REROLLED.BOIL

Daybreak and I find fermentation following forward. With nighttime temperatures under fifty (in August?), the humidifier has kept the tank a happy seventy two. However, I need to ensure the yeasts ferment completely.
Once the bubbling (and my coffee) are finished, I sample the must.

Thus far, the yeasts have neared the same specific gravity as water: 1.000. But to finish the job, they need oxygen and redistribution throughout the must. No air or nutrients means dead yeasts. Also the bubbling CO2 they produce will not go away without degassing the must. So I re-sterilize the secondary carboy, let dry and then siphon.

Even thinking about the bag of skins turns my stomach. Any extraction that could have happened via fermentation is probably over. Also, the carboy's neck is two inches in diameter. The bag is six. So I trash the skins.

Along the way, we taste the must. Surprisingly, it is not poison. It seems almost palatable even fruity, and the sweetness is nearly gone. One niggle though: it is thin. The body and tannin are there enough, but the alcohol is lacking. Without a chemist lab I cannot check the proof. But it tastes under 10% of alcohol by volume.

Time to cheat.

What went into the morning coffee gets dissolved into a test tube with some must and nutrient. Hopefully, the yeasts are still kicking around. Rebooting fermentation with cane sugar will give me more alcohol than before. Where it takes the flavor is unknown.

The next day finds resurrected yeasts churning away at the sugar. If any bacteria join in, we are done for. Yet everything smells clean enough.

Only time will tell.

RUSHING.REVENGE

Our old apartment returns to wine friendly temperatures (middle seventies Fahrenheit). So I pack the kids into the back seat, and we carefully crawl over speed bumps home. I only yell at them once for splashing each other. Once they reclaim their place as living room decoration, we seem ready for fermentation. I quickly clean the equipment. However, the must is only a few inches deep, while the hydrometer is 10 inches long: too long to check the specific gravity (relative density, brix) of the sugar to liquid.

I rack some must into a sterile wine bottle that will fit the hydrometer.
The specific gravity sits at 1.030 brix. This means that the potential alcohol will end up at around measly 4% of volume. You might recall my Barbarescowelches started at 1.080 brix giving it almost 11% potential alcohol by volume. Blueberries have only 65% of the sugars that grapes contain. So I cheat. Not interested in blueberry beer, I stir in some dissolved organic cane sugar (maybe a cup, or two or three). If smart, I would recheck the specific gravity to determine the potential alcohol. But I am far too impatient to waste time being smart. It is time to ferment.

Internet wisdom claims Montrachet yeast from Red Star is the weapon of choice. Developed by UC Davis in 1963, yeast strain 522 can turn sugar into alcohol until it reaches 13% or dips outside of 59 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. It can even survive small amounts of sulfur dioxide (in case I get cleaning crazy). Other strains of yeast are tougher, but my fruit is not concentrated enough in flavor or body to cover up more than 13% alcohol on the palate. Balance is the goal. Well, at least drink-ability would be nice. So, as before, I add my single-celled militia of millions to a cup of warm water and wait. Nothing. One hour then two pass by. I get angry and dump the yeast into the must, cap it, air lock it and go to bed.

With morning light I check the tank. Eerie silence. No gurgling air lock like last time. I crack the lid. Nothing.

Maybe it is too cold. The yeast packet may be a dud. Maybe it was the change in location. What if red is the new black? Maybe blueberries lack the sugar or nutrients to restart yeast.

I look for life. A white film runs to a blue patch on the otherwise burgundy juice and skin bag. Not good. In my mad dash to clean and re-rack, I did not rinse out the "rinsing is not necessary with one step" oxyclean. The yeasts may never wake up. Billy Mays's revenge is at hand.

