Pruning Grape Vines: Coaxing fruit from Swenson Red

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I went two seasons without fruit from my Swenson Red grape vine. It was one of the first additions to my bonsai vineyard, and I’ve been struggling with how to prune it. Two years ago, I decided that Swenson Red needs cane pruning to bear fruit.

Canes or spurs?

Canes are just long “branches” of one year old wood with one or two dozen buds along their length. If they had just a few buds, four or so, then they would be a lot shorter and we would call them spurs. I had been spur pruning because it’s easier to take vines in and out of pots, while I trim their roots, without long fragile canes whipping about.

Letting the vine decide

Easier doesn’t get you very far if the varietal doesn’t bear fruit that way, so last year I pruned to canes. I was careful not to jostle them when I tended the vine, re-potted it, or just walked past it. Well it looks like it may have been worth the effort. I’ve noticed a few clusters on my Swenson Red and I’m looking forward to my first crop in three years!



Cherry Wine Recipe: Bottled!

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Sweet Cherry WineTwo years ago I set out to make wine from cherries the way you would make red wine from grapes. I bought 43 lb (19.5 kg) of Bing Cherries from Safeway, put them in a large picnic cooler, and crushed them the old fashioned way. Adjusting the sugar was a little tedious, but I was off to a great start. It turns out that the acidity of cherry wine is tough to get right, though, and in the end I sweetened it to balance tart tasting wine.

About the label

LouGarou is a talented photographer, and he was kind enough to let me use his photo in my wine label. He’s taken many exceptional shots, but the warm tones in this one made it just the thing for my label – thanks Lou!

I labeled it “Sweet Cherry,” and included alcohol content, TA, pH, and final gravity. Instead of a vintage (not too many people are going to be raving about “Safeway’s 2007 Bing Cherries”) I put a date range. The first date is the day I started and the end date is the day I bottled. You’ll know how long it bulk aged, how long it’s had in the bottle, and yes, when the cherries were grown – that date range says a lot without saying a lot.

How does the cherry wine taste?

I think I managed to balance the wine. The acidity is noticable, but it’s lively and not too tart. Sweetness is there too, but people who “don’t like sweet wine” liked it and didn’t think it was too sweet. I don’t notice the astringency that comes from tannin. This makes it an enjoyable red table wine, but unlike the dry reds that I’m used to. The flavor and aroma are different as well. I wouldn’t say it “tastes like cherries,” but there is something familiar from tasting commercial cherry wine (yes, there is such a thing).

Thoughts on my next cherry wine

This was a learning experience, and I’ve got a to-do list for the next one.

  • Use a yeast like Lavlin’s 71-B that consumes malic acid: since most of the acid in cherries is malic and I had trouble with too much acid, having the yeast remove some for me should make things easier.
  • Learn more about dealing with high titratable acidity (TA) and high pH at the same time: I’ve been reluctant to use phosphoric acid to adjust the pH because it can be dangerous to handle. Maybe I need to get comfortable with that or find another way to manipulate the different facets of acidity.
  • Learn more about cherries:  This is my second batch of cherry wine, and both batches had the high TA – high pH problem. Is it something about the variety of cherry (I used Bing each time)? how it’s grown? or are all cherries like that? I sense another know your ingredients post coming up.

Until then I’ll be enjoying my newly bottled cherry wine – cheers!



Know Your Ingredients: Rhubarb

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Rhubarb is a high quality ingredient that can make a great, age-worthy wine. It’s also a versatile ingredient that shines in many different styles. To take advantage of its versatility, you need to know what it brings to your wine and what you need to add.

Sugar and acidity of rhubarb juice

So what does a winemaker need to know about rhubarb? The short answer is sugar and acid. Getting that right is the biggest part of any successful recipe. It turns out that rhubarb has a lot of acid and not much sugar. I juice the rhubarb and normally see measurments like this (these figure are from my most recent batch):

specific gravity (SG): 1.020, titratable acidity (TA): 14 g/L as tartaric, pH: 3.19

This agrees with Ben Rotter’s data:

SG: 1.020, TA: not enough data, pH: 3.17

Most of that acid, 70% or more, is malic.

