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As has been too common for me lately, I’ve been very busy with a bunch of different things – some good, and of course some activities to ensure the bills get paid. But do not fear, I am still passionate about my winemaking hobby! This past week, I spent some hours on racking wines and getting a “quick taste” while starting the syphon for each of them.

So some notes, which include comments on taste, where it was noteworthy, according to me, to pay attention to that:

1. Blueberry – On November 15, 2005 I started 5 gallons of blueberry wine according to this recipe – but I used DV10 yeast. The specific gravity this past week was 0.990 – very dry – and I’m not sure I’ll use this yeast again for blueberry wine, but we’ll see how it turns out with more time.

First, the bouquet was not very attractive. Admittedly, I only had a quick, little taste – not a mouthful – but I did not enjoy it nearly as much as I did this blueberry wine. There was something I liked about it, but it didn’t beg for more, if you know what I mean. Perhaps this will be an acquired taste? Perhaps I should try a batch where I stop fermentation before it dries off so much?

Other notes – the wine is very clear, and this IS notable in that no clearing agents were ever used. As well, the wine is still with virtually no indication of any remaining CO2. I’ll take the pro’s advice though, and not even think about bottling for several more months.

2. Dry Mead: I started 5 gallons of dry mead according to this recipe on February 5, 2006. One interesting observation about this is the amount of CO2! Incredible. Tiny little bubbles when attempting to degass with a Fixx-X – that result in something similar to a head on a beer. In fact, there was so much CO2, that after a few seconds of Fizz-X use, the carboy overflowed so much, that I ended up racking into a 4 gallon carboy with just a little bit left over from the 5 gallon. The floor was a mess.

3. Gooseberry: Readers will know that I started Gooseberry wine on November 28, 2005. This recipe was used. When I racked this past week, the sediment on the bottom was like a very fine dust, although there was quite a lot of it. I had to be careful during the racking to disturb it as little as possible. The wine itself is crystal clear however.

I tasted a small amount, and yes! This wine DOES taste like more. I didn’t sample enough to come up with any tasting notes, but this wine will be wonderful with some curry dishes.

4. Parsnip Wine: I started my parsnip wine on December 10th, 2005. I used this recipe, based on the one found in Making Wild Wines And Meads (book review here). This is another crystal clear wine without the use of any clearing agents. At this point, it has what I would call an interesting bouquet – not overly attractive on the nose, but not repulsive either. The very small sample I managed to taste in order to get the syphon going suggested a bit too much “bite,” but at the same time pleasant tasting. Perhaps I’ll experiment a bit more with this, try a different yeast and perhaps not let it dry off so much. The specific gravity of the parsnip wine is 0.990.

5. Blueberry Melomel: Ah, now this had a very pleasant, “drink more of me” taste. My paper notes in front of me don’t make mention of the specific gravity of this and the log card is over on the carboy – but regardless, I started this melomel in January of 2006, so it really has not aged at all. I used this recipe. This racking, I added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite and topped up and of course, will let it age a while before racking again.

So that was my week. I also did some racking of some wine kit wines as well, but I’ll save those for another day.

I found some bottles of pure pomegranite juice at the local grocery. I love pomegranites, and sure enough I loved the pure juice as well.

It gave me an idea to maybe try a pomegranite melomel. Anyone ever heard of such a thing? I should maybe do some research and googling on the subject.

Trivia – do you know that the word pomegranite comes from the expression, apple with many seeds?

Wow, a full month since I last posted here. It’s been an interesting month, both professionally and personally. I must thank my average ten visitors per day for sticking around here and peeking in.

I have NOT stopped winemaking. Although for a variety of reasons, my winemaking hobby has been put on the backburner for a bit which of course, is ok when it’s winemaking. Nothing wrong at all with letting carboys filled with wine sit and age longer before bottling.