PHEONIX.DEFROSTING

Days of distraction divide me from my blueberry defrosting.
Wine equipment languishes like a cross-dressed Achilles, forced into hiding by his mother. Wigged in lint, powdered in dust, for too long it endures aimless domesticity. Thus, as a feigned Odysseus, I shall trick my comrade-in-drag back into virile action. This persuasive purge shall come, however, not by hidden arms but by fresh air.
Instead of sterilizing with sodium sulfate as before, which led to spousal itching, sneezing and complaining, I try oxygen. "One Step" claims to clean and sanitize with oxygen (O2), a chemical that deceased Billy Mayses and winemakers (in the electrified gas form of ozone O3) have latched onto. Simply put, sodium precarbonates (salts) mix with water, release oxygen and sanitize by morphing into hydrogen peroxide that kills microbes. Only earth friendly, fluffy minerals remain. "Rinsing is not necessary with one step". What could possibly go wrong?
Fearing Billy Mays hauntings, beards and other oxyclean-related taints, I rinse my wares, let dry and go to the freezer.
My sanitized hands dump the chilly blocks of blueberries into the crush tank. With thaw the skins should break and slowly let slip their liquor. But a cloud hangs about the horizon.
The apartment will be superheated to test for winter. In August. Too rapid a defrost could trigger a microbial outbreak of epic proportions. Thus, I pack my troops into chariot and storm a much nicer apartment.

BLUISH.BARTERING

Five months after bottling my Barbarescanadianwelches "wine", the itch has returned. Against all odds, the remaining 20 bottles have avoided ruin, re-fermentation, or apartment explosion. They even taste a bit better with the bottle shock faded. Yet, with poor acidity and minimal tannin structure, I doubt their futures.

Therefore, this Aeneas must leave Dido and the lap of wine-kit-complacency. Destiny calls. Inching towards real wine, I set sail in hope of picking, crushing and fermenting my own. However, grapes still cling green to the vine with the harvest months away.

In my impatience, I aim to fool Bacchus.The blueberry, poor tough cousin to the grape, ripens with the arrival of August beneath the northeastern sun. This false berry rarely makes wine of merit. It bears the baggage of sweet confections and jams. Yet rich, dry red wine can be made from it. Thus, under spousal assistance (persistence), we pick go picking berries at Hand Mellon farm.My first day out, I ate more than I picked, got lost, came home happy and blue-fingered but disappointed by my lack of focus. Grape growers will plant different varietals and even various strains of the same grape in order to find the best match for their vineyard's growing conditions (climate, weather, soil and slope). Hand Mellon is no different.

They grow four kinds of blueberry: Chandler, Blue Crop, Spartan, Nelson. I could just ferment my first haul en mass. But that would tell me nothing about what each type could provide. Sure, I could doctor the mix by adding acidity or sugar later, but each manipulation would walk my drink further and further from its source, tasting more of my process and assumptions of how things should taste than of the fruit.

Luckily, while I wallowed in worry, my spouse went picking again. She returned with bags separating each type. For the sake of science, I analyzed each:
Chandler:
Medium, high pulp, small seed, black skin. Slightly sweet, low acidity, light bodied, tasty, fine.
Blue Crop:
Small, little pulp, small seed, red blue skin. Sweet, high acidity, medium bodied, high skin, cherry.
Spartan:
Large, high pulp, low seed, firm red purple skin. Medium sweet, medium acidity, medium bodied, very aromatic, typical blueberry and tangy green notes.
Nelson:
Large, high pulp, medium seed, black blue skin. Very sweet, low acidity, medium body, firm skin, mellow blueberry plum notes.
I needed bulk, so Spartans offered the best choice. However, blueberries have 45% (9.96g/100g) less sugars (half fructose, glucose and trace sucrose) than grapes have (15.48g/100g). Thus adding some Chandler and Nelson might fill that gap, while adding complexity to the batch.

With weather cleared, I returned to pick properly.
I worked fast, cutting ahead of kids, their parents and dogs from getting the better fruit. The season was on the wane by now.
At the counter, my haul included 4.5 lbs of Spartans, 2.5lbs of Chandlers, 1.25lbs of Blue Crop and 1lb of Nelsons. Nearly ten pounds seemed like a enough.

To avoid a massive, fuzzy, white outbreak of mold I washed my acquisitions. Freezing them was the internet's best advice for extraction, as the cold would break down cell walls.

