Red Wine

[Xabia Jim]

I work for wine......preferrrably red!

[gjbingham]

Re: Red Wine

Come on over Jim. My lawn needs mowing.

What's your favorite red from Spain?

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Red Wine

So many to choose from and so little time!

I really like the wines from the Priorat region but they're getting noticed and more expensive. Also had the Mencia grape from Galecia last year and liked that.

Lots of the wines here are still Tempranillo, an indiginous grape. Close by are lots of Monastrell vinyards. That said, lots of the more common grapes are being planted so we now have loads more Cabernets, Merlot, Pinot and Syrah.

Like anywhere you can pay a lot for wine but here a good bottle can be had for $20. Still very drinkable wine is had under $10 and even under $5. They even have liter boxes in the grocery for $1.50 that say "most sold Spanish wine in the world"

And another neat thing here is that you can find old wine if you're willing to look and pay. I bought a wine friend a bottle of 1964 Rioja a few years back for $20. And last week we bought a magnum of 1994 Rioja for $15 for when James comes over to teach me how to cook pizza

I've cut trees for wine, why not grass?

[gjbingham]

Re: Red Wine

I cut trees for firewood!

The Riojas are almost always excellent, though not full bodied enough for my taste, but I found that they're often easier on the pocket book. I never developed a taste for the sherry served everywhere with tapas around Jerez, but then again, whites are not my favorites.

I found many really nice older reds while shopping in Barcelona. I saved many of them for years, but alas, they're all dead soldiers now. I'm not very familiar with the many Spanish varieties though. Kind of a hidden market to the US. The French and Italian reds, and German whites seemed to have dominated the EU market while I lived and travelled in Europe.

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Red Wine

I too like a good chewy red wine.

What are you drinking up north George? Washington has some nice wines. I tracked down a blend wine called 6 Prong up there but it might have been from Oregon.

I also went to CA to do my first wine tastings and really enjoyed the Zinfandels. Great fun to see how many wineries you can tag.....

[CanuckJim]

Re: Red Wine

XJ,

No hijack of the thread intended, just a report. I'm suffering from a surfeit here: Texas pecans from Dave, Tenn. White Lily flour from Dutch, maybe some coffee beans from Sammy, definitely some CA herbs from Joe Engineer. So far, all I've done is ship off some levain. We should develop this, I'm thinking: THE BARTER BROS go with a public offering!!!. I can see the headline in The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN, BBC. Let's get on a roll.

In truth, very grateful I am (Yoda), or is it Jeff. Not sure, just trusting the Force.

Jim

[gjbingham]

Re: Red Wine

CJ: There's a thought! - "Jim's List - Items for Barter"

XJ - I lived pretty extravagantly when I was single. Retired, with a family and new daughter, I look for inexpensive bargains. I really like Mary Hill Vinyards Zin from Eastern WA. They do several other wines that are top quality for the money. Google will get you there. I've been really disappointed with the latest release of Pinot Noirs from everywhere, CA to WA. '05 was not a good vintage anywhere as far as I can tell.

I hope to get some grapes off my vines this year, just to see how much sugar they can concentrate. I'm only 40 miles north of the pinot vineyards of Oregon, so I have hopes that my SW exposure will bring these berries in with great sugars.

Locally, there's a small vintner, Captsone Cellars, that buys grapes from E. Washington and ferments locally. A very common practice in Western WA where it is not as warm, but where everyone lives. They do a very nice Sangiovese and another blend that I've forgotten the name of, that was a killer last year, but then again, I had a Reisling by them that was bottled too early and was still slightly fizzy.

Sadly, I've fallen out of the better wines of the past. Hopefully, I can make my own in the future. I've got 11 gallons of Blackberry wine bulk ageing in carboys right now. Somehow, just not the same ;(

[jwnorris]

Re: Red Wine

<snip> I've been really disappointed with the latest release of Pinot Noirs from everywhere, CA to WA. '05 was not a good vintage anywhere as far as I can tell. <snip> (

I recently tried a nice 05 Pinot from Longoria - out of the Paso Robles area in California.

Good luck with the wine making. My Dad made a batch of Elderberry wine one year.

J W

[Frances]

Re: Red Wine

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.

[Les]

Re: Red Wine

I've been really disappointed with the latest release of Pinot Noirs from everywhere, CA to WA. '05 was not a good vintage anywhere as far as I can tell.

My brother in law (plug intended) has a winery that specializes in Pinot?s. Not sure how the ?05 turned out, I?m sure I tasted it, just can?t remember.

Savannah-chanelle Vineyards in Santa Cruz Mountains of California the very best

Les?

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Red Wine

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]

Re: Red Wine

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]

Re: Red Wine

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]

Re: Red Wine

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]

Re: Red Wine

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.