Juice yield

A lot of people make rhubarb wine by fermenting on the fruit, and most recipes specify the amount of rhubarb by weight. To make sense of these recipes, or make wine with whole fruit, or to compare notes with other wine makers, you’ll need to know how much juice a given weight of rhubarb will yield. I got 515 ml (17.4 fl oz) of juice from 1.115 kg (2.5 lb) of fruit, or a yield of 462 ml/kg (7 fl oz/lb).

I froze the rhubarb, thawed it in a strainer and got 225 ml (7.6 fl oz) of “free run” juice. Then I lightly pressed, just squeezing with my hands, to get another 290 ml (9.8 fl oz). This is low compared to Mr. Rotter’s data (470 – 830 ml/kg). The pulp I discarded was wet, so I could have gotten more with a small press.

You know your own procedures better than I do. Do you efficiently squeeze the fruit leaving bone-dry pulp? Expect over 600 ml/kg (9.2 fl oz/lb). If you press lightly and leave wet pulp, then you’re more likely to get 500 ml/kg (7.7 fl oz/lb), give or take. Now we have some information on yield, sugar, and acidity. What can we do with these data?

The possibilities are endless

I normally make my rhubarb wine dry, and I can tell you it’s terrific that way. I’ve tasted sweet rhubarb wine that was fabulous. I’ve aged rhubarb wine over two years and noticed improvement. I’ve tasted 5+ year old rhubarb wine from the Montana Hutterites that was superb. I’ve heard that the Hutterites successfully age their wine for decades, and Ben Rotter aged a sweet rhubarb wine for 30 years, and it hadn’t past it’s peak. Many wine makers have found rhubarb to be an excellent blending wine.

This is what I mean when I say that rhubarb is versatile. That’s why no recipe can show you “what rhubarb wine tastes like”. To find out, you need to go beyond any one recipe and try different variations. Honey instead of sugar, sweet instead of dry, dry instead of sweet, high acid like a Riesling – and do set some bottles aside for extended ageing! While we’re on the subject of ageing, I wouldn’t recommend rhubarb as an early drinker. Even if you decide against extended ageing, you’ll want to give it at least a year.

Further reading

The Rhubarb Compendium – a good collection of rhubarb information
Improved Winemaking – Ben Rotter’s website – From his fruit data to ideas on wine styles, there’s a lot here for any winemaker

Bonsai Vineyard: Drip Irrigation

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With ten grape vines in pots, and another ten fruit trees, I’ve been doing a lot of hand watering. It’s become quite a chore, so I’ve decided to put in a drip irrigation system. This will have water coming from a garden hose, through a pressure reducing fitting, into a feeder bottle so that I can fertilize, through a half-inch hose, and out of quarter-inch drip lines that run to each pot. Instead of a seemingly endless cycle of fill the watering can – water the vines/trees, I would just be able to turn on the water and go read a book. With a timer, I might not even have to turn the water on and off.

I had an abstract idea of what a drip system was and how it worked. What I needed was some hands on knowledge – what were the various components of a drip system? what did they do? how did they fit together? For a crash course in Drip Irrigation 101, I went to three hardware stores. I struck gold at Lowes with a clerk who had been a plumber and installed many a drip system. Now I have most of the equipment I need and a much better idea of how to put that equipment to use.

    Basic equipment for a drip irrigation system

  • half-inch tubing – delivers low pressure water to the drip system
  • quarter-inch tubing – delivers water to an individual vine or tree
  • 25 PSI Pressure Regulator – keeps pressure from overwhelming the system
  • 3/4″ hose to 1/2″ tubing adapter – connects the system to a garden hose or tap
  • quarter-inch double barbed connectors – connects quarter inch tubing to the half inch tubing
  • 50 quarter-inch hole plugs – plugs holes in the half inch tubing

    Other equipment that might be needed

  • anti siphon device – prevents back flow from the drip system to the water supply
  • filter – keeps dirt from clogging the drip system

You can buy this equipment at a garden center as a kit or as separate pieces. I had planned to buy a kit, and use it as a learning tool, but the clerk at Lowes assembled everything I needed for the system I had in mind. If all goes well, I’ll be putting it all together into a working drip irrigation system for use this summer.

Titratable Acidity: Trouble with the better way?