MID.LIFE.CRISIS

Free. We journey south, purging our palates of Stoutridge with water, on route to Benmarl Winery. A sign guides us past suburbia and onto a gravel road. Knotted, older vines twist along a slope to the left. Unassuming barn buildings emerge and we park the car just below them. In the courtyard, a white tour van worries us of the possible wine-trail trash inside. But the worn wood, flower beds, the faded door handle all reassures that this is more about wine than image.
Luck. The walking veil with mini plastic penises and her bridesmaids are already stumbling out of the cellar. We slide past their chatter to stand at the tasting table. No one. Just the smell of burnt cheese whiz. Not an ideal wine pairing. Our man pokes his head out of the kitchen, apologizes incoherently and disappears again. We glance at used wine lists.

Benmarl gleams its glory from having "America's oldest continuously producing vineyard" with 18th century grapes, Farm Winery License #1 and its "slate hill" name derived from Gaelic. We certainly stood in what was once a diner and everywhere was unfinished flooring and wood work. Our guide, still chewing, retired but amiable finally came up and began our tasting.

2008 Dry Riesling: Once my nose cut through our friend's cheese aura, vanilla notes from oak and butter jumped out of the glass. On a riesling? Seriously? Nearly all New York, German and Austrian riesling, I thought, rarely saw secondary fermentations especially not in new oak barrels. Yet there it was. A medium weight riesling, still holding its golden apple and pear notes yet cushioned in pillows of American oak and popcorn's diacetyl. Not bad actually. Perplexed, we moved on.

2008 Traminette: flowers and ginger danced quietly, echoing the hybrid grape's gewurztraminer origins. A crisp attack of acidity and green citrus followed on the palate. No oak just stainless steel and a trust that cool climate's grapes deserved their acidity. These vines are still young.

2008 Estate Baco Noir: Finally a legitimately local wine, born and raised to bottle on site from 50 year old vines. Baco noir began as a crossing a century ago by Francois Baco working in Belus, France. He created a red more resilient to rot, mildew, phyloxera, and cold from an unknown American and the grape hiding behind Cognac and Armagnac fame: folle blanche. Benmarl keeps it honest here. Black cherry, boysenberry, herbs and light oak spices are quickened by moderate acidity and a drawn out finish. Great wine but not at thirty dollars.

2008 Cabernet Franc: Yay! wait...it is re-fermenting in the bottle. Not today.

2008 Merlot: Oaked. Plum. Dull. Long Island grapes.

DeChaunac: Decent and red and twelve bucks.

2007 Cabernet Sauvignon: An import from Californian vines. It is well produced but underwhelming and, sadly, a sign of things to come throughout the Hudson.

Sangria: Our guide admits they dump a bucket called "Sangria" into their left over red.

Benmarl's wines show some experimentation under their new owner, Victor Spaccarelli. They are well made and interesting when local. Yet like the tasting room (a diner addition still under renovation), the fizzy cab franc and sangria, Benmarl lacks focus.
We wandered around the cellar basement, which retained the dust, barrels and bottles of Benmarl's original ownership. The remnant pride in its Baco noir echoed throughout the collection. Mark Miller obviously cared about his Baco and Spaccarelli has carried that mantel well enough since 2006.
Once outside, we saw how perfect this slate hill was for wine. High over the Hudson, the slope had great exposure to the morning sun: perfect for ripening grapes in cool climates. But like the fifty year old Baco noir, the 60s Corvette in the courtyard and all the rennovations, Benmarl was going through a midlife crisis. I still have hopes for how it will look tomorrow.

PREMATURE.AGGRANDIZATION

Our wine tour of the Hudson "gunks" off first with Stoutridge Winery. The winery sits at the end of a pit. On the right, a drainage pipe pours into what aspires to be a pond. Small plots of vines run up the hill like thinning hairs. The drive ends at the winery: an imposing cream cube littered with french lanterns, potted plants and hand-written signs that misdirect the entry.The side door opens to a long tasting bar connected to the cash registers. Behind the bar bounds Stephen Osborn with his bottle brandished high in hand. We catch him in mid-attack, breathless and raving, something about all other wines being canned tomato juice, processed, homogenized, pasteurized blandness.

