Racking Night

'Evening all!

Just finished racking some of last years stuff. Sadly, I'm guilty of a big no-no. This was the second racking after moving the wine to carboys. I should have done it a few months ago, but didn't. Oh well....

A primer on the process: Primary fermentation makes alcohol from juice. When that's done you rack (move) the wine to a secondary fermenter, let stuff settle, rack the wine off the sediment, lather rinse repeat every 3 months or so till it's clear, you're ready to bottle or bulk age.

All of these are from September and had their last racking (to the secondary) in October.

How did things turn out? Pretty well...Fate may have smiling upon me tonight.

• Red Zinfandel: Great Zin taste, still a little gassy, but that'll go away. This is going to be a good one.
• Chardonnay: Smelled great, the first part of the taste was good...the WHAM, some harshness I hope goes away. It all tasted like chardonnay, but wow...it kinda hurt.
• Diamond: Got this juice in the Finger Lakes region of NY. Smelled wonderful, very grapey, and had a definite 'diamond grape' taste, but it needs conditioning (sugar added before bottling) to get the true diamond flavor people are used to. (and by 'people' I mean my lovely wife Heidi, and our friends.)
• The backyard red: This I'm very excited about. I have 6 vines in the yard, mostly for decoration; 2 each of Concord, Catawba and Niagara grapes. Last year was insane with the amount of grapes I got. So, I made wine from them. Yep, good old Dunmore Red...hahaha. Well, the wine smells incredible...just outstanding. The taste: it's getting there. Probably will have to be conditioned, but I think I'll be happy with it.
  

In the cellar now, on top of the above, I have 12 gallons of 2006 Zin that still needs to be bottled. I have 6 gallons each of Honey Apple and Honey Grape wines from 2006 that are aging till 2009. 12 gallons of Ruby Cabernet from 2007, and the above wines.

Looking forward to a blueberry wine, and possibly a strawberry wine in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Lastly, what do you think of this? Send me your feedback. There's a poll on the right side of the screen, take it.

Till then....

Random Stuff

Some sites and thoughts today.

First up is http://tv.winelibrary.com/

I used to watch this guy's daily podcast, but I've since grown tired of it. He's a bit 'in your face' for my taste, but he's doing two really important things in wine. 1: He's blasting away the aura that wine is snooty. Thank God for that! 2: He's using tech, blogging, podcasting, Facebook, etc. to promote his love of wine.

Next up is another blogger I found. http://chezraywinery.blogspot.com

This guy is doing what I hope to be doing in a few years. Huge blog, tons of useful info if you're interested in making your own wine.

Finally there's www.the1819redbrickinn.com

This B&B is in the NY Finger Lakes region, and is our favorite place to stay when we go there. The owners, Wendy and Rob are two of the best hosts you can find. On our first stay there, we were with 2 other couples who were friends of ours. We all found ourselves in the kitchen with Wendy and Rob (where else do you end up when you're visiting someone's home?) talking and laughing till very late/early. This is not a B&B where you feel like you're staying at your grandmother's house, and everything is pristine and untouched because nobody's allowed to touch anything.

I say that wine is best drunk conversing with friends in a relaxing environment. Wendy and Rob provide the environment, and the conversation. You just need to bring the wine.

One last thing. I'm playing around with ads on the blog. I've been watching the sponsored ads for the last couple of days, and they're not shady. I'm seeing ads for wine meetups, homebrew suppliers I've bought stuff from, and wine reviews from magazines I've checked out. I'd never ask you to click on them, I'll just say I was surprised to see legitimate links.

Do I need a cool signoff?

Gluhwein

Getting a hankering to make your own wine? Try doctoring up someone else's first...make something tasty, with little, if any, investment.

It's called Gluhwein, and I thank my friend Kurt for introducing me to it.

It's easy to make and you probably have most of the ingredients in your kitchen now.

Take the bottle of red wine...the drier the better. Know that bottle you got as a gift, and have no intention of drinking? Now you have a use for it.

In a sauce pan, bring the following to a simmer:
1 cup of orange juice
3/4 cup of sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbl orange peel (did you squeeze the orange for the juice?)
10 or so cloves.

You want it to simmer for about 20 minutes till its a syrup (coats the back of a spoon) , then strain it into a carafe, thermos, something heatproof.
Add the wine to the syrup.
Pour in your favorite mug.

Enjoy!

Expand your Wine Horizons

I never really liked wine till about 6 years ago. Yeah, I had some on hand, gifts given when I had parties, something to cook with, and even one or two to drink, when I got around to it. I didn't dislike wine, but I did dislike (and still am not a huge fan of) Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, White Zinfandel and Chardonnay. The reds were always too dry and oakey, the White Zin left a buttery feeling in my mouth. The Chardonnay just didn't taste that good.

Then I met my future wife, Heidi, and she convinced me to go to a local wine festival. I learned about Concords, Chambourcins, Niagaras, table reds and whites that tastes like grape juice, and didn't leave me feeling thirsty! That summer we spent a weekend in NY's Finger Lakes region. I was introduced to my favorite variety: Gewurtztraminer.

The rest is history.

California does a great job of promoting it's big products; Cabs, Merlots, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Chablis....and I know several people who associated wine with those varieties. Depending on where you live, you might also associate wine with the jet fuel your grandfather made in the basement. I even know some people who drank the $4 a bottle stuff in college, and couldn't bring themselves to taste wine again.

I'm suggesting you do one thing: forget that you don't like wine. You probably do, you just haven't had one you liked. And once you find one you do, you'll find another, and another...and you might even end up liking something you didn't before.

Next time you're going past a store that sells wine, grab a bottle or two of any of the following: Red Zinfandel (drink it with a bowl of pasta), Gewurtztraminer, Reisling, Concord, Niagara, Catawba, Rioja, a decent Austrailian Shiraz (or Syrah) or any semi-dry table wine (red or white). When should you drink it? When you're looking to relax. Saturday night, you're sitting on the porch and would normally have a beer? Have a glass of wine. Cooking your favorite dinner, have it then. Just need some time to yourself (and I don't normally advise drinking alone), but pour a glass of wine, instead of having a cigarette, or scotch. The time to drink it is up to you, but open that bottle with the intention that the next 30 minutes are dedicated to relaxing.

You might be surprised to fine out that you really do like wine.

Lesson Learned: When Good Wine Goes Bad

The economics of making wine are pretty good. If I make a 14 gallon demijohn (a type of fermentation vessel) of wine, I'll get about 70 bottles of wine. At 150 bucks or so for grapes (enough to press and fill the demijohn), that's $2.14 a bottle!!!

I've made one or two wines that I would consider on par with a $6 -$8 a bottle wine (Pa. prices). When you realize you can do this, there is every reason to make sure your wine is good. The money you put in isn't a 'large' amount, but who couldn't find another use for $150 or so? If it's your hobby, you probably have to take time away from other things as well. So if you're going to make wine, take care to do it right, so you can fully enjoy the fruits of your labor.

In 2005 I made two wines from grapes: Zinfandel and Sangiovese (Chianti-styled wine). I took good care of both, watching, tasting, racking, making sure everything was perfect. The Zin worried me, didn't develop a lot of flavor at first, and was even a little harsh in late winter. The Sangiovese, however, was delicious right from the start.

My lovely wife, Heidi became pregnant with Giada in late 2005. Spring and Summer of 2006 was busy with preparing our lives, and our home for her arrival. This caused me to do something in haste that I now regret. I racked the wines for the last time in late Spring, and both were coming along nicely. I forgot to 'top off' the Sangiovese.

Oxygen, it would seem, is quite a nasty substance! Cut an apple, leave it out for an hour...see that color? O2 did that. Taking a multivitamin? Does it have 'anti-oxidents' in it? What do you think they're trying to prevent in your body?

What oxygen does to your apple, it did to my Sangiovese. When you rack wine, you have to make sure you leave as little air as possible in the fermentation vessel in order to prevent oxidation. When mid-summer came and I did a final tasting before bottling...well it was a sad moment. The wine was rust colored...it tasted acidic; not vinegar yet, but might as well have been. The wine I was so looking forward to handing out at Giada's birth was rotten.

