Blue Door Vineyard's Grapelog :: Grape-growing, winemaking & wine

I racked the Valiant wine to secondary tonight. Overall, I’m pleased. If my calculations are correct, alcohol is a little under 16%. There is decent body, with a slight acidic bite. I added light oak chips to it right after racking. It’s a pretty dark color – more purple than red. But a nice color nonetheless. In about two weeks, I’ll rack it again and set it aside to age.

The Valiant wine is coming along great. I planned to press last night, but ended up doing it today instead. I scooped most of the skins and ’stuff’ out and into a mesh bag. I hand-pressed the bag, set the skins aside and then poured the rest of the wine with a few remaining grape skins through the mesh bag. I squeezed this and then siphoned the wine (about 1.5 gal) into a large carboy. Once the fermentation slows – likely just a few more days, I’ll rack it into a smaller secondary and set it aside.

Here are the numbers:

Current brix: 11

Current SG: 1.003

Current res sugar: 51

Current alcohol: 13.1%

After punching down last night I checked the numbers on the Valiant wine…it continues to progress well. Here’s what I found last night:

Current SG: 1.023

Current Brix: 14

Residual Sugar: 95

Alcohol: 10.9%

It still has a very nice grapey/fruitey nose, but now the alcohol is there along with legs. I plan to move it to a carboy tonight after pressing.

It’s day three of the Valiant wine experiment and I have to say, I’m impressed. I knew this grape had a lot of flavor based on our experience making jelly with it. But it seems to come out even more as it’s fermenting. It’s got to be the best-smelling must I’ve smelled yet! After the grapes thawed, I took measurements and was surprised that the brix was only 17. I decided I wanted to try for a little more alcohol in this one, so I added two cups of white sugar to the batch (the batch is only a little more than a gallon). This brought the brix up to 26 – slightly higher than I initially planned, but I was totally happy with it. The SG started out at 1.1091. On day three it’s down to 1.0742. Alcohol is at about 4.7%. Check back as I plan to continue taking daily measurements.

I pressed and racked the wine to secondaries tonight. Everything looked, smelled and tasted great. I am especially interested in the Prairie Star wine – it smells awesome. I only wish I had had more PS grapes. The Brix tested out at 8%. The Frontenac is coming along well too. I can taste the acid, but not nearly like my first Frontenac batch a couple years ago. I think with some aging and oaking both of these wines should turn out fine. The Frontenac Brix tested at 7% tonight.