Winter in the Vineyard
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Right now the vines are dormat and enjoying a little sleep. If you drive through the vineyard areas you will see different types of grass and flowers growing in between the rows. These plants are not randomly growing in the rows. They were planted there for a reason (and no it’s not just because they look pretty). These plants are called cover crops.
Cover crops help protect and enrich the soil in a variety of ways. They help regulate vine growth, protect soil from erosion, improve soil fertility, draw away the abundant moisture, help with air quality, and introduce beneficial insects to the soil and vine.
The photos you see above are from Lanza-Musto Vineyards. At Lanza-Musto Vineyards we planted three peas, crimson clover, mustard, and oat throughout the rows. These are all full of nitrogen and other nutrients. Some rows have more crops planted than others. For example, the younger vines have the three peas mix because the younger vines need more nutrients. Where as an older vineyard might have a mustard mix.It is important to remember that vineyard maintenance does not start and end at harvest time. There are many things that need to be done in the vineyard throughout the year to ensure the vines produce quality fruit.
Our Winemaking Resolutions for 2015 – What Are Yours?
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Happy New Year Winemakers!
Frank:
- To improve my personal winemaking skills and winemaking knowledge
- To continue to grow my friendships and business relationships within the wine industr
- To visit more wineries and winemaking groups
Nick:
- My resolution is to continue to find ways to enjoy winemaking and the business we are in. Whether it is helping someone just starting out in making wine or someone starting a winery. The passion we bring to this business is not something that can be imitated.
Kim:
- I would like to start trying more locally made wines
- I too need to stop procrastinating on racking, etc…
- I would like to work on expanding my pallet! (sometimes I think it’s broken lol)
Frankie K: I have a couple!
- I would like to drink more wine! (I really mean that, I often choose beer when wine is available and would like to stop doing that. Beer has a ton of calories!)
- I would like to procrastinate less in my wine racking and other exercises. I often find myself putting those things off because I am too busy, and the wine ends up suffering as a result.
- And I would also like to drink more wine!
Christina:
- To try more wines from the East Coast as well as wines from other countries
- To research new blends to try next vintage
- To make a sparkling wine for the first time
- To make Grapa for the first time
Ken:
- I would like increase my knowledge as it pertains to Malolactic Bacteria. When has my wine completely gone thru malo? When is the proper time to add sulfites?
- I would like to take classes in becoming a Certified Wine Competition Judge
James:
- Visit more local wineries
- Improve my winemaking lab skills
- Learn more about wine and food pairings; what kind of wine does go with a big mac?
Bring on the Bordeaux! – A Home Wine Making Experience (4)
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So 11/6 was a sad day. When we went to punch down the wine, there was an off odor. To be specific it smelled like rotten eggs. This means my yeast is “stressed”. UGH!!! I’ll admit I panicked a little. Why does this happen? Well there are multiple reasons. One is in the Vineyard. Sometimes the grapes are sprayed too close to the time of harvest and the copper or sulfur compounds will stay on the grape. Another, is the yeast can get stressed if there aren’t enough nutrients for them. Sometimes the grapes don’t have enough nutrients, and as winemakers we fail to properly introduce enough supplemental nutrients for the yeast to complete fermentation.
Thankfully, there are multiple ways to treat this issue.
- You can aerate or “rack and splash” the must in order to “blow off” the smell. This will only work if the issue is lack of oxygen.
- You can add DAP. DAP stands for Diammonium Phosphate. It is a source of nitrogen (aka food for the yeast). Therefore, when you introduce DAP the yeast has more food to eat and the odor disappears.
- After fermentation, you can run the wine over copper. The copper will absorb the sulfite and help eliminate the odor. However, it will strip the wine of some flavors.
- You can add Reduless after fermentation. Reduless will not strip the wine like copper and it will remove the smell if it is a h2s issue.
We chose option 2 and it worked! We introduced 100 grams of DAP to the wine and in 2 days the off odor was gone.
Once we were able to get rid of the odor we added a 1/2lb of French oak dust. This addition helps protect against oxidation and increase color stability. The next time we will introduce oak to our wine will be during the aging process.
Thanks again for stopping by. Next time we will discuss Maloactic Fermentation.
Cheers ~ CM
Mulled Wine ~ Getting in the Holiday Spirit
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We hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for and it’s good to take a step back, reflect, and enjoy each others company.
Now that we are in the holiday spirit we have been experimenting with different winter wine recipes. One of them being Mulled Wine. Below is my recipe. I suggest pairing it with friends by the fireplace and a tasty charcuterie plate.
4 cups apple cider (or can use apple juice if you want it a little sweeter)
1 bottle of red wine (suggest cabernet, merlot, or a blend of both)
1 tablespoon – 1/4 cup of honey (depends on your sweet tooth)
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange – juiced and zested
4 whole cloves
2-3 stars of anise (do to taste)
orange peels/wedges for garnish
Add the apple cider/juice, wine, cinnamon sticks, orange zest, orange juice, and cloves to a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Add stars of anise and honey to taste. Let it simmer for 8-10 minutes. Pour into mugs, add an orange peel/wedge for garnish, and enjoy!
Bring on the Bordeaux! – A Home Wine Making Experience (3)
It’s all in the yeast
We waited for our must to come up to a temperature of about 60 degrees and added our yeast starter, opti red, and tannin ft rouge. Below are our reasons for these additions.
Yeast occurs naturally on the skins of all wine grapes. If they are left alone, these yeasts will ferment the juice into wine. Some winemakers let the “wild” yeast ferment the juice. We however, use cultured yeasts. This is because we received grapes from multiple vineyards and the different strains of wild yeast will fight for the sugar or their “food”. This can cause the wine to not fully ferment and result in a stuck fermentation because of all the competition between yeasts.
The yeast we chose was FX10. We chose FX10 because it is a vigorous fermenter. It enhances the mouth feel to be big mid-palate with major fruit concentration. The wine will have notes of intense fruits while maintaing a soft, silky mouth feel.
To kick off pitching our cultured yeast we heated up a bowl of distilled water to 110 degrees. Dissolved a tablespoon of sugar in the water (the sugar helps the yeast go from a “freeze dried state” to a “living, wet state”). Added 72 grams of GoFerm. We let the GoFerm sit alone until the temperature was 104 degrees. Then we added the FX10 yeast. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. The bubbles in the photo below are proof that the yeast is awake and working.
Before we mixed our yeast starter in with our must, we added our opti red and tannin ft rouge (pictured below). The opti red helps extract more color from the skins. The tannin helps create a better mouth feel and more complexity in the wine. All you need to do to add this is dilute them in distilled water and mix into the must.
Below is a photo of us adding the yeast starter to the must. We took juice from the must and mixed into the yeast starter first. We did not just dump it in. In our opinion, it is better to try to make it all “one organism” instead of dumping into the must right away. It makes for a smoother start to fermentation. Once the additives and yeast were added we punched down the cap.
Now we monitor the must’s temperature, brix level, and smell. If there are any off odors we want to make sure to deal with them right away.
Thanks again for stopping by. Next time we will get into DAP and when to add oak additives.
Cheers ~ CM & FJ
Bring On The Bordeaux! – A Home Winemaking Experience (2)
So before we start going into how our wine is doing, we wanted to outline some winemaking terms. Here’s a mini wine vocabulary lesson.
Degrees Brix: Expresses the percentage of sugar by weight. This scale is on a Triple Scale Hydrometer. Measuring the Brix by using a hydrometer will help you determine the level of alcohol you wish to produce in your wine.
pH: This is the potential Hydrogen ion. The pH scale spans from 0, representing extreme acid, to 14, representing an extreme base or alkai. For winemaking purposes only the 0-7 scale is considered and wine should between 3-4. The more intense the wine acid is, (the lower the number) the less free sulfite is needed to afford proper protection and hence wine stability.
Total Acidity: This measurement refers to the amount of acid that is in your wine in grams/liter of percent of volume. Ideally, your TA should be between 0.65%-0.85% for white wine and 0.60%-0.80% for red wines. If the acid is too low your wine is susceptible to bacteria and spoilage. If it is too high your wine will taste too tart.
We took the must out of the cooler on 10/28 and waited for the must to heat up. Once the must started to heat up we took our measurements. The Brix were 25.5, TA was 5.985, and pH was 3.88. My pH is a little on the higher side. My TA is pretty good for a dry red and my Brix are at a great level to make a 12.5% alcohol per volume wine.
Some tips for taking your pH and TA measurements. I would suggest purchasing some type of all in one SO2, pH, and TA testing equipment. To test TA on your own can be very complicated and not very accurate. I would suggest looking into a Vinmetrica kit. They do all of the tests and it’s easy and accurate.
Also, try not to get distracted and mix up your solutions like I did. It took me 30 minutes to get the correct TA reading because I was mixing in the wrong solution. #airheadmove
Thanks again stopping by and checking out our winemaking process. The next post will concentrate on yeast, yeast nutrient, and other additives that help the wine during fermentation.
Cheers ~ CM & FJ
Bring On The Bordeaux! – A Home Winemaking Experience
This year we are making Bordeaux Blends. One blend is made up of 68% Cabernet Sauvignon from Oakville, 14% Petite Verdot from Atlas Peak, and 18% Merlot from Caneros, Napa Valley. This blend costs more than my first our first cars so we are praying we don’t screw them up. Lol
We crushed the grapes on 10/22. It was a deep, dark, and beautiful color purple.
There is more information to come! Stop by for the next post updating our wine making process!
Next we will be discussing Degrees Brix, Total Acidity, and pH Levels
Until next time….
Cheers ~ CM & FJ
Images via D. Pelletier
Wine Grape Buying Made Easy
From Pick-up to FEDEX and Over The Road Trucking. There are many ways to get your order.
The season is upon us. You’ve likely received numerous emails by now. Each email from M&M updating you on the current state of affairs with this years wine grape harvest. A link on the site shows an updated bulletin of what’s coming in, photos, and brix levels.
As you will see, M&M has an extensive list of offerings, which can be accessed here.
So, how do we take all this information, make sense of it and plan accordingly? Well, that is not a simple feat. There are a number of factors at play in planning your wine making. These include:
1. Are you limited by what date during the season you can make wine?
2. Are you limited to processing grapes an/or juice only once during the season or would you be willing to process at different times?
3. Do you have budgetary constraints?
4. Are the varietals you are considering ones which typically are available at the same time?
5. What product format are you able to handle?
6. Are you flexible and able to take grapes when they arrive?
7. Do you require shipping?
In M&M’s sales department, we know that wine making is an important event for you, whether it is your business or a family tradition. We ask to speak with our customers, rather than simply emailing, because we know that with each customer, a successful sale involves navigating the considerations listed above.
There is one simple fact. Grapes are not ready to ship product. They tell us, by their specs, when they are ready and we adapt accordingly. This is something that folks with tight schedules should consider. If your schedule is what is driving your ability to make wine, the conversation should start by asking what product might be available on that particular date. Even if a product were to not be available at a later date, we could offer options such as our frozen must program, which would allow you to still make wine with quality product.
For those folks who are limited to processing at one time only, we suggest planning around the most important variety or if in conjunction with a date restriction, planning around grapes that will be available that date. We can arrange to process the other products on your order and consolidating those items so each has complete integrity, but can be obtained together.
Some people ask about larger volumes, perhaps in the interest of saving money or easier handling. That is certainly worth exploring with your sales representative, but you need to consider how you will receive the product and your ability to handle the product. The larger formats are a good idea, but you need to consider the handling logistics associated with their purchase.
Another consideration is whether you are able to pick-up or if you require shipping. If you are able to pick-up, we recommend you try to schedule pick-up for off hours when you are likely going to be more able to get in and out with your order. Another benefit to coming during off hours is that our staff will have more time to answer your questions and work closely with you. ALWAYS call ahead prior to coming in to verify your order will be ready for pick-up. M&M does reach out to customers to arrange for pick-up or delivery, but prior to coming in we highly recommend making a pre-pickup confirmation.
For those of you looking for product to be shipped, we have a long history at M&M of trying to accommodate our customer’s delivery needs as much as possible. However, with more and more people wanting to take advantage of delivery, our ability to provide fair freight rates to everyone necessitates that we coordinate shipments according to how M&M is best able to accommodate the bulk of shipping requests. That may mean we are only able to ship to certain locations on certain days. Our ability to provide fair pricing necessitates consolidating shipping requests. If you absolutely require a shipment on a specific date that we cannot accommodate via consolidation. then we will offer you a dedicated rate for shipping.
The harvest season is incredibly busy and as you can see, there are a lot of considerations to navigate together to ensure all goes smoothly for you. That being said, some careful consideration and prioritization will allow us to lay out the best plan together. The first step is making the call into our knowledgeable sales staff who will help you with your planning.
Cheers,
M&M Sales
M&M’s Competition Offers Opportunity to Showcase Wine
Prior Award Winners
(left) Noel Powell (right) Jason Phelps
For the past several years, M&M Wine Grape Company, LLC has held an Amateur wine making competition. The M&M Wine Grape Company Amateur Wine Classic competition itself, originally known as the Amenti del Vino Amateur Wine Competition, was established to give the many wine makers we work with the opportunity to have their wines judged amongst the wines of their peers.
M&M being perhaps the only wine grape supply company supplying wine grapes and juice from the best growing regions of California, Washington State, New York State, Argentina, Chile, and Italy, attracts some very talented wine makers who make a large selection of wines. This has always made our competitions interesting and competitive.
There is no shortage of wine grape competitions. Some competitions boast the quantity of entrants and others emphasize a large celebratory dinner. The M&M Wine Grape Company Amateur Wine Classic can boast participation by some of the amateur best winemakers. It is also one of a few, if not perhaps the only, competitions that judges wines made from fresh grapes, fresh juice, and frozen must separately from wine kits.
You’ve worked hard on your wines. In many cases we’ve worked with you to craft an ever-better wine. The M&M Wine Grape Company Amateur Wine Classic is your opportunity to earn recognition for those efforts and among a group of peers where earning an award truly means something.
This year is the 21st Amateur Wine Classic. Judging will be held August 23rd with entries due by August 16th. All competition related documents can be found here.
Apple Cider – As Wine or Hard Cider
Fresh New England Apple Cider makes for great wine or hard cider.
Juicegrape.com may focus on the sale of grapes and grape juice to its customers, but for those of us in the company who
are located on the East Coast, there is an undeniable connection between Fall and Apples. Some of the finest apples are
grown right here in Connecticut and greater New England. For us winemakers, the best way to partake of these apples is in
a glass and in the form of hard cider or apple wine.
The best way to make hard cider or apple wine (styles and ABV differ) is with fresh apples or freshly pressed juice. M&M Wine Grape Company, LLC will be offering apple cider this fall for this purpose. We do our best to select cider with the best acid possible. It is this cider that makes the best fermented cider products.
There are numerous approaches to the process, so it doesn’t make sense to provide just a single one here. This blogger has made apple wine in the past and can certainly offer a few tips.
1. Enzymes – Particularly HC and PEC5L from Scott labs are really great to breaking down all the pectics that are found in apples and for making a nice clear product.
2. Nutrients – Apples are naturally low in nutrients for yeast and have a tendency to produce Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S rotten egg smell). Using products like Fermaid K or Fermaid O help to ensure a healthy fermentation and clean apple aromas.
3. Yeast – There are a number of yeasts perfect for fermenting apples. These “known” yeasts, as is the case with wine, beer, etc., provide the wine or cider maker with a yeast product that maxmizes positive attributes like mouthfeel, aroma, complexity, and fermentation qualities. A few of these strains are as follows: 71B, D47, EC1118, R2, QA23
4. Tannins – These are what give wines their “characteristic structure”, aid in longevity, and help create a balanced product that pleases the pallet. Apples are naturally low in tannins, which is partially why some recipes call for the inclusion of raisins. Modern winemaking techniques offer tannin solutions like FT Blanc Soft which work wonderfully in apple wines.
Making great apple wine can be accomplished really easy. A link to preorder your apple cider for this Fall will be available soon. You can also visit the cider section of our online store. Of course, if you have any questions regarding this article, please feel free to contact us.
Happy Wine Making!
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