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Whoa, what a weekend! Well, even more specific, what a LOOONG weekend.
From the last minute rushing around on saturday purchasing the wine equipment, right through to tuesday’s Australia Day spent with the parents and their neighbours, patiently waiting for the baume of the fermenting must to drop to 4 degrees so it could transferred to the Demijohns and i could drive back to Sydney; the weekend was long and tedious.
The good news arrived on Wednesday morning that the baume had continued to drop to a little above 1 degree by 9am, and was still bubbling furiously! This put my mind at ease, allaying my earlier fears that i hadn’t rinsed the demijohns sufficiently after earlier washing them in a Potassium Metabisulfate super-concentrate to sterilize them. Had that been the case, the fermentation would have promptly ceased, leaving me with 100 litres of dessert wine!
Back in 2007, i had the idea that i wanted to be a winemaker, so enrolled Charles Sturt University. I had no desire at that point to actually work in the industry, and still don’t today. My goals were simple: to one day be able to produce wine of a decent quality, and secondly, to be able to produce quality fruit from healthy grape vines to make my wine from. Today, they haven’t changed.
I’d reached the stage in my course, a few rises before the hump in the middle known as the homeward stretch that i now felt it was time to make that first vintage. So i set about putting it into motion. First things first, we’d need the equipment. So i bought was two 54 litre Demijohns off eBay, for the cool price of $40 which i picked up off an Old Italian man in Burwood. He’d used them for years making his wine, and decided he’d had enough. Next to come was the basket press, again off eBay, this time from Greystanes. The guy had designed and made it by hand using recycled components, and never fully finished it. When my parents went to pick it up, they discovered the base didn’t join onto the central rod, but my dad being good at fixing things figured he could make it work. Besides, at the time i figured $150 is a lot better than buying it new from a shop for 5 times the price. Providing it worked!
I Decided the Australia Day long weekend would be the ideal time to do the vintage, because of the time off work. So, after making contact with a grower in the Hunter Valley to purchase the fruit, it was confirmed that the Chardonnay were a few weeks off, as were the Shiraz and Merlot. All that would be ripe in time was the Verdelho. So, decision made then! Verdelho would be the fruit for my first wine. Still needing to purchase lots of equipment, and with the long weekend looming in under a week, i set about gathering my tools.
I purchased my selected strains of yeast, and my pH meter from WMSS in Victoria, with the guarantee that i’d have them by the weekend (which it did, Friday afternoon thankfully!). Saturday, i drove out to Wetherill Park, with probable father in law in tow, to Cooperage Brew. From there i purchased another 54 litre Demijohn, a 225 litre Fermentation vat, Potassium Metabisulfate powder, American Oak chips, bungs, airlocks, and the winemaker’s most important tool of them all – the minus 2 to 15 degree Baume Hydrometer! Ray was most helpful, and thankfully had everything in stock.
Sunday would be the picking day, so in preparation we drove up to my parents place at Port Stephens on the Saturday night, with the car fully loaded. A 6:45 start, and arrival at the Hunter Valley vineyards by 8:15, we’d started picking by 8:30. Four of us picking, i presumed it would take about 2 hours to load the trailer with 200kgs worth. I didn’t however take into consideration the small bunch, small berry size of the unirrigated vineyard we would be picking from! My planned 2 hours came and went, by the time we were complete i checked my watch and it read 13:30. We’d been picking for 5 hours straight!
Dad covered over the trailer, and off we went back home. Mum ordered pizza’s for lunch, which we hungrily consumed coupled with a Hunter Verdelho (thought it was appropriate), and then it was time to get stuck in to making the wine.
The basket press worked to a certain degree, though the going again proved tougher then i’d expected. By 20:30 we were all but done. We’d managed to extract a little over 100 litres from the grapes. Now, it was the time to do my analysis’ of the fruit sugar level, and pH, and to inoculate the ferment with my selected yeast strain.
Initial Readings:
Baume – 13.5 degrees
pH – 3.25
I Added Potassium Metabisulfate sufficient to provide around 10-15 ppm of Sulphur. I made a decision before i started that i wanted to keep the sulphur usage at this stage to a minimum because, whilst inoculating with my selected strain of yeast, my goal wasn’t to slaughter everything indigenous in the mix already, rather to allow them to survive for as long as possible. After all, they would be outmuscled by the inoculated yeast in the very near term anyway. And whatever flavours they impart before their doom will be minimal, and given i have no apparatus to test for sulphur content down the track, it gives me more margin to play with.
By Monday morning, the baume had dropped to 13 degrees, and had formed a froth on the surface. I made a point during the whole of Monday to stir the must atleast once every 2 hours. The pH i measured to be 3.30.
Tuesday morning at 9am when i investigated, the must was bubbling ferociously! The smell had changed, there was definitely Alcohol coming from the ferment, and smelled less sweet.
Readings:
Baume – 7.5 degrees
pH – 3.20
I tested it again at 11:30am, and the baume had dropped a further degree to 6.5. By 14:45 it had dropped to 5.75, and by 17:00 was down to 5.05. I figured the latest i’d leave it to transfer to the demijohns, in order to make it back to Sydney at a reasonable hour was 7pm. I tested the ferment again at 18:50 and it registered at 4.5 degrees. A decision was made that we’d transfer it now.
We filtered the must through a sieve and filled the demijohns to an equal level, one of which i added 200 grams of American Oak chips. My plan is to produce two different wines as finished products, one oaked and the other un-oaked. I sealed both demijohns with airlocks, and packed up and drove home. Wednesday morning, my parents tested the baume of each demijohn, and both registered at around 1.5 degrees. They continued to bubble, though at decreasing frequencies right through to Sunday. By Sunday, my dad calculated that the bubbles were releasing at a rate of one every 4 minutes. The fermentation is almost complete.
I haven’t yet decided whether to rack both demijohns off next weekend (6th Feb), or whether to leave them to sit on the lees for a few months. Either way, on the 6th Feb my plan is to remove the airlocks and fit the demijohns with bungs, and to add another 10-15 ppm of Sulphur to each demijohn. On this weekend, we will pick the red grapes, and do it all again! I also haven’t yet decided on Shiraz or Merlot grapes, or a blend of both (co-fermentation).
Click here for the photos!
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