Tonight however, I decided it was incumbent upon me for my own personal sanity to spend some time on my hobby. After watching my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs drop yet another game to the Ottawa Senators, it was time to open up a wonderful bottle of Chamblais to sip on, while I did the following:

1. Even though the Coupage de Soleil that I started back in November has been sitting for some time, it still had too much carbon dioxide and a bit of time spent on degassing was just the ticket with my Fizz-X tool. It’s been ageing in the carboy since the beginning of January when I added the clarifying ingredients and stablized it. I’ll probably bottle it tomorrow.

2. I have neglected my blackberry wine. Even with the neglect, it is turning out nicely, although a bit too much tartness yet. This evening, I racked it added a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite. I shall likely let this age for at least another three months, perhaps with another 1/4 teaspoon shot of sulphite around July, before bottling. I’ll check to see if the extra tartness has subsided first, before I bottle it. If not, I may try some other things to soften it.

3. Ohhh.. an amazing sensual lingual pleasure! I found a gallon of black currant wine that I had forgotten about. It came from the batch that I had started back in November, and had racked into a 3 gallon carboy, with one gallon left over. I had forgotten about that little one gallon carboy, and while going through the wines I have on the go, saw it sitting there, beckoning me to rack it.

And then I had a taste of it. My God, is this simply wonderful. Felt-like texture on the tongue, just enough sweetness to recognize the fruit, not too much sweetness that one might linger too long over it, but just right for lingual pleasure.

I was so impressed that I went and knocked on the bedroom door of my business partner, and asked her to wake up enough to try this. Just to make sure it wasn’t just me that found this incredibly awesome. I had to tell her that she was about to experience something as good as an orgasm and chocolate… she woke up, grudgingly, to humour me – and then I let her taste. Oh yeah, her eyes opened wide, then closed tightly as that liquid splashed against her tongue.

“OK, Ian, this is the absolute best fruit wine you have ever made. Thank you for getting me up to try it.”

She took another, longer sip.

And then another. She just went to her bed with a smile on her face.

This one gallon carboy of blackcurrant wine will likely be bottled tomorrow, and I’ll let the three gallon batch age a little longer. Or will I? This wine has an amazing sensual “yum” factor right now.

4. The Barolo: Added clarifying ingredients about three weeks ago, and have let it sit since. Racked this evening, and observed a great deal of CO2. Tasted – is ok, but definitely needs some ageing according to my palate. Don’t get me wrong – nothing wrong with it – but certainly tastes “young” and uninspiring, even though it’s coming along.

5. Dry Mead: About the 4th of February, I started five gallons of dry mead. Since then, I racked into a carboy and for the past 2 1/2 weeks, it went through the secondary fermentation. I took a look at it tonight and was quite concerned about it’s very cloudy appearance. I racked, checked the SG which was 0.098, and found that it had huge amounts of CO2 present.

After I racked it, and into an “Italian” carboy (which is a bit larger than the Mexican carboys), I thought I’d try some degassing with the Fizz-X tool. Ten seconds later, I had a mess. For whatever reason, this mead has not even begun to degass itself. I’m thinking that the overly cloudy appearance is because of the CO2 that is present. I did add a 1/4 teaspoon of sulphite, stirred it up, got more CO2 bubbles, and I think I shall attend to it tomorrow and see if I can degass it even more. After a few days of that, I’ll decide if it needs something else for clarifying.

Anyhow, I’ve got a bunch more things I could be doing, but after spending about three or four hours on my hobby, while sipping Chamblais (the bottle has just about been consumed), I’m off to bed.

More soon!

I haven’t posted here in some time due to personal busy-ness and other things going on. That however does not mean I haven’t been keeping up with the wonderful hobby of home winemaking.

I’ve started some melomels recently, and I’ll have more on that when I have more time to blog about them!

Thanks for dropping by even though the postings recently have been few and far between.

If kiwi fruit are on sale at your local grocer, you might want to give this a try. A kiwi melomel, or perhaps more descriptively, a fruit mead.