The crowd stands a good yard away from the bar. They near this proselytizer in polyester only to fill the next glass and then step back. We squeeze up and Osborn throws two glasses down without breaking his verbal stride.

He starts with white. A pretty standard Vidal Blanc, like many from the Finger Lakes, with light white pear, honey and enough acidity to keep it from being boring. Next, two white blends showing off 2006's cool climate acidity against 2007's sunnier climes but softer and flabbier results. Next, the reds cut the palate with unending acidity and tight tannins. Osborn proudly kept waving his decanters up to a hanging light. They were ink black and not just hazy but opaque. The texture resembled pureed tomato sauce. Briars, black pepper, grass, pencil lead, stones overwhelmed any fruit quality. Drinkable whites and really rough reds, but what matters is the spin.

Osborn pushes that this is how wine is meant to taste. He adds nothing unnatural and says all his wines are unfined, unpumped and unfiltered. In itself this is laudable but slightly misleading, because he never educates us about what he actually does. Words like eco-friendly, solar power, green, all natural, antioxidants and slow food keep filling his sentences and the room, assuming these terms are self-satisfying. Worse, this distracts from real problems with his wine.

He won't ship because his wines cannot survive the heat of trucks (all of which are refrigerated). The wine is naturally fizzy because that is...um nature (a little stirring would resolve that problem). The crystals at the bottle bottom are normal (potassium tartrate crystals actually develop when wine is over-refrigerated). The wine is hazy because it contains healthy pectins and proteins, which he does not filter or fine away (a little more racking, even with your gravity-only setup, would solve that). High acidity and rough tannins are good for you, just decant for two hours or more (what? my wife's already gone to bed.).

Osborn never asks for reactions or questions about his wine. He must know it all.
Now hammered, but not because of alcohol, we break off to check out the winery. Shrink-wrapped barrels and stainless steel vats were cloistered behind glass. A computer monitor on a dresser enlightened us with bright colors about tank temperatures. Whether they were real or not. The kicker was the "Museum".
In an act of premature aggrandization, the Museum displays man-sized barrels mounted with LCD screens, knobs and Stoutridge's tomato sauce logo. The small plaque on the 1990s tropical carpeting reminds us that this hallowed space is cold because it is in a hill and therefore environmentally friendly. Impressive? Sure. But this all reeks of Disneyland (surprise, Osborn comes from California). Standing there, I cannot imagine these gleaming barrels in use. Everything is too clean and polished. That heady aroma of wine at work is no where.
Branding wine matters. The labels on your bottles should convey to the customer something about what is inside. That something can be the taste, place, persons or purpose behind the wine. If Osborn claims that "this is what wine should taste like", then why does his logo and labels resemble airbrushed playdough? If his message is all-natural wine, shouldn't his label be something other than a cartoon blob? Or maybe that is it. Like the blob, Stoutridge is not open to comment or question. You cannot fight it's mixed message of environmentalism and modernism. Nor do you want to drink it.

