Monday, February 27, 2012

Vintage 2011 - My first attempt at wine

I ended up bottling my first attempt at making Wine this weekend!

There are a lot of things I learned this first year.
#1 - I harvested way too soon and ended up having to adjust the must throughout to reduce the acidity. Next year I need to wait until the stems and the seeds are brown, not green, before harvesting.
#2 - Now that I have multiple 1/2 gallon carboys next year I won't combine the Frontenac and Marquette grapes into one big batch. 
#3 - Since everything else had been early I decided to continue the process and bottle a early..

All in all, for my first attempt the taste is pretty good. In my opinion the wine is a little "Heavy" but the taste is good and doesn't leave an aftertaste.

here are some pictures I took:

First up, my bottling area:
Hopefully sooner, rather than later I'll get a true area to make my wine and bottle. Right now I just have a corner in the unfinished part of our basement.

I had 1 1/2 gallons and ended up with 7 full bottles and 1 smaller bottle. Looking at the picture I think I made a small mistake of not filling the bottles enough, but again learn, learn, learn ;)

and last picture is the finished product in my nice Wine glass:
Videos of the process:
Racking to bottle:


Finished bottling: