BLUEBERRY.BOUND

A week ago I added Sparkolloid Powder to my blueberry wine must. This blend of crab-friendly clay and polysaccharides sunk the floating yeasts and blueberry bits by positively charging them. Now three inches of detritus and less than a gallon of clear blueberry goodness remain.

Time to rack the good from the ugly. The somewhat drinkable from the undrinkable...and purple...

Not bad. But another racking is on order.The temperature breaks record this week. Granted it was only 95F, but in the North East that matters. Wine with loitering yeasts could restart fermentation or simply spoil.

The vast universe of tank air-space also worries me. Every day I spray Private Preserve to protect the wine from oxidizing. But I have no clue how long that blanket of inert gasses will hold.

Impatient, I set up to bottle.

Last time, I filled twenty six bottles. Six months on, I still have twenty. It is not every day you want to guzzle pink colored, banana-strawberry flavored welches with alcohol.

This time I scrounge about for half bottles. A gallon will fill ten 375ml bottles. Hopefully, I can also get rid of some wine as gifts. I mean, gift away my hand-harvested blueberry gold to a deserving few.

Once everything is sterile (including myself), I try racking the wine into bottles alone. I fail. So, I grab my spouse from dinner preparation.

I will pump. She will take on the tube's end, which, annoyingly, will not fill unless pressed at the right angle, under pressure, into the bottle. The siphon trigger cannot work unless against a flat surface, and most bottle punts (bottoms) curve.

So, with wife hating me, we begin.

The must remains hazy. This is annoying. I should have racked again. Maybe filtered. Most Americans view hazy wine as faulty. No one really wants to decant and let the sediment settle for a half hour or more. Conditioned by fast food, year-round strawberries, and driving to our mail box, we want immediate satisfaction. Allowing a wine to rest postpones enjoyment, unbearably for some.

But I have to stay true to the fruit. In bottle, a bit of lees (skins) will continue to contribute to the evolution of the wine's character. Filtering would remove that.

With three regular bottles (750ml) and three splits (375ml) brimming with blueberry, we taste what wine is left.

The color is of mild intensity, ruby with a slight haziness. The nose has light intensity of tart cherry, apple, clay and some sulfur. On the palate it is dry, with medium to high acidity, light tannin, light body, short length. Flavors of green and red apple (malic acid), wild strawberry, kiwi and a touch of sulfur slide by the palate in one note.

Decent and drinkable. I should have extracted more color and flavor by not bagging the skins and instead punching them down during fermentation. More time on the lees after