This is my first melomel of the year with part of the 90 pounds of honey I recently had delivered. Of course, I’ll be making even more melomels and meads with the honey, and hopefully will have time in the next week or so to get them started.

A couple of other notes – I meant to write about two Christmas gifts that I received. My business partner, Wendy, is awesome at finding unique and great presents and this year was no exception. She knows I love to read, and the first gift was the book, “The Heartbreak Grape: A Journey in Search of the Perfect Pino Noir”. I’m looking forward to reading this book which was short listed for the Canadian Governor General’s award, as well as nominated for the James Beard Book award. I’ll provide a review when I’m finished reading it.

The other gift from Wendy was exquisite. Somehow, she managed to find a dozen hand-blown (mouth blown? I don’t know the proper term) glass airlocks, each about 6″ high. Apparently at least 40 years old, these airlocks are really nice, and I’m looking forward to using them. Of course, I’ll be using them with carboys that are mostly out of reach when long term ageing is desired, so there is little risk of breaking them. What a great Christmas present!

A few more sips of my wine, and I’m off to bed.

I enjoyed a wonderful New Year’s Eve, sharing it with some of the most special people in my life, including my almost 14 year old son Colin, my 3 1/2 year old son David, and my business partner, Wendy. Why bother to try to make something special happen, when the company is already special regardless of what you’re doing? We all could have gone out and done something, while shivering our butts off in the cold weather, but instead, we simply stayed home, watched the Toronto Maple Leafs massacre New Jersey as David, in his cute 3 1/2 year old voice practiced his “Go Leafs Go” over and over.

My computer clock, being wrong, I helped everyone bring in the New Year about ten minutes early. Ten minutes early meant sipping on Chateau-Neuf wine before we had planned, but enjoying it anyhow. When we realized my clock was off, we just figured that our previous countdown was a good rehearsal for the real thing, but I don’t think any of us actually felt any different when we did cross into 2006 for real, ten minutes later.

After some hugs and kisses, and clinking of glasses, we were all wide awake, and David decided he wanted to keep on playing with his brother David, and I decided I wanted to tend to my home winery. I racked some wines, and started a new one – Borolo from an “Advintage” kit that I’ve started to review here, as well, started a review on a Festa Juice Merlot “sort of kit.”

In the meantime, I’m enjoying some wine I bottled a month ago.. realizing it is now almost 6 AM, and I should get some sleep.

I hope you had a New Year that you’ll remember for along time to come, and perhaps discovered some good wine as well. There was no Champagne here… I personally think all Champagne is way over rated as far as personal enjoyment goes.

But whatever.. hope your celebrations were awesome and memorable as mine will be!

Christmas is a wonderful time for children – and a wonderful time for the parents of children, at least to me as a parent it is. My son David has been talking about Christmas for the past week, and had been eyeing all the presents under the tree. He knew that they were not going to be opened until our friend Roy and then Grandma arrived on Christmas day.

When Roy arrived, David said, “Now we just need Grandma to be here!”

Not long after, Grandma and her Collie drove into the driveway, and that was that, as far as David was concerned. Now that Grandma was here, presents could be opened. How can you argue with logic like that? My three year old understands precise language, and it means exactly what it means. So we had fun opening presents – David had a blast!

I like to cook, sometimes. I don’t like everyday sort of cooking, but I love to cook for special ocassions, and today I was responsible for dinner – all of it. If I’m going to cook, I usually prefer to do it on my own. Everyone get out of the kitchen! “No, I don’t need any help right now, but thank you.”

Everything is planned in my head, exactly when to start the potatoes, the vegetables, make the cranberry sauce (although I was a bit late with that one), all timed so that the turkey could be carved when it was ready and steaming hot.

Everything (other than the cranberry sauce) turned out perfect. The turkey breast was deliciously moist and tasty, the gravy was so good that Wendy had seconds of the mashed potato – just so she could slabber her plate with gravy and used a spoon to get the last drop.