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I’ve mentioned that I’m getting inconsistent results with my CO2 acid testing apparatus, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I noticed that the measured volume of CO2 increased in the first few minutes. That’s an important problem because the test works by using that figure to determine how much acid was in the wine or must. Ideally, the final volume would increase almost immediately by the volume of the sample plus the volume of liberated CO2 then remain constant. Not only does the volume rise in the first five minutes, but then it falls over the next thirty minutes.

Gathering data

I had some ideas about this, but wanted to get a clear picture of exactly how the final volume changed over time. I’ve been recording six final volume measurements at the same time intervals over the past two months. For example, on March 2, I tested my Merlot. The initial volume was 0.2 ml, and right after adding the sample I measured the final volume as 2.4 ml. At +5 minutes, +10 minutes, +15 minutes, +20 minutes, and +30 minutes I measured:

2.9 ml, 2.9 ml, 2.8 ml, 2.8 ml, and 2.7 ml

Since the initial volume is arbitrary, it’s more helpful to view the data as a difference from the initial volume or as a percentage of it. Here are the same data expressed as a percentage of the initial volume:

120.83%, 120.83%, 116.67%, 116.67%, and 112.50%

I ran this same test nine more times on different wines and musts. Here are the results expressed as a percentage.

Normalized Volume Measurments
Immediate +5 Minutes +10 Minutes +15 Minutes +20 Minutes +30 Minutes
100.00% 120.83% 120.83% 116.67% 116.67% 112.50%
100.00% 98.18% 96.36% 94.55% 92.73% 89.09%
100.00% 116.67% 116.67% 112.50% 112.50% 108.33%
100.00% 103.23% 98.92% 96.77% 93.55% 92.47%
100.00% 104.55% 97.73% 95.45% 90.91% 90.91%
100.00% 95.24% 90.48% 88.10% 85.71% 83.33%
100.00% 110.00% 106.67% 103.33% 100.00% 96.67%
100.00% 107.69% 104.62% 104.62% 104.62% 103.85%
100.00% 121.88% 125.00% 128.13% 128.13% 128.13%
100.00% 96.81% 91.49% 89.36% 88.30% 87.23%

On six occasions, the final volume rose (indicating more acid) five minutes after the initial measurement then fell over the next thirty minutes. Three times (the red text in the table), the final volume steadily fell after the initial reading. And during one test (indicated in gree), the final volume continued rising for fifteen minutes, then held steady. What’s going on? It doesn’t surprise me that the apparatus can’t hold pressure perfectly, so the gradual fall that I see in almost all the cases makes sense.

Am I just being impatient?

The rise in the first five minutes that I saw in most of the tests made me think that the chemical reaction between the acid and the baking soda was slower than I thought. That would explain six of the tests and sort-of explain that (green) one that rose for fifteen minutes and plateaued. But the three (red) tests that showed a steady decline just don’t fit.

Is it something in the water?

I drain the device after each use, and fill it with water just before a test. Most of the time I get water from my kitchen faucet, but sometimes I use a utility sink in the basement. Water is water, of course, but the kitchen faucet has an aerator on it and the utility sink does not. Could the aerated water from the kitchen be releasing air during the test and affecting the final volume? Might there have been some air bubbles in the tubing that I overlooked? That could explain all ten test results. Being especially quick with the test and using kitchen water (or not doing enough to dislodge all the air bubbles in the tubing) might have caused the fifteen minute rise in the green test. The six times that I saw a five minute rise might have been me going at a more normal pace, allowing some air to bubble out while I got ready for the test. Water from the utility sink would not have cause a rise at all, and that would dovetail nicely with the red tests.

Putting it to the test

I didn’t think that my water source would matter, so I didn’t make a note of it when I recorded my data. So I’m going to run more tests and collect more data. This time, I will leave the water in the apparatus between tests. This ought to insure that no air bubbles out and affects my results. If I get the same sort of results, then I can rule out the air in the water. If, on the other hand, all my tests show a gradual decline after the initial reading, like the red tests, then I think I may have solved this mystery.

Kirkland 2007 Sonoma County Chardonnay

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Kirkland 2007 Sonoma County ChardonnayI had high hopes for this wine ($9 at Costco), because the Kirkland brand is usually pretty good and I liked the Kirkland Sauvignon Blanc. So how did it stack up?

