermenting bin and stir in two crushed campden tablets (8.5kg)
  
• Put into the fridge to cold soak for 7 days
• Take out of fridge, put onto heater pad put in two plastic bottles of hot water (to bring temp up as quick as possible)
• Manually crush all grapes with my hands
• Pour everything into a straining bag in a second fermenting bin (7.5 litres)
• Stir in some yeast nutrient and pectolase as per instructions
• Leave on heating pad and put to one side to ferment

My concern at this point is that the rinsing and adding campden tablets may have removed / killed the wild yeast and the grapes will slowly rot...rather than ferment.

My questions are : How likely is this? How long should I wait to see if it starts fermenting? Can I have a cut-off point where it is not too late to add yeast?

And of course any other advice is most welcome!

Thanks

 

[joel]

Hello, welcome! Two campden tablets in that amount of grapes is almost certainly enough to stop wild yeast reproducing. I'd get some wine yeast ASAP, make sure you follow any instructions on rehydration carefully. The good news is the campden will hopefully have prevented oxidation so it should still turn out ok. How did the grapes taste before crushing in terms of sweet/tart balance?

 

[MrCart]

I have added some yeast :)

As to taste, can't say that I have much of a palate for this sort of thing but if I had explain then I guess they were bittersweet - not sure if that is a good or bad thing though!

 

[joel]

Bittersweet can be a good thing for red wine, bitter means there is a good amount of tannin and sweet means there's some sugar to make precious alcohol. I've tasted some really sour garden grapes in the past which are hard to get good results without sweetening the end product to balance it out and needed sugar added at the start to make enough alcohol. It's good practice to measure the juice with a hydrometer or refractometer so you know the sugar content and can adjust to get the right abv for the style of wine. Sounds like you should get some drinkable wine though.

 

[MrCart]

Ah, I guess I should have measured that before sprinkling the yeast on... which has now created a foam across the top.

Should I draw some out and measure now, or wait till tomorrow - I was planning on stirring twice a day?

Thanks btw :)

 

[joel]

If it starts fermenting the measurement won't be accurate tomorrow, you have to measure before it starts. It can be hard to get an accurate reading from grapes with a hydrometer due to the suspended solids but it will give you a rough idea of the amount of sugars in it and can work out if it will get decent abv (we're not looking for rocket fuel but 12% or above is a decent result for garden grapes).

 

[MrCart]

Turns out I forgot to order the hydrometer jar!

Quickly made one and took a reading - getting liquid out was ok as all the skin etc was inside the mesh bag.

The reading was a fraction below 1.070

 

[MrCart]

Learn as you go.... spotting the obvious is not so easy first time round!

I had the room at 20c and had the bin on a heat pad which raises temp by 9c - that’s 29c and from what I read a great temp to use.

When I took a reading it was 34c!

Then realised that with only 7.5l in a 23l bin it was going to raise more than 9c!

Power off as it settles back down :)

 

[tonyhibbett]

sg 1070 is pretty good, but it has been an exceptional summer. I had some cabernet sauvignon with an sg of 1090 this year, which is exceptional in the UK. I use a refractometer to test the grapes individually. Once the sugar content stops rising, that's when I harvest. I don't wash the grapes as the wild yeast is on the surface of the skin. For red wine, I crush the grapes with the stems, take the sg of the juice, add sugar to sg 1090 and leave them, covered and warm, until the skins have turned from black to pink. I then press them twice, discard the pulp and put the fermenting liquid into a suitable bucket with lid. After 24 hours, the fine pulp rises to the top, which I skim off with a sieve. Then it goes into a fermentation vessel with a constant temperature of around 20 c., no lower. Once the initial fermentation has slowed I take a reading. At sg 1010, I rack and remove most of the thick layer of yeast sediment, which I keep in a jar for another brew. It keeps well. Red wine clears quite quickly once fermentation has stopped. It is best stored in bulk, not bottled, in a dark place, with a thin layer of yeast on the bottom. For large quantities (5 gallons or more) I use oak casks for maturing, usually at least 3 months, before bottling for further maturation.

