Anyone Here Into Winemaking ?

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Moray

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Is anyone here going to making wine this year, the grapes are starting to come in.

My brother and I are getting 30 cases of shiraz grapes this weekend. We should be able to get a bit over 300 litres from this.

last year we got about 230 litres from 20 cases.
by the time we got it into the bottles ( 306 * 750ml)
it worked out at about $5.50 a bottle, including buying brand new bottles, boxes, and an american oak barrique.

imho it is as good, if not better than a lot of $20 bottles.
 
While I have never made wine from grapes before, I have done so with other fruits. I have a pear wine in the fermenter at the moment that is looking pretty good. The grape wines I have made before have all been from the Brew King Vintners Reserve kits. I must say they come out reasonably good for a kit product. However, for the cellar door price of some fantastic wines in the Hunter, I don't think I would bother making grape wines on a regular basis.

Cheers,
Pete

:chug:
 
I spoke to by brother last night, and he corrected my costings. It only cost $3.26 per bottle last year.
:D
 
Moray said:
I spoke to by brother last night, and he corrected my costings. It only cost $3.26 per bottle last year.
:D
That's a little closer to what I would have imagined. Particularly making that sort of quantity. You must have one hell of a cellar if you make that much each year :p.

Cheers,
Pete

:chug:
 
I wish I had a large cellar, the bulk of it is stacked in the corner of the double garage at mum's beach house.

We crushed 30 cases of shiraz grapes on saturday, into a 500 and a 225 litre open top plastic fermenters, ( big buckets ). adjusted the ph to around 3.3 and pitched wine yeast, and yeast nutrient.

it's now fermenting along nicely, and has a good aroma.
starting baume was 13.5, (o.g. about 1.1 )it was down to 10 last night.

we are aiming to press it on saturday.
 
Mmmmmm Shiraz ....

I'll be making some port out of a shiraz concentrate next month. It will be my first attempt at making port. I plan to fortify it with some 85% spirit at an S.G. of around 1.040 to keep the natural sweetness. That way I wont have to add sugar syrup as many others have told me they do. Of course, they are smart in waiting to see if they end up with a nice enough wine to warrant fortification, but I am willing to take the chance.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Of course, that may well be four or five years from now :p

Cheers,
Pete

:chug:
 
do you have any more detail on the port making ?
I'd be very keen to try my hand at it myself.
 
Pmyers,

What is the 85% Spirit you will be using.
Is it the reflux distilled odourless, colourless, tasteless alcohol ?
 
GMK said:
Pmyers,

What is the 85% Spirit you will be using.
Is it the reflux distilled odourless, colourless, tasteless alcohol ?
Thats the one. Traditionally they use brandy for fortifying the wine, but I figured the more % alc. in the fortification, the more original taste would come through from the wine. Thus the spirit distilled from a sugar wash, being odourless and tasteless would serve a dual purpose in that regard.

Moray - I have seen several methods of creating port and fallen back on the simple fortification method. Typically, only the best wines are ever fortified by home winemakers due to the cost of the spirit, but letting a wine ferment out to completeness would mean I would have to add sugar to the wine after fortifying to obtain the required sweetness. I wanted to retain as much natural sweetness as possible, so I am going to ferment this wine to a S.G. of around 1.050 - 1.040 (O.G. of about 1.100 if possible) before adding the required spirit. This will halt the fermentation while the wine is still quite sweet. When no further signs of fermentation are present I will rack it off the lees and from thereon treat it as I would an ordinary wine. I will however, probably age this on oak for about three to four years before bottling it in order to reach a decent level of complexity.

Cheers,
Pete

:chug:
 
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