Joy of Home Wine Making (12 page)

NOTE: In some climates, keeping the fermenting wine warm enough is a problem in the winter, and sometimes in the summer! The British books talk about fermenting cupboards, insulated cupboards built up against chimneys or fitted with an electric bulb for warmth. Electric mats made for heating seedings are a possibility, as are belt-type heating pads. Always be sure you are taking fire safety into consideration.

If you live off the power grid, there are various ways to keep your wine warm besides direct sunlight, which is NOT a good idea. Look for warm nooks around the house, behind the stove, next to a flue, etc. Take a tour of your house with a thermometer and see what you can do to boost the temperature in a small area. The idea of insulating a large cupboard or packing case isn’t a bad one. If you have a passive solar area that gets really warm during the day, you can use bricks or stones against one side of the case to soak up daylight heat and radiate it out at night. Just be careful it doesn’t get too hot during the day!

Any time I name a yeast in a recipe, feel free to substitute another kind. They will all work. Some, however, work better than others with various wine ingredients. Montrachets are usually standard for red wines, while champagne is for rosé or white wines. Sherry Flor is used for higher alcohol content, and actually needs more oxygen than other yeasts, so when you rack your wine it won’t hurt to splash it around a bit and leave room in the fermenter for more air contact with the wine (but
don’t
leave off the air lock!).

I do discourage you from using beer and bread yeasts in these recipes. They weren’t bred to take the high levels of sugar and alcohol these wines demand, and they will result in off-tasting syrupy wines.

If you have a taste for fortified ports and sherries, you can make wine yeast produce more than 10 to 14 percent alcohol by keeping it very cool and feeding it small amounts of sugar syrups over a period of time. Too much sugar all at once will result in a stuck ferment.

A stuck ferment is a situation where the wine yeast stops working. The PA or SG has stayed at the same place for a couple of months with no change. This rarely happens.

Sometimes it’s just dumb luck. Sometimes the must is at a cooler or hotter temperature than you thought and just isn’t doing its job.

Other times the wine just needs some stirring up. Or there is too much sugar or too little.

To “unstick” the ferment, you can:

• check the temperature of the wine and adjust it if necessary
  
• simply rack the wine and let it splash a bit, adding a little oxygen
  
• check your original measurements and PA. Whoops, you think you added the sugar twice? Dilute the wine with water that has been boiled and cooled to obtain a more reasonable PA.
  
• add some more yeast nutrient or yeast hulls or a little Marmite or Vegemite (
  ¹
  /
  ₈
  tsp.)
  
• compare the PA and your original PA. If there is still sugar in the must, make up a starter bottle of new yeast, get it going, and add it to the must
  

If all else fails, shrug and start over.

YEAST NUTRIENT

Yeast needs other food besides sugar and fruit. Yeast nutrient is basically urea—highly purified! You can buy it at a wine supply store or from a mail order wine supply house.

You use only a small amount (one teaspoon), but it makes the yeast so happy! Think of it as the yeast’s vitamin pill. It is especially important in making mead. Yeast nutrient is cheap and keeps well.

Some people are currently advocating the use of “yeast hulls,” or “yeast skeletons,” or “yeast extract.” It is made from the dehydrated remains of yeast sediment. Many people are enthusiastic about it, using it to fix stuck fermentations, and in some cases (particularly in meads) in place of yeast nutrient. It is very inexpensive and is available at wine and beer supply stores, and through the mail. Use half a teaspoon per gallon instead of regular yeast nutrient. So far, I can’t see any difference between regular yeast nutrient and yeast hulls.

STABILIZER

Potassium sorbate is used to prevent the yeast from growing again after you are satisfied with the alcohol content of the wine and want to sweeten it (it doesn’t kill the yeast completely, though). It is available at wine supply stores and through the mail.

You need half a teaspoon per gallon. Rack the finished wine into a sanitized primary fermenter. Just before bottling, mix the stabilizer with a cup or so of the finished wine in a sanitized container, until dissolved, then add to the rest of the wine. Wait
half an hour to one hour, add the sugar syrup to sweeten, stir well, then bottle.

Some people don’t like the taste of stabilizer in their wines. It also isn’t a good idea to use it in a wine you are going to keep a long time, because it can develop off tastes.

SULPHITE

Campden tablets contain one half gram of sulphite (aka metabisulphite). It is also available in crystal form. For sanitizing, use a stock solution of one quarter ounce or nine grams in a pint of water. That would be about thirteen Campden tablets.

To purify a must before adding the yeast, use one Campden tablet or the equivalent, and wait twenty-four hours before adding the yeast. Heat destroys sulphites, so the must needs to be cool before you add the tablet.

When you rack the wine (after secondary fermentation is done), you can also use one crushed Campden tablet per gallon to help stabilize the wine. This is optional but recommended by many experts.

To completely stabilize a wine before bottling, use two to three tablets.

When you sanitize your bottles, drain them well, but don’t rinse them unless you are sensitive to sulphites. This extra bit will help stabilize the wine.

For most people, sulphites are safe, especially in the small amounts we are using here. I am moderately sensitive to them. (Eating at salad bars used to make me sick before regulations were passed to forbid using sulphites to keep the lettuce from turning brown. Cheap wines can make my stomach upset, too, and I suspect they are heavily sulphited.)

I use Campden tablets to sanitize, in some of my apple wines, and in a few others. I don’t rinse the sulphite from my fermenters or bottles when I sanitize them, and it works out fine for me.

