Back on the Horse

So let’s review the lessons I’ve learned during the last year and a half of winemaking without a mentor.  You can, and will, lose your grapes to black rot, birds and bees, so get comfortable with it.  The wrong kind of oak will make your wine taste like a tree.  Bottling too early will make your wine too cloudy.  Exposing your wine to oxygen will allow bacteria to turn it into vinegar.  And the wrong acidity will make your wine taste flat out bad. 

Each of those lessons have been learned the hard way, and I can pour you the wine/vinegar to prove it.  It’s with that backdrop in mind that I recently laid down $300 for 180 pounds of grapes from Russian River Valley.  It’s the largest production I’ve attempted on my own at once, and, of the 80 or so grape varietals available for purchase, literally the most expensive choice.  I’m a glutton for punishment, I realize, but if all goes absolutely perfectly, I could end up with three plus cases of pinot noir from arguably the best producing AVA (American Viticultural Area) in the country at an average cost of less than $10 per bottle (not including my equipment costs, of course).  I had to at least give it a try.

Macy on the hand crank with Jeff.

With assists from Jeff and Macy, the grapes were crushed in the driveway without issue with my fancy new crusher/destemmer.  After 11 days fermenting in the dining room in my new 45 gallon tub, Drew and I pressed the must in the garage, producing just under nine gallons of newly minted wine.  Malolactic fermentation is now well under way, as the wine ages in the basement beside my other three varietals in progress.  I now have a record 23 gallons of wine in production, a total of over 10 cases.  Surely, somehow, somewhere in that collection, is a glass I can be proud of, and validation of the greatest lesson of all:  practice makes perfect.

Inside the crusher.



180 pounds of must.

From left to right: 2010 Pinot Noir,

2011 Chardonnay, 2011 Corot Noir,
2011 Pinot Noir.



Drew on the press.

You Win Some You Lose Some

Congratulations to Michelle Tucker Day, of Boise, Idaho, winner of the first annual Dry Run Winery Free Wine Giveaway! 

With a year of blogging and my first successful wine competition under my belt, there might be an expectation that I can now rest on my laurels, the learning process complete.  But be assured, I still have no idea what I am doing. 

Future vinegar.

Case in point, you know that Corot Noir estate wine I’ve been working on for the last six months and anticipating for the last three years?  Well, I’m pretty sure that’s ruined.  For the last three weeks a nasty aerobic bacteria film has been forming on the top of the carboys, beginning the slow and steady process of converting my young wine to your standard table vinegar.  Ironic, I realize, since much of that wine is aging in a liter bottle that originally contained store-bought balsamic vinegar, but it’s not so much the charming, funny kind of irony, as the gut-wrenching, tear-inducing kind that makes you fall to your knees, look up to the sky and scream out loud “what have I done to deserve this.”

The problem started when I inoculated the must with yeast to launch the fermentation.  I only had two gallons of must, and the yeast comes in packets suitable for five gallon carboys, but I added the whole packet anyway, thinking the more the merrier.  As a result, a process that usually takes one to two weeks was finished in two days.  But two days isn’t enough time to leave the wine on the skins and impart the desired flavors, so I decided to let it sit in extended maceration for another week or so.  When doing so, however, I didn’t realize the importance of completing the maceration in an air-tight environment with the excess oxygen removed.  Net result – the excess oxygen created the ideal environment for bacteria, that bacteria began to grow, and now that it’s in the wine there’s nothing I can do to remove it (including pressing, inoculating malolactic fermentation, or adding heavy doses of sulfites).

Desperate press.

So here I am, left to witness the gradual conversion of my wine to vinegar, but too heartbroken to put it out of its misery and pour it down the drain already.  Then suddenly, a new idea hit me – check back next year for the first annual Dry Run Winery Free Vinegar Giveaway!

Bacteria - bad.