First Posting

[Richard H. Araujo]

Glad to see this page is here. I've been listening to the backlog of shows and love them, and was glad to hear eventually that the community had been enhanced via this website. I guess I'll write whatever I feel like in this blog, but mostly it'll be on topic discussion of my latest wine experiments. Right now I've got a pale of juice, half pinot grigio and half chardonnay, that I hope to start fermenting in a few weeks. The delay is only because of previous plans for memorial day weekend and the weekend afterward, I want to be there to sheppard this batch through to completion so it will have to wait for a little longer.

So far I have made various whites and reds from kits. My first try at a red from actual fruit was in the form of frozen must from Juice Grape and I messed it up to say the least. Second time this particular error happened too. Either there was too much of an air gap in the carboy or oxygen in some way got through the airlock and oxidized the wine. This also happened with my last red kit, a Wine Expert Crushendo single vineyard Australian Shiraz. That one I think I caught in time, it's bottled and tastes passable but crashes so fast you'd think it was lead. The frozen must was a cab, it was so bad I didn't bother bottling. I tried to make it into vinegar but no luck there either.

I'm looking to make more whites and more country wines from various fruit in the near future to up my stores. Right now all I have left from previous runs is the nearly oxidized shiraz, some riesling, and a crazy concoction I made with apples, pears, raisins, blueberries, mangos, and papayas that I got from Costco. The end result with that one was a wine with a nose bordering on divine but taste that was nondescript and a bit musty in the finish. I think I let it sit on the lees too long. Still, to smell the stuff you'd think it was heaven in a glass. So, with a concentration on early drinkable whites I hope to up my wine stores a bit so by harvest time I have some to fall back on while I concentrate on reds from fruit.

Now this next white, the grigionnay as it's apparently called, is going to be interesting. This will be my first attempt to control the temperature on the fermentation of a white to get a more fruit forward end result. I bought an aquarium chiller called The Ice Probe. It's a peltier device and can lower the temperature of a body of water below ambient about 10 degrees for a five gallon batch which is about right for me it seems. It also seems sanitization friendly, so I'm going to install it half way up the side of one of my 7 gallon primaries and calibrate it to keep the fermenting must at around 55-60 degrees. The end results should be interesting to say the least.

As for my reds, I'm thinking of changing what I put in the airlocks from sulphited water to sulphited glycerol. Maybe this will be a better barrier once it's in secondary. This year by harvest time I'm hoping to have three more 12-13 gallon primaries. These I hope to fill with cab, malbec, and cab franc to get a bordeau style blend together and bottled sometime next year. I've done blends before. My most successful one to date was a gewurtz/chardonnay/sauv blanc mix, about equal parts the first two with a small amount of the blanc added. It really came out nice. I was taking a hint from one of my favorite professional wine makers as he recently did a white blend of chardonnay, riesling, and gewurtz that blew me away. I feel blends really are the way to go in the end, red or white.

Thanks to Dave and TOG for the great shows and for this page.