not quite three weeks ago A said something like "hey can we make some wine"
and while I hadn't expected there to be many grapes this year because i basically pruned them for remedial action since they hadn't really been tended for a while it turned out that in a few hours we had picked
about eight of these, a total of about 130 pounds of (mostly) very ripe Sauvignon Blanc grapes
and by very ripe i mean to say some of them were pretty close to being raisins though many were about perfect
Misu stood guard
and the next morning A stomped the grapes
we pitched Lalvin QA23 yeast, and the must (skins and juice) has now been fermenting for two weeks as of today
it's going to be an "amber" wine - basically a white wine made in the fashion of a red wine.
when you make white wine, you use a "white" grape (like these - white? - eh. not dark red, or rather, not purple), you press it, and only ferment the juice, by itself
a red wine is made with "red" grapes (sorry they're purple)... you crush them (old fashioned way like the video, or more efficiently with a machine which we don't have (yet)), then ferment the juice with the skins, and only later do you remove the skins, which provide the wine with tannins and color... did you know that red wine grapes aren't red inside? they're mostly colorless like the "white" wine grapes (which are greenish on the outside)
a blush, or rosé, is a wine typically made from a "red" wine grape but the fermentation on the skins is only a couple days, then the skins are removed for the rest of the ferment - thus it's a milder wine with just a bit of color
so what's an "amber" wine? some call it an "orange" wine, but that can have confusion with wine made from oranges (ok that's not common) or wine from Orange (France) (ok those wines aren't typically named for the place) but Georgians (the country, the colony named for George II in 1732) who still make this kind of wine call it amber for its color
anyhow, amber wine is wine made with "white" wine grapes, fermented on the skins like how a "red" wine is made. it's much bigger and more complex, and more colorful, than the typical white wine, because of all the flavors and color from the fermenting skins
the sugar level in the original juice was fairly high - brix 26.5 - which gives the potential for 15% ABV if the yeast takes it all the way to dry; we may or may not stop the fermentation early depending on flavor and whether or not we're paying enough attention because not only are we not pros we're not even remotely amateurs at this
but right now at two weeks, it smells very interesting! smells like nectarines and citrus. i pulled a bit of juice to taste it and welp it looks like unfiltered apple juice because of all the yeast floating in it (that settles out later) but the flavor is already pretty good! still a bit sweet; i get a bit of alcohol no doubt, and can definitely taste and feel the yeast
most likely the fermentation will slow way down during this week, and next weekend we'll press the skins, extract a bit more sugar and flavor from them, and toss them (i'm contemplating if there's enough of anything left in them to use them for anything else? or perhaps just a treat for the chickens)
it'll be really interesting to see after the pressing if the fermentation kicks back on as i suspect there will be more sugar that the yeast will go after
if i recall after the pressing we'll put everything into the glass carboys - right now i have four 20+ liter buckets, each of which likely has about 13-15L of juice plus a bunch of skins... not sure just how much juice is going to come from the skins