MYTHMENDING.ENDING

The final battle nears. Since late January, I have coerced grape juice into wine. Yet if I don't begin bottling, it all risks ruin. Pumping oxygen out has carried my wine through weeks of racking. Now I must use the remaining two cleanser packs to purge thirty three bottles of their pasts.
Drinking through the weeks left me with a few bottles. Work provided the rest. I rinsed and scrubbed each. Then my Trojan horse of Sodium Sulfate trumped any resisting bacteria. I re-rinsed everything three more times until the burning subsided. Tired and impatient, I brought in the fan.
Once somewhat dry, my siege-work of bottles were set for the final assault. I attached the bottling "Easy"-Siphon to the racking set, propped the carboy on a chair one last time, and, with help, began filling the bottles...
Messy. The siphon did not work with bottles that had curved punts (bases). Filling the other bottles went too quickly, so I had to manually top up to the necks (otherwise there would be excess air contact with the wine). My hands were bloodied and/or pink, the bathtub battlefield was stained by fallen victims, and tears strewn across my cheeks from the sodium sulfate.
Although only twenty-six bottles could fill, victory lay at hand, so I readied the corker.
Since I had sixty fresh corks from the separate juice and equipment kits, I used both in case one set was defective, thus hoping to save half of my surviving wine...unless both set failed...
Before the cork squeezed into the neck (more or less), I pushed the last oxygen out with the Nitrogen blend. In antiquity, everything from olive oil to still fermenting CO2 kept their wine from spoiling. Today, most bottling is mechanized in temperature controlled environments, and bottles are wholly absent of oxygen. Me...well I might have cleaned the bathroom earlier.
With cruel irony, I put my pseudo-barbaresco into real bottles of Barbaresco (still no reply from the company as to the grape type[s], provenance, or vintage of the grape must). Like Patroclus in Achilles' armor, my wine and I aimed at undue glories.
Rarely did the corks fit the differing bottles sizes (although screw-capped bottles seemed the most forgiving). The last task remained: foil capping. While wine is in storage, vermin love to nibble corks, so wax caps and later foil kept them at bay. Given my poor corking, an extra seal to keep wine off the carpet would not hurt...

Even if it could not hide the corks sticking out of the neck.

Now the bottles needed two days to stand and allow the corks to fully expand. I then took my completed twenty six and laid them rest, so that their corks might remain moist and the wine age.

A few nights later I uncorked a bottle at a friend's pasta party. The wine's levity and fruit went quickly and well, showing none of the blood, tears or kitty litter that went into it.

Thus, then, did they celebrate the wine of mine, tamer of Barbaresco.

ROTA.FORTUNAE

Like fate's turning wheel, my burgeoning Barbaresco cycles to and fro between the glass carboy and fermenting tank, uncertain of its future. For the last week, the Chitosan bonded with the Kieselsol pulling the proteins, dead yeasts and excess junk to the carboy's bottom. Inches of debris now colored the base purple. So I racked the wine, hoping to not need filter pads.
Many winemakers take pride in avoiding filtration. They believe that it thins wine and removes complex flavors that could develop if left to age in bottle. That, and my wine already seemed thinner than any Barbarescos that had ever passed my palate.Racking the wine too many times, however, does risk ruining the end product. If you splash it too much or let oxygen froth into the tube, you get vinegar. So I did my best to be gentle. The grime left at the bottom = success.
The next day, I racked it again.
Although Barbaresco has pedigree, it bears little relation to the wines it claims from antiquity. Not only has the process modernized into a chemist's wet dream, the end products could not be further apart. The wine of antiquity saw massive extraction and addition of spices, honey, fruit and other inebriates like opium. Much was boiled down in lead tanks to increase the sweetness and weight. This sugary, alcoholic monster (akin to Madeira, PX Sherry or Port), was often diluted with water (unless you were a barbarian).No more digressing. Me knocking Barbaresco or antiquity won't make my Canadian Welches taste any better. All I know is that this racking makes me sleepy. Kneeling nearly prostrate before my bucket-o-wine altar I realized, at the heart of crafting wine lies patience, attention and mostly luck.Luckily, the only slough left this time fit into one glass.
I had to taste it. What if the nightly gassing with CO2, Argon and Nitrogen didn't keep oxidation away? What if all the shellfish glue, preservatives, dead yeasts and kitty litter killed the fruity, grape-y decentness that came maybe from Italy, maybe Canada? What if the apartment was too cold or too hot? The bouquet told me that I hadn't screwed up. No mustiness or yeast, just red fruit and floral notes. The appearance lacked haze. Going down everything seemed fine, if a bit bland. Light notes of dried red cherry, cranberry and pepper dust came and went. Alcohol and acidity presented themselves but only to flank the slim-bodied fruit.

Who knows? Maybe re-racking and bottling won't kill it.