Take a cautious sniff of your sanitizing solution to make sure it is still good, but for heaven’s sake don’t take a big lungful. It irritates the lungs and eyes in that concentration. Always keep sulphites labeled, and out of the reach of pets, children, and anyone else who might not know any better.

If you are sensitive to sulphites, don’t use them.

O
THER
S
ANITIZERS

Wine supply stores and mail order sources sell several varieties of equipment sanitizers, that are marketed under various brand names. They cost more than Campden tablets and cannot be used in the wine itself. Each brand comes with its own directions for use.

I continue to use metabisulphite because I know I understand what’s in it and how it works, though I have used some of the other sanitizers. They work well and are probably easier to use for people who make large amounts of wine.

GLYCERINE

Glycerine is a nonfermentable, nontoxic substance that will give body and a bit of sweetness to a finished wine. In fact, some companies call it Wine Finisher or Wine Conditioner. Use one ounce of food-grade glycerine per gallon. You can buy it at any wine supply store or through the mail. You can also buy it in some drug stores.

COLORING

Most of the time, I don’t color my wine. But now and then one comes up with a “white” wine that needs a little help. It’s best to use a natural winemaking ingredient to give color, like some red fruit or lightly toasted bread. Or, in a pinch, you can decant the wine just before serving and add a drop or two (not very much!) of food coloring or red fruit juice concentrate.

I have colored my mint wine green once or twice just for the effect. It was nice for Saint Patrick’s Day.

CHALK

Chalk is food-grade calcium carbonate. Available at wine supply stores and by mail order, it is used to reduce acid in a wine. Use an acid test kit to determine the acid content of the wine. The wine is racked off into a primary fermenter, and two to six teaspoons is stirred in per gallon. It is stirred every few hours for twenty-four hours, then the wine is racked carefully off the sediment back into
a sanitized secondary fermenter. Two teaspoons reduces the acid 0.1-1.15 percent. Never add more than six teaspoons per gallon.

There are also commercial products available at wine supply stores to reduce acid; these products come with complete instructions.

CHAPTER FIVE

Fresh Fruit Wines

H
ere we go, real fruit wines. Remember that I am assuming you have read the previous chapters. Also remember to read the recipe all the way through before starting. There are lots of little details that you won’t want to miss.

Be sure to obtain the best fresh fruits you can for your wine, fruits that are ripe and sound. It’s better to use a little less good fruit than a lot of dubious fruit.

Look for local fruit if you can. It is almost always better than fruit brought in to your area. The less it’s been hauled around, the better. Local fruit is usually cheaper, too.

You can find fruit in many places besides the grocery store. Look for special fruit and vegetable stores, farmers’ markets, roadside stands, and pick-your-own farms, where you can pick your own fresh fruit and pay less than you would in the stores. Your local state or county offices might have a listing of such places. Very useful!

Nonlocal fruits can be quite good, too. If you check out the farmers’ markets or fruit and vegetable stores, you can get some bargains with fruit that is dead ripe and won’t hold for another day or so. Check carefully for mold or rot, especially on the bottom of the case. Be picky. Tell them you want it for wine. This usually catches the sellers’ interest, and they are more likely to make sure you get good fruit.

Sometimes buying by the lug or case is cheaper, though not always. It’s best to know what the going price is for fruits you are interested in. I’ve gotten some good bargains by showing up at the end of the day at the farmers’ market. I’ve also missed some choice fruits that went fast because I wasn’t there earlier. You never know.

Sometimes ethnic grocery stores carry interesting fruits. When I lived in the Mission District in San Francisco, we could buy enormous pieces of sweet papaya by the pound.

Wild fruits are good as long as you aren’t breaking any laws by gathering them or aren’t picking them on private property without permission. Also, be very sure you know WHAT you are picking. Don’t just take someone’s word for it. Look it up in a wild plant field guide.

Admittedly it’s hard to mistake raspberries or strawberries for anything else that will harm you. Blueberries are pretty easy, too, or so I thought. Recently I discovered that friends of mine were making wine from what they said were blueberries. I looked at the berries and the plants they came from. Doubt crept over me. I had a horrible feeling the berries were nightshade. We discussed it at length. They had been eating these berries all summer, and hadn’t gotten ill from them.

I went to the reference section of the university library and did some careful checking with a sample of the leaves, flowers, and berries. Common nightshade!

As a matter of fact, common nightshade berries are quite good and are marketed as garden huckleberries or Wonderberries. One of these friends had grown up in the country, and they had always called these berries blueberries. I, who thought I knew what a blueberry was, felt quite shaken by the experience.

Deadly nightshade is much nastier.

ALWAYS double-check if you have the slightest doubt.

When you get the fruit, wash it and make it into wine as soon as possible. Slightly overripe fruit is OK. Rotten fruit is not OK. Any bits of mold should be cut away, as should bruises. Underripe fruit shouldn’t be used because it isn’t ripe. You won’t get a good flavor from it. Ripe fruit smells fragrant.

Sometimes people will cheerfully give you fruit. Maybe their trees or bushes overproduce. Ask around. Make friends with gardeners. Of course, you can always grow your own fruit, if you have a garden. I have only a small city lot, but I have tucked in many gooseberry and currant bushes.

Freezing fresh fruit seems to help release the juice. If you have a freezer, take advantage of this. Be sure you know the proper methods of freezing, of course. When your primary fermenters are busy, and the fruit is coming in too fast, you can simply freeze the surplus for future use.

The following recipes will make one-gallon batches. Make the wine in a one- or two-gallon batch the first time around to make sure you like it. Then, if you care to make bigger batches, multiply everything by five EXCEPT the yeast. Easy.