Red Wine

[Xabia Jim]

I think that Pinot Noir movie (what's that name?) increased the demand for Pinot and had a negative impact on that variety....just a wild opinion here.

[Inishta]

The films name was 'Sideways'. Much reviled by the French wine snobs for turning drinkers off Burgundy.........the same grape...........onto Pinot.

There is an upside in everything..........................

[gjbingham]

I remember shortly after the movie was released while I was in Japan, you could hardly get your hands on a bottle of PN. All the young sailors were trying to impress their girls with their newfound knowledge of wines.

[cvdukes]

Originally Posted by Frances

George, could you post how you made the blackberry wine? When can you drink it, what will it taste like?

We had blackberries coming out of our ears last summer. Grapes too, come to think of it...

Maybe we could start a new subject heading called "what I brewed/distilled last year" - there are quite a few out there on beer brewing already.

Frances
I see that George never posted his blackberry wine method...so I'll post mine. I make 5-10 gallons of blackberry every year and anywhere from 30-70 gallons of other wines (apple, muscadine,peach, strawberry,pumpkin ...an acquired taste, pinto palm...)

For Blackberry, I start with about 2-3 gallons of crushed ripe berries in a food grade 7 gallon bucket. Then cover with equal amount of boiling water, cover overnight (kills the native yeasts and bacteria, plus extracts a lot of color into the wine). Next morning I innoculate with a yeast i keep growing in an orange juice mixture (I posted somthing about this method in a discussion on baking yeasts a few months ago so I wont repeat here). Usually for Blackberry I'll use the champange yeast or Montrachet. Cover again. Starting the next day, the berry pulp will foam up at the top of the liquid. Take a wooden spoon and stir it down. Basically just repeat this once a day for next 10-14 days. This is the primary fermentation stage and accounts for about 90% of the alcohol content the wine will have unless you add more sugar to boost the content.
Strain through cheesecloth into 5 gallon carboy fitted with fermentation lock. At this stage, I usually add in a sucrose syrup made by dissolving table sugar into boiling water (want max sugar concetration).
About 6-10 weeks later, siphon off to another carboy ("racking") leaving the dregs behind. Top up with sucrose and wait a few more weeks.... By then most of the yeast has died off and the wine is clear. Most people use a sulfur compound to kill the yeast off at this point and bottle up but that sulfur stuff gives me headaches and makes the wine taste yuck. Instead I rack off to 5-liter glass jugs that allow the wine to continue to offgas if the yeasts reactivate (but usally not a problem because
the alcohol content is killing the yeast)...drinakable at this point...blackberry is a local favorite so it doesn't get a lot of aging
I only bottle up if I'm taking to a party. People that drink here know that we pour straight from the jug.
attached pic shows a lot of the process... 3 carboys on the left are apple in various stages from this fall and the red is a muscadine from the primary fermentation last week (frozen berries til I got a carboy freed up) ....lot of dead yeast sediment in the bottom of the muscadine and the apple on the right so they need racking to another carboy.

[gjbingham]

Sorry Frances. I totally missed your request as quoted above. CV's got a similar recipe. They're all variations on a theme. I don't add the sucrose later. I hit my 14 or so gallons of wine with 10ish LBS of sugar at the start of the ferment. I aim for a potential alcohol content of around 13 -14 percent, based on a hydrometer reading.

I have to re-read the books each year before I start, and that was 6 months ago for my last read. I'm sketchy on the particulars off the top of my head. This year I added the equivalent of a gallon of white grape juice to it. A couple of years ago, I added about 3 gallons of inexpensive burgundy wine to seven or so gallons of BBW. 9 months of fermenting and bulk aging should get the wine close to perfect. Blackberry wine doesn't age well like grape wines. They loose their colors and flavors quickly. Drink 'em up within a year or two.

G.

[Frances]

Thank you George and Duke

You're right, its the wrong time of year for this subject really, I figured I'd ask again once the blackberries start getting ripe. But this certainly sounds like something I have to try!

[mannextdoor]

Here is a cheap red wine. Better then nothing.

[Les]

WOW! And it's clearly marked as such. Mannextdoor, how much is that? Less than 2 buck chuck? My wife bought a bottle the other day called "Oops" - they nailed it, tasted like crap.

Les...

[RTflorida]

Personally, give me one of cvdukes plain brown jugs.....now thats some drinking, there. Thats down home good ole boy country style.

cv, not a knock on your wine or vessels.......I love those JUGS

(sorry didn't mean to bring up XJs somewhat suggestive thread...ok, maybe I did...couldn't resist)

RT

[Xabia Jim]

Originally Posted by RTflorida

Personally, give me one of cvdukes plain brown jugs.....now thats some drinking, there. Thats down home good ole boy country style.

cv, not a knock on your wine or vessels.......I love those JUGS

(sorry didn't mean to bring up XJs somewhat suggestive thread...ok, maybe I did...couldn't resist)

RT

innuendo and out the other.....