A few weeks back I had a bit of a disaster in the vineyard, which to be honest I should have seen coming. There were so many bunches of grapes gradually swelling that the trellising wires were beginning to sag under the weight. After a heavy rain shower the whole lot gave way bringing all the vines crashing to the ground:
With the help of my very sympathetic Wife, amongst lots of cursing from me, we managed to haul them up using ropes. A lot had to be cut away but it seemed like the only option to avoid losing the entire crop.
Over the next few weeks the Solaris ripened to the point where they were going mouldy and the Phoenix were being eaten by wasps so I decided I would just harvest all three varieties in one go and make a blend. They all tasted good, so even if some were a little unripe, I could hopefully make a good sparkling wine, which needs a bit more acidity anyway.
What I thought would take me a couple of hours to harvest took most of a day. I couldn’t believe how many grapes there were. Bearing in mind I had only had a maximum of 4kg of any one type in previous years I was absolutely amazed to pick 22kg of Solaris, 18kg of Phoenix and 15kg of Orion. 55kg of grapes! No wonder the trellising gave way!
I ended up with 3 crates like this:
Which were crushed in the traditional way – yes I washed my feet!
And then put through the press:
This resulted in 35 litres of juice. It tasted very nice, although I’m a little worried it might be a bit too acidic as a result of the early harvest for the Phoenix/Orion. A quick acid test gave a TA (Titratable Acidity) of 9 g/l which is possibly a bit too high, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.
I left it to settle overnight then syphoned the good stuff into the fermenting bucket, leaving the sediment behind, which ended up with 24.5 litres of juice. A quick specific gravity check gave 1.060, which is a little on the low side. This is enough to produce 7.6% alcohol. I want 10% to be able to turn it into sparkling wine later, so a quick calculation showed I needed to add 1kg sugar (calculation is 17g of sugar per litre per % increase so 17 x 24.5 x 2.4 = 1000).
I then stirred the must to oxygenate it as much as possible and added the yeast. I’ve set the fermentation fridge to 15°C to give a nice slow fermentation:
