Sparkling Cranberry Experiments Results

Roughly about this time last year, I posted about some experimental sparking cranberry wines that I was trying.  Back then, my lovely girlfriend (now my wife) helped me get ready for their secondary fermentations in the bottle.  She'll be the first to tell you that this was a pretty big endeavor since we were investigating the affect of 6 different variables as part of this experiment.  Each of the 3 different base wines (cranberry, cranberry-cider, and cranberry-niagara) were also split into 2 carbonation styles (a lightly carbonated spumante and a fully carbonated sparkling).  If that wasn't enough, I also wanted to try a potentially labor-saving fermentation style using an encapsulated yeast (read the original post for more details).

Since then, the bottles have been sitting quietly doing their thing.  During the winter, I housed them in an upstairs closet to stay warm and then in the basement during the summer to keep relatively cool.  After almost 12 months of hopefully fermenting, I decided to pop a few bottles open a few weeks ago while I was clearing out the basement in preparation for winery construction to begin.

Drumroll please....

"Blech."  Followed by "dang it...shoot" (the words were actually a bit stronger, but this is a family show).

Cranberry (base wine made from 2 lbs cranberries/gallon of water)

Very few bubbles at all.  The spumante bottles were barely fizzy at all and the sparkling bottles had only a light fizz that disappeared quickly after opening.  Pink color with a strong cranberry taste, a thin mouth feel, and a very bitter finish.

Cranberry-Cider (base wine made from 1 lbs cranberries/gallon of apple cider)

More bubbles, but only in about half the bottles.  The sparkling bottles had the largest number of "bubbly" bottles but still had a significant number of duds.  The sparkled bottles did produce a nice mousse of bubbles that lingered for a decent period of time.  Pale orange color with a barely perceptible cranberry taste that was dominated by the aroma & taste of old dried apples.

Cranberry-Niagara (base wine made from 1 lbs cranberries/gallon of Welch's White Grape Juice)

Just about every bottle had sparkled with only 1-2 duds  The spumante bottles were refreshingly fizzy but I wanted more.  The sparkled bottles had a nice lingering mousse of small, fine trailed bubbles.  Bigger mouth feel than the rest.  Pale pink-orange color with a barely perceptible cranberry taste that was dominated by the aroma & taste of foxy niagara grapes (like drinking a dry version of Sparkling Welch's Grape Juice).

In the end, I opened every bottle and dumped them down the drain.  The Cranberry-Niagara produced the highest quality sparkling wine, but did not have a flavor that I really wanted to ever taste again.  Rather than waste valuable storage space on a wine that I wasn't going to drink, I dumped them.

Some lessons learned for the future:
1)  Amount of cranberries in the recipe needs to be fine tuned.  2 lbs/gal resulted in too strong of a flavor, while 1 lb/gal gave too weak of a cranberry flavor.
2)  Use a grape base for best mouthfeel and higher chance of complete carbonation.
3)  Forgo the "foxy" grapes like Niagara and use a more neutral flavored V. vinifera grape as the base
4)  Encapsulated yeast do work well for "sparkling" wine production, although the jury is still out on whether I'd use this "yeast-in-a-cap" method again.  Worked well when it worked, but still had a larger number of duds than I would like.  Reasonable for amateur use, but not commercial use.

Salute,
Noel

Hiccup in bottling the sparkling concord

This fall has been a series of procrastinations in the winery due to needing to focus on some of life's little chores. I swore to myself that I was going to charge and bottle the concord base wine this weekend and start the secondary fermentation to make this a sparkling wine. I intend to use the "methode champenoise" to produce the sparkler--basically that means doing the secondary fermentation in the bottle.

After a slow start on Saturday (due to a Friday night social hour at work), I finished practicing the pipe organ and getting ready for the service on Sunday and headed for my favorite local home brew store (Beer-Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA) to pick up a crown capper, caps, yeast, and some champagne bottles. Filled my arms and got to the counter, only to discover that they only had 2 cases of champagne bottles and I needed 3.

Well, shucks... Not going to get that done after all.

Bought the 2 cases and headed home. Later that night, I realized that actually 2 cases would be perfect. I've got 6.5 gallons of base wine. 2 cases would allow me to bottle 5 gallons of wine. That would let me finish 1 gallon as a sweet still wine, and a couple of bottles as a dry wine just to see what happens. This stuff is tarter than crazy, but would be interesting to see how it ages and mellows.

Of course, by the time I thought of this, it's too late to bottle and I must wait until next weekend. I really, really, truely, double-dog swear that I'm going to get this stuff charged and bottled this weekend so that the secondary fermentation can get going before the basement gets cold. We'll see (even I have my doubts)...

Cheers,
Noel

Sparkling Concord base wine racked

Real quick note tonight. Just got done racking the sparkling Concord base wine after primary alcoholic fermentation. I'm liking this a lot and maybe I'm on to something here. Granted, it's a very young wine, but it tastes like a spritzy bubbler with extremely little foxy flavor. Lovely dark pink color. Nose smells like a sparkling wine. It's definitely very tart and needs some sugar to balance the acid, but so far so good.

Is this what Concord wine was meant to be? For the non-wine historians, sparkling Catawba was the wine that first put America on the winemaking map back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Catawba is a cousin of Concord, so I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that they behave similarly enologically. Still got to get some Champagne bottles and start the secondary fermentation, but I'm actually liking this now.

Still have to do some more experimentation, but perhaps I've stumbled across a good use for Concord grapes!

Cheers,
Noel

Sparkling Concord Begun

This fall, I got a special opportunity courtesy of my friends Matt and Catherine. They're in the process of moving and didn't have time to make jelly from the Concord grapes that grow in their backyard, so they asked if I would turn them into wine.

FRANK DISCLAIMER ALERT!

I really don't like Concord wine. To my nose, something that smells like grape jelly shouldn't give me a buzz. That foxy flavor and smell literally demands a sweet wine, especially with the usually incredibly high acid levels (and you all know my prejudice against sweet wines). So I've never bothered trying to make wine from Concord grapes even though they were developed just down the road from Westford in Concord, MA by Ephraim Wale Bull in 1849. Quick trivia factoid--did ya know that the original Concord grape vine is still growing?. You'd think that local history would be enough to make me investigate their wine potential, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it.

So there's time for a little soul searching and thought. Free grapes, it'd mean something to my friends... Maybe treat it like a rose, or crush & press immediately for a white Concord...

Then it hit me--Sparkling Concord! Something like a Spumanti or other demi-sec/sec sparkling white. Lots of fruity flavors with a clean, crisp bubbly finish. I think that'd work, and what better way to celebrate moving to a new house that creating a sparkling wine from the fruits of the old house. Plus, I've never made sparkling wine before. OK, that's the plan!

The weekend before Labor Day, I got up early, went for a run, and then headed over to pick grapes. Matt & Catherine have an interesting trellising technique for these grapes--something I'll call the rhododendren method. The vines are growing up over a big rhododendren bush. Odd, but rather effective (disclaimer--M&C didn't plant the vines, but found them growing there when they moved in). Matt & I picked the grapes and ended up with 2 large Rubbermaid bins full of the little purple things.

After helping move some furniture over to the new house (and sweating like a pig in the 90+ degree heat). I headed for home with my grapes. This is where the fun begins. I'm tired, my back is sore from moving furniture, it's late afternoon, and the last thing I want to do is pull out the big crusher/destemmer to process what looks like a pretty small amount of grapes. My big idea? I'll just pull a chair up in front of the basement TV and hand destem and crush these little babies. Looks like only 50 lbs or so, so shouldn't take that long.

6 hours later...

The grapes are destemmed and crushed, I've watched 3 movies on TV, it's midnight, my butt is killing me, and I can barely stand up straight, let alone squeeze my hand. Yeah, that was a great idea, Noel!

I added some pectinase and 50 ppm SO2 (based on the expected 3 gallon yield) and let it sit until Monday night. I decided to add a gallon of Niagra grape juice since I was only expecting 3 gallons and this should help dilute the dark red color I was expecting. As expected, sugar levels were pretty low and acid was pretty high with Brix = 10.8 and pH = 2.88. I added 45 g K2CO3 to lower the acidity and 2.9 lbs sugar. Hmm, that only raised the sugar to Brix = 14.6, but pH = 3.28 was pretty good. I added another 2 lbs sugar to get Brix = 17. For a sparkling wine base, that's pretty good as the potential alcohol should be about 10.8% and more sugar is added to make the bubbles, so the final alcohol levels should be around 11.5-12%. Let's ferment.

I hydrated a packet of Cotes de Blanc yeast (been sitting in my fridge for awhile, so let's get rid of it) with some Go-Ferm and added it to the must. The next day, there wasn't much sign of fermentation (maybe I really should have paid attention to the yeast packet expiration date of 2008). Following day, I think I smell fermentation, so I added some Fermaid K nutrient and crossed my fingers. Thursday morning--definite fermentation!

On Saturday, I decided that I had extracted enough color and pressed the fermenting wine off the skins. This should also limit the over-cloying foxy taste extraction and give a softer wine. Was a little surprised when my 5 gal bucket under the press filled to the brim. Thought I was only going to get about 3-4 gallons? What the.... Ended up with almost 8.5-9 gallons of pressed juice. That's a little more that I expected, although it does explain why I needed to add almost 5 lbs of sugar. At the moment, the wine is sitting under airlock in a couple of carboys while it finishes fermentation. I'm quite pleased with the light salmon-pink color that I obtained--should look great as a sparkling "rose".

I'll keep you informed, but for now, it's up to the yeast to finish the job. Once the base wine has been racked off the gross lees, it will be time to bottle in Champagne bottles and start the secondary fermentation.

Cheers,
Noel