Running the numbers

When I make wine at home, I measure the specific gravity, titratable acidity, and pH. I thought I’d start doing that for some of the commercial wine I buy to see how how the pros are balancing acid, alcohol, and sugar. Since some wineries publish an analysis of their wines, it’ll also give me a chance to see how my measurments compare to those of a commercial lab.

The alcohol content is 13.9%, according to the label, and here are my measurements:

SG: 0.990, pH: 3.34, TA: 4.4 g/L

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an analysis for this wine, and my e-mail to Kirkland Signature Wine Connection went unanswered. So I’ll just have to go on what I have, and what I have is a low TA – I would have expected 6 g/L or so. Ok, but how does it taste?

Disappointing

“Not unpleasant,” said the Lady of the House. We both hoped for more. There is promise, as you begin to sip, a hint of something lively. It’s gone the moment you swallow, however, and that short finish makes it a plain, disappointing wine. Next time I’ll pass on this one and pick up the Sauv Blanc or head over to Trader Joe’s for some Panilonco 2008 Reserve Chardonnay/Voignier.

Labels: Dressing Up Your Wine

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Can a good label make your wine taste better? Not in the sense that it alters the chemistry involved in your senses of taste and smell, but your enjoyment of wine is more than chemistry. A California Institute of Technology experiment showed that expectations and psychology have a big impact on how much people enjoy a particular wine: test subjects liked wine better when told it was more expensive. This means we home winemakers need to present and serve our wines with pride if we are to get the most enjoyment out of them.

A good label on a clean bottle, without scuff marks of the previous label on it, is part of that presentation. It should be attractive and informative. An informative label answers questions about it. You don’t have a lot of room on the label so make sure you cover the basics, like “what am I drinking?” and “is it sweet or dry?” If you’re serving to other winemakers, then measurements like specific gravity (SG), titratable acidity (TA), and pH might be important. Attractive labels make people feel good about the wine and want to try it (and if the CIT results can be applied here, make it “taste better”).

The Image: Tell a story

My labels are usually text on artwork. I try to choose artwork that reflects the wine in some way. This relationship between the label and the wine can make a nice story to tell your guests as you serve the wine. That can mean showing the base fruit of the wine on the label – one of my apple wine labels featured a woman eating an apple. It can mean color and mood coming together the way a fun pinup of a woman blushing became the artwork for my “Raspberry Blush” wine. It almost certainly means different things to different people. To me, wine and mead are feminine so most of my labels are too – though I did use a self portrait on my first wine from grapes and the Dharma Initiative logo on a wine I bottled just as a new season of Lost was starting.

The Text: Explain and get them interested

Once I have the artwork, I choose the text style and color to match. Placement is just as important. You don’t want to trample over a beautiful sunset or a pretty smile with boldfaced text. The top and bottom are usually good places, and you can often say a lot on one side or the other without ruining or upstaging the artwork. What do you say? That depends on who you’re serving to. For other winemakers, you might include the basic measurements, the yeast, and other details about how you made it. If you mainly serve mead or unusual wine to friends who are unfamiliar with it, then a short explanation can go a long way. You might say something like, “apple juice and sugar can ferment into a terrific white wine!” or “men have been fermenting honey and water to make mead for centuries.” Remember, you haven’t got a lot of room so keep it short, tell them what they’re drinking, and pique their interest.

If you already make labels for your wine, I’d love to hear about them. If not, give it a try. You might find it’s just the finishing touch to set your wines apart.

A Simple Mead Recipe: Bottled!

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Wildflower MeadIt’s been nearly two years since I started this batch. I added acid and oak chips to my simple mead recipe in making this still, dry, lightly oaked mead.

It fermented out to a specific gravity (SG) of 0.996, and I didn’t sweeten. Since the original gravity was about 1.082, I’m calling it 11% alcohol by volume. The pH was 3.0, and titratable acidity (TA) was 4 g/L, as tartaric. I should mention two things about the TA. First, I’m getting some inconsistent results using my new apparatus that determines TA by measuring the amount of CO2 given off by a base neutralizing an acid. I’ll have more to say about this in another post. The other thing is that TA measurements of mead are tricky, and are best thought of as upper limits rather than precise values.

