Racking yet again...

Since their was quite a bit of lees still in the bottom, I racked the wine into my other carboy. But since I want to be able to keep a better eye on the sediment, I cleaned out my glass carboy and racked it back into there. I also degassed it, then topped it off and put the airlock back on. So far so good. Oh, and I gave it a taste... it's getting there!

Amador County tasting.

I went tasting in Amador County yesterday, up near Sacramento/Folsom. We hit three wineries, none of which had tasting fees. That's nice, but I'd almost rather pay the $5.00 and not feel like I have to buy a bottle. We went to:

(1) Youngs Vineyard (www.youngsvineyards.com). There were some pretty good wines here. My friend noted that their wines are on the more expensive side in Amador, the least expensive being $26. The highlight: 2007 Petite Sirah. Oh and the really cool wine labels...

(2) Montevina (www.montevina.com). They had a ton of wines to taste; probably 20-30 different wines. They have two different labels here, one being Montevina and the other Terra d'Oro. The highlight: Zinfandel Port. Also, getting to taste about 8 wines for free was cool.

(3) Dobra Zemlja (www.dobraz.com, pronounced "DO-bra ZEM-ya". It means "the good earth" in Croatian). They had a cool tasting room crankin' some pretty good tunes. They offer a cool 1L, refillable, screw-top jug wine, which they call Milan Ruž (pronounced almost like Moulin Rouge). The highlight: 2007 Kikas Zinfandel, which they call a dobra-style port. The story behind this wine is that the grapes were harvested so late, that they had basically become raisins on the vine. They obviously yielded very little juice. But they distilled this juice twice and fortified it with grappa (Italian liquor distilled from pomace, which is the leftover skins, stems and seeds from winemaking). Traditionally, ports are fortified with brandy (liquor distilled from wine). And the wine is pronounced "kick ass", but they had to alter the spelling to put it on the label.

Overall a great time. If it wasn't so far away, I would frequent Amador County more often.

Oh... and don't forget my grapevines!

Chardonnay, if you must know. And they're growing like weeds...

After it settled...

I noticed a bit too much sediment in the bottom of my glass carboy. My racking cane didn't work like I expected. No worries though. My good friends at WineMakingTalk.com had some solutions, so we should be bottling here in a couple weeks.

The second racking.

The wine is pretty clear so far. I've put a sample into a wine glass and checked it out. It doesn't look cloudy at all. So far so good. But since the sample is already in a glass, I figure I'll have a taste. It still smells a bit young and it tastes kinda like a Charles Shaw wine. That's good I guess, because after it ages for a while, it should taste way better than $2BC.

Anyhoo, today is the second racking. I cleaned and sanitized my equipment, and siphoned all of the wine into a second carboy; glass this time, so I can see it. I think I took too much sediment during my first racking, so I'm going to try to leave more behind. My siphoning cane has a stopper on the bottom, so that it sits up an inch or so from the bottom. That should help.



Once this step is done, its another 2 weeks before bottling.

Almost wine now.

Secondary fermentation has gone on for about 30 days. As I mentioned before, the kit instructions suggested 10 days, but I was assured that 30 days should not be a problem. Well, now its time to stabilize and begin clarifying.

The stabilizing additives essentially stop fermentation. Potassium metabisulfite is added to create a hostile environment for the yeast (anyone who has been sexually harassed knows about a hostile environment). Potassium sorbate is added to disrupt the reproductive cycle of the yeast. While neither additive actually kills the yeast, they have little sugar to consume and can't reproduce. Attrition anyone?

Clarifying is pretty self explanatory. Chitosan or isinglass is added to make the wine is crystal clear. I think of it as turning a Hefeweizen into a Coors Light.



I added the stabilizers and used my handy drill-mounted stirring whip to mix them in and drive off excess CO2. I poured in the chitosan and fired up my drill for another couple of minutes.



Up to this point, there has been a significant amount of headspace in the carboy; a couple of inches. But since the fermentation is coming to a halt, there won't be any CO2 produced to protect the wine from oxygen in the air. So I have to top up the wine almost to the top of the carboy. I reattached the cork and airlock, and guess what? We wait more. In about 8 weeks, we rack it again. Oh and I got a new airlock. Super sweet:

Still waiting (notice a pattern here?)

I am back from a long week of camping. Not that I needed a vacation (I haven't worked since May 22nd) but I went anyways. I'm actually going to let the secondary fermentation go on longer while I wait for a piece of equipment to arrive from grapestompers.com. I'm going to get this fancy stirrin' stick that attaches to my drill. There is going to be a lot of stirring in the next couple steps and the carboy opening is a couple inches, making vigorous stirring rather difficult. This should save my arms some trouble.