Is a good test of a winemaker making a great wine from great grapes, or making a good wine from grapes that were never meant to make wine? I mean, if you were given 60 lbs of Chateau Margaux cab and merlot grapes, all you would really need to do is not mess it up right? You might not make a 99 point wine with it that will be impressing critics in 2055, but you would have to really screw up to make something undrinkable.
Well here in Tamil Nadu, India, it isn’t quite that easy. Imagine you were given instead 60 lbs of a mutant strain of Thompson Seedless that you really knew nothing about. Now imagine that the grapes had travelled an unknown distance in extreme heat, probably on an oxcart for at least part of the journey, and you had no idea how long it had been since they were picked. This is what I am making wine with here in Chennai. Am I crazy? Read on to find out.
These are the grapes I am using above. They are called ‘Sharad Seedless’ and are actually a cultivar of Thompson Seedless, which, as you may know is V. vinifera. These grapes taste pretty good; their skins are crunchy, and they have almost no rotten berries due to the spacious clusters of oblong shaped fruit. The brix of these grapes tends to be around 20-21 as they are grown for yield and not for maximum sugar concentration. I have to chaptalize at up to 20% to get these up to 25 brix.
This is what 20 lbs of these grapes looks like on the “crush pad”, (that is not a wine made with these grapes in the photo obviously) and you can see my daughter going to work on these. These firm grapes are not easy to crush, and they take a lot of stomping to get them all. I sheepishly admit I was sore the day after my first attempt. I remove most of the stems, especially the green ones after the grapes are completely crushed. To help break down the skins I add 1/4 tsp per pound of pectic enzyme. This does an effective job of helping to release the juice, color and tannin. I also add about 2g (1/4 tsp) of KMS (sulphite) into the vat during the crush. I bring all of these extras back from the U.S. when I visit.
I ferment these grapes in a wide plastic bin with a lid that clips on. You can see the cap forming on this wine that has been in the fermentor for 1 day. I like to use Vintners Select MA33 to help reduce the malic acid content as I cannot get a malo culture here and the conditions are not optimal for conducting a malolactic secondary fermentation. To be honest, I haven’t tried, and maybe someday I will. I usually ferment with about 1-2 oz of French medium toasted oak chips that I bring back from the States with me.
It is not easy to keep the fermentor cool in the tropics, and these grapes will go up in smoke if you’re not careful. They also produce a lot of heat and I’ve had a batch like this ferment out in 2 days before.
I punch down as often as I can to avoid infection of the cap and to homogenize the must and release heat. You can see that the grapes do produce a beautifully colored wine. I could easily press after only a fe days, but as i don’t have a proper press I need to let the skins break down as much possible for the the best yield at runoff.
I am experimenting with cold soaking half the batch of grapes in my spare fridge and adding them later to extend the fermentation out, keep the must cooler, and extract as much character, structure, and color from the skins as possible. I also hope this will yield a more nuanced wine with less heat on the palate.
This is my ghetto system of runoff/pressing. I purchased these items from various container shops in Chennai, the coolest of which are in Parry’s Corner. The perforated metal cylinder is a stainless trash can liner. It works. The bin below is a stainless milk jug holding about 3.5 gallons. I think I paid 6 dollars for it.
I let the wine mature in plastic bottles: 5 gallon water jugs if I have enough wine. If it’s a smaller batch I’ll use 5 L water bottles that I bought full of filtered water. I add plenty of oak chips to it to give it that refined edge. Without the chips its still good, but not impressive.
As you can see the finished young wine has quite a gorgeous ruby purple color. You may not believe me, but it actually tastes pretty good. It has a mildly tart cherry and grape flavor with the oak showing nicely after some air. Tannins are light with just enough structure to hold it together until I drink it. It is a bit high in acid, but I like lively wines in the tropics. I do have the option of deacidification if necessary. I don’t like what that does to the wine though, so I’ll continue to drink it as is. All in all, it is a good test of winemaking skill and determination.