So how does it taste? That Lady of the House and I really enjoyed it. Oak is discernible and pleasant, but it plays a supporting role not the lead. Aroma is muted, and I think that’s a characteristic of the honey. I don’t have any on hand for a direct comparison, but I remember meads from heather and clover honey having stronger aromas.

Would boiling have improved this mead?

That gives me an idea. If wildflower from Miller’s Honey has a weak aroma, then it may be a candidate for boiling. This is just one batch, and each year’s wildflower honey probably differs from those of previous years, so I’m not ready to make such a blanket statement. It’s something to keep in mind, though.

I experimented with boiling and found that it weakens a mead’s aroma, but may give it more body and a smoother taste. Is it worth it? That depends on a lot of things, including personal taste, but if the aroma is going to be unremarkable anyway, this might be a good trade off.

About the Label

For me, making a label starts with nice artwork. Sometimes I use my own photos, but more often I use the work of another artist. Gary Cooper (no, not that Gary Cooper) was kind enough to allow me the use of his photo for this label. Gary’s collections of classic Hollywood photos is terrific, and my only problem was deciding which one I wanted to use – thanks Gary!

There’s only room for so much text, so I try to be informative and to the point. I include a name, “bin number” (there must have been one of those Aussie wines in the house when I started that) that identifies the batch, starting and bottling dates, and relevant measurements.

And now, the easy part

The most relevant measure is, of course, how it tastes and I’ll be doing a lot of research on that in the months (and years?) to come – cheers!

Colony Collapse Disorder: A nuisance, not a catastrophe

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CCD was first identified in 2006, and by the end of that year the number of producing colonies had fallen barely 1%. In 2007, beekeepers had increased their colonies by more than 2%, ending the year with more than in 2005 – the last year prior to the CCD outbreak. So this year’s 6% decline – see the USDA’s just released 2008 Honey Report – isn’t very alarming. If honeybees really were threatened with extinction, as some of the more shrill coverage suggests, we would have seen severe declines in 2006 and 2007. For some perspective, I’ve summarized USDA data going back to 2005 in the table below.


US Honeybee Colonies And Honey Production
Year Production (millions) Producing Colonies Yield
2005 174 lb (79 kg) 2.41 million 72.4 lb (32.8 kg)
2006 155 lb (70 kg) 2.39 million 64.7 lb (29.3 kg)
2007 148 lb (67 kg) 2.44 million 60.8 lb (27.6 kg)
2008 161 lb (73 kg) 2.30 million 69.9 lb (31.7 kg)

As long as CCD is still afflicting honeybee colonies (it is), and as long as we don’t know why (we don’t), then it’s a concern. But it’s no more worrying than the other difficulties facing bees and their keepers (disease, pests, weather, and so forth).

Fewer honeybees but more honey in 2008

The latest Honey Report paints a good news – bad news picture of 2008. While the number of producing honeybee colonies fell by 6% to 2.3 million, honey production rose 8% to 161 million pounds (73 million kg). Why did honey production increase when the number colonies fell? Because the honeybees were much more productive – yield per colony soared by 15% to 69.9 lb (31.7 kg).

Honey prices up, inventories down

Honey inventory has been falling for years, and 2008 was no exception. Producer honey stocks fell by 4% to 50.4 million pounds (22.9 million kg). If you make mead and buy honey, like I do, then you already know that honey prices surged last year. Now the USDA has put a number on it: The “all honey” price rose 31% to $1.41/lb. I don’t know what will happen to honey prices, but I’ll be keeping my eye on them. And publishing updated price reports as the year unfolds – watch for them.

A White Wine Bargain

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Panilonco 2008 Reserve Chardonnay ViognierA lot of cheap wine is overpriced, so it’s a real treat to find a $4 bottle that I want to buy more of. A friend recommended Panilonco 2008 Reserve Chardonnay/Voignier and I bought a bottle at Trader Joe’s – a great place to hunt for bargains.

I like my white wines to have a little bite, while the Lady of the House prefers them sweet and smooth. So I often get excited about a wine only to see her make a face. Other times  her eyes light up after tasting one that I think was made boring by too much sugar.

This well balanced wine made us both happy. It’s  simple, in a good way, with a nice flavor that’s crisp but smooth. Our only complaint was that Trader Joe’s was out of stock when we went back for more.