Grapes and Wine Making
This year I became a wine maker. And so far, I'd consider myself a good one!
You can read more about this grape over on my substack at this link: https://anabank.substack.com/p/wine
The variety of grape is either German or French origin and came over to Australia in the 1850's. An old friend introduced me to a friend of his, who had this vine growing in his back yard in Rockhampton. He gave me cuttings, which I then gave to a friend, as this was when we were in a state of flux, not knowing where we were going to live. This was around the time we sold our farm at Baralaba and were in the process of moving to the Sunshine Coast region.
My friend gave me some cuttings after we bought Serenity and I planted them out. I only had success with one vine last year and harvested about 10-20kg of grapes off it to make a small batch of wine. I have written the full process as I did it in Healthy Farming Healthy Food, because it turned out so well. It is honestly a really good wine! But maybe that's the grape...... I'm happy to share cuttings, so let me know next August if you want some!
Grapes are amazing plants! This one was a few years old before it fruited, and I was amazed how much fruit was on one vine. Last year in September it was just a stem with two side shoots growing along the top of this fence. We had people here who watered it more than I probably would've and it grew into a healthy ubundant plant, so this year I've been taking a bit more notice and watering it fairly often. This is the vine on the 5th September this year.
It's already got more growth and it will be covered in grapes in a couple of months. Then ready for harvest in February 2027.
A young friend of ours, Deni came and helped me with the wine making. She had a winemaking friend who gave us some instructions, I had watched an old Italian guy on you tube and I also asked ChatGPT to give some advice. We came up with a method that worked for a small batch of wine.
We decided the easiest way to crush the grapes was to use our hands. This way we could pull the grapes from the stems and discard the stems, while keeping the squashed grapes with their juice in the bowl.
I have a 10 litre pottery jar, which I did the initial ferment in. I measured the sugar content on this first day. This effects the final depth of wine and the alcohol content I think. (I'm still learning about wine making)
The juice and skins started fermenting within 24 hours. I measured the juice every day until it measured the correct specific gravity, plus a few other factors - all details are in the book. Mine took over a week, which surprised me as it was pretty warm here in February. It needs to be stirred every day, several times a day. Also this is covered loosely to keep out flys etc, but to allow air in.
Pressing the grapes.
I bought a small press and hopefully I'll get away with this size for a while. It's only problem was that I needed more blocks of wood than it came with. I only pressed the once, as I had seen/read somewhere that pressing too many times will make it the tannins too strong. I think this is one reason that it tasted so good.
I had two 5-litre carboys and I had hoped that I'd fill both, unfortunately I didn't.
These fermented for quite some time. I racked them once. Racking is when you syphyn off the clear wine and leave the yeasty bit's behind. The bottle is then cleaned and the wine put back in and topped up from the half full bottle. The SG was just under 1000 at this stage and actually tasted pretty good! The second carboy was .995 so I put that into smaller bottles. One with an airlock on and the other wasn’t full, so I just capped it to use to refill if I racked again. This was in April.
I then went back to ChatGPT and it was suggested not to rack again unless I needed to, as with no-sulphite wine, racking and therefore adding more oxygen leads to risk of contamination and removing the yeast can slow or stall fermentation. I just had to sit and wait for it to get down to a SG of .995.
So I drank the half full bottle - very good, but a little rough still.
The small full bottle met the same fate a little while later - May
Then finally in mid June, the SG reached the required .995. If I was going on the taste or look of the fermentation, I would’ve bottle a lot sooner. The 5 litre carboy gave us just over 6 x 750 ml bottles of wine.
At the time of writing, I have 3 bottles left! Do you realise how hard it is to age wine?
I'm looking forward to the next vintage!
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