And the wine – I decided to serve my homemade blueberry wine with dinner – more on that in a separate post – but I have to admit I was quite proud of the fact that every part of dinner was made from scratch – including the stuffing.

However, what I’m most proud of is my 3 year old son. Man, if you could see him, you’d adore him as well. He is just the best and makes every ocassion something special. In fact, every day is special and moments throughout each day when I hear,

“Daddy, know what?”

“What, David?”

“I love you, Daddy.”

If you’re at home and browsing blogs and happen to come across this one, I’d like to take the time to wish you a Merry Christmas. I plan a quiet evening tonight with my three year old, David and we may spend some time racking some wines and perhaps, if I’m into it, starting some mead.

I’ve got the turkey brining at the moment. I’ll let it sit in the brine overnight and tomorrow we’ll have a yummy turkey dinner. I haven’t decided what wine I will serve; perhaps I’ll just bring out a variety of bottles and let folks choose for themself what they would like to drink.

However you spend Christmas or whatever you want to call it, I hope you have a wonderful time.

I’m pretty lucky that I’ve got a very good relationship with my ex-wife, mother of three of my sons. She enjoys wine, and I thought I’d help her out and purchased a starter winemaking kit along with a Chamblaise kit for her birthday.

I wasn’t around to help her out, but one of her co-workers makes wine, and Angela thought the co-worker would be able to assist with the various steps. Angela’s co-worker did help with starting the kit, but wasn’t around when it was time to rack the wine into the secondary. So, Angela followed the directions provided and did that part on her own.

Yesterday, I drove to Ottawa (where my ex and three sons live), and thought I’d give Angela a hand with another racking; her wine should be ready for bottling in a week or so. She did rack the wine about three weeks ago herself, but it still not quite ready as far as having cleared. It also needed some degassing.

So, we go take a look at her wine in the carboy. A closer look at the air lock reveals no water in it at all. Bone dry. Angela did not realize that she needed to put water in the airlock, so it had been sitting for three weeks, wide open essentially, to air.

I was a bit concerned. Well, a “bit” is an understatement. Here I had been telling Angela all about the wonderful benefits of home winemaking, and now would I have to tell her that her wine was no good?

I was expecting to taste the wine and find off-flavours, if not outright vinegar. First, I smelled it.. smelled fine to me. Then I tasted – again, it tasted just like a young Chamblaise should taste. Amazing! For three weeks, essentially there was no real airlock on that wine, yet even through the biggest rule was broken, it was still ok.

I will suggest that Angela add a bit of sulphite to the wine before bottling, just in case. I’ll probably be back out there in about two weeks to help her do the bottling as I have a floor corker and she has none at this time.

But there you have it. The biggest and most important rule of winemaking was broken, but still, it would seem, the wine is turning out fine.

One thing I have never done is filter my wine. Some of my wine, made for early consumption, has not aged that long, and certainly wouldn’t win any wine competitions based on clarity.

And of course, some of those wines, after sitting in a bottle awhile, does have a wee bit of sediment. But I personally can live with that, and it still tastes quite yummy to me.

One of the knocks against filtering that I’ve come across is the possibility that filtering could remove some of the taste characteristics. But I really don’t know if this is true or not.

What do you think? Do you always filter your wine? Never filter it? Any ideas about the “characteristics” issue of filtered wine?

The reason I’m wondering about this is that I’ve got about 9 gallons of Reisling that I made from pure juice, harvested the day I started the wine from grapes on the Niagara Peninsula – the wine has been ageing for about six weeks now, and it looks very clear to my eye in the carboys. I also have a Liebfraumilch which was clarified and has been ageing in the carboy for about 4 weeks since, and I could read a large print book through the glass and wine of the carboy if I wanted to.

I’m also thinking about giving some of this wine as gifts – some I hope that will be considered “special.” And I’m considering for the first time ever, filtering the wine.

I’ve heard and read so many different ideas and thoughts on this – but I’m open to even more if you want to contribute. Thanks!