Fortunately, the Zin was tremendous (in my opinion).

I had 13.5 gallons of bad wine in my cellar. I didn't know what to do. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I left it, with the airlock till this past fall when I needed the demijohn again. Dumping it was easier than I'd expected, but I learned an important lesson: Air+wine=swill.

So far this years wines are still tasty, and haven't been exposed to that much air. I plan to keep it that way. I'll keep you posted on the 2006 Zinfandel (we HAVE to get around to bottling it!) and the 2007 Ruby Cabernet, Zinfandel, Diamond, Chardonnay and table red made from grapes grown in our backyard!

Welcome

Welcome to Gowden's Wines blog.


I am a very amateur winemaker; have been one for 3 years now. There is nothing about it I don't love, and want to share my perspectives on wine with everyone. I want to talk about the process of making it; tasting the grapes, adjusting the must (the juice that will become wine), fermenting, racking, and the always enjoyable bottling. I want to talk about drinking wine, my own, my friends' and the stuff you buy at the store, winery, wherever.

I'm not a snob. I ask one thing of the wine that passes my lips: that it tastes good. I think wine is a singularly unique substance. If you sit with friends and open a bottle of wine, it will get emptied. The time spent sipping it usually involves conversation, laughter and often fond memories. If the bottle can provide that, then I am satisfied with its quality.

I began making wine about 4 years ago. Started with a must made of sugar and grape juice concentrate. I'd made beer in the past, and the two processes share much of the same equipment (carboy's, airlocks, racking hoses...) and mistakenly believed that their fermentation timelines were similar. I fermented for about a week, saw the fermentation slow (wasn't done, it was 'stuck' as they call it) and bottled it. I used leftover beer bottles from when I made beer, filled about 2 (beer) cases worth of bottles.

It tasted okay, but I wasn't drinking much wine for some reason. The wine sat in the cellar for a few months. I'd noticed, but thought nothing of the fact that the bottles I opened were somewhat effervescent. Oscar night, 2004, a few of us are watching the presentations and I hear a loud pop. I walk downstairs to the cellar to find total darkness when I had left the fluorescent lights on. I stepped into the darkness and something went crunch under my feet.

I had 48 bottle bombs on my hands. One had exploded and taken out the lights. There was sticky, green glass pieces all over. There was sticky white fluorescent tube glass everywhere. I had to don some heavy leather gauntlets, lab goggles, and bottle opener, over a metal sink, and pray none exploded in my hands.

Over the next 15 minutes I found little wine, but lots of foam. Every bottle I opened was like a Mentos in Diet Pepsi, and several actually propelled themselves from my grasp.

I returned to the group with a few cuts, pretty sticky from the sprays, and convinced I'd never make wine again. About a year later my friend Tony came over with a jug of his (delicious) homemade wine; sangiovese if I remember correctly, and I was determined to try again.

That fall I made apple wine (Gowden Winery's Apple of my Eye) and a more informed attempt at the Concord grape juice wine (Gowden Winery's Love Potion #1). In 2005, Tony showed me how to make wine from grapes; the result was Bella Giada Zinfandel (given away to celebrate the birth of my lovely daughter, Giada). Since then I've tried Sangiovese, Strawberry (Gowden Winery's Strawberry Stupor), Chardonnay, Thompson, Shiraz, Ruby Cabernet and even a few honey wines that are currently aging.

It's Spring here. That means warm nights on the deck with a glass of sweeter wine (Bully Hill's Banty Red perhaps?) and maybe pizza. Family cookouts; a great opportunity to bring a hearty red (Zinfandel, Shiraz and any table red you like) or fruity white (you CANNOT go wrong with Gewurtztraminer!!!!!) There's been a flurry of activity locally in the form of wine tastings, and an upcoming wine festival. So while there's not much to do with the wine that's aging in my cellar (other than rack it and bottle it), there's more then enough 'research' to do.

I've taken up enough of your time. Thanks for reading, now go share some wine, and drink responsibly at all times.