 

[pomme homme]

I have a small row of Oberlin (I think) vines. As has been said already, 2018 is proving to be something of an annus mirablis for fruit. I picked the grapes on 5 October (but probably I could have left them later if not for the likelihood of the starlings stripping the vines) when they had a brix reading of 17.2 (about 1070 sg). Because the vines are not in an ideal location (planted there before I arrived and before the apple trees grew tall) and lacking full sun all day, always I have to practise chapitalisation. However this year I've had to add less than 1kg of sugar to the 16 litres of juice produced with a view to achieving 13% abv. What I am doing, this year, is to leave the juice in with the skins and pips for as long as possible. In previous years I've taken the skins and pips away too soon and ended up with an insipid wine lacking in body. But as fermentation is almost complete, I'll be racking the wine into demijohns soon to leave until I bottle in the spring. Then I can get back to this year's real 'star' - the Noah grapes which have produced about 90 litres of juice and the wine produced therefrom soon will need to be racked off its lees - in order to avoid the mustiness that it suffered last year when other matters meant that I took my eye off the ball and left the wine on the lees for too long with detrimental effects.

 

[MrCart]

Should I be adding some sugar to help get the abv up? I think from my (untrained) calculation I might end up with only 9-10%?

 

[pomme homme]

I suppose it depends on how you like your wine. I'd say that 9-10% abv is too low and you may sacrifice flavour. If you look at commercial reds generally you'll find an abv of 12% at lowest - although this year some of the Anjou Rouge I bought en vrac was 14% abv.

 

[MrCart]

I like it 14-15%!

It's in the bin at 7.5l but that includes the grape skin and seeds - so maybe 5-6l when pressed? Based on you adding 1kg to 15l maybe I add about 0.5kg?

 

[pomme homme]

My 16 litres also includes skins and pips. So if you want to achieve an abv of 14-15%, you'll need more than 500g of sugar. If you look online you'll find tables that indicate, by reference to an initial sg/brix reading, how much sugar you need to add to achieve your desired final abv.

 

[MrCart]

Thanks - according to the calculator it is 0.7kg to get 14%

Part of me just wants to leave the wine as is, but then I read that if it ends up around 10% or lower, it isn't going to keep very well?

If I do add the sugar I read that some people put it in directly and stir, sometimes early in the primary fermentation, some times after about a week.

Others dilute it - but with only 7.5l of must is this going to adversely affect the taste of the wine?

Any thoughts?

 

[pomme homme]

I added sugar at the start of the primary fermentation - on the basis that if the natural sugar content of the grapes had been high enough not to require chapitalisation, all the sugar would be there from the start . But whether that's right or wrong I'll leave to the experts and/or the passage of time!

 

[tonyhibbett]

Wine keeps perfectly well at 8% abv so you don't need to add sugar if your wine is likely to reach 10%. It could be argued that adding sugar could reduce the quality of the flavour since ordinary granulated sugar (sucrose derived from sugar beet) does impart a flavour which I don't like. I have tasted hooch made purely from fermented sugar and it's disgusting!

 

[MrCart]

Thanks Tony - I am going to leave it alone.

I guess it better to start as natural as possible then if it's not good I could always try something different next time.

 

[pomme homme]

I might concur if you are speaking only of white wines, Tony, but I'd disagree if your theory extends to red wines - and I'd do so based on experience. I've made red wine from my Oberlin grapes, without adding sugar, and with an abv of less than 10% it was insipid, lacking in body and not a pleasant drink. Rather like a third rate Beaujolais Nouveau! Whilst I accept that granulated sugar can impart a less than pleasant flavour, weighing the two 'downsides' in the balance, I'd go for chapitalisation and the higher percentage abv.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Can't find any info on oberlin but certainly not all black grapes make good red wine. I have tried with isabella and Wrotham pinot with poor results, whereas cabernet sauvignon is consistently good, given an Indian summer and long maturation in oak. The grapes must be left on the vine long after they have ripened. The best batch I had were picked on the 5th December!
High natural sugar levels are important with red wine. Some varieties are naturally low in sugar. My isabellas never go above 15% (sg 1060) no matter how long they are left to ripen.
Adding sugar increases the alcohol but dilutes the natural flavour. One way to increase the alcohol is oak maturation. The volume decreases as water evaporates but the alcohol less so. In a large barrel during the course of a year the volume may decrease by say 10% (increasing the density of the wine) while the abv is proportionally increased by up to 2%. Low acidity and tannin can also make a wine taste insipid. Vodka is very high in alcohol but has almost no flavour.
A great red wine improver is of course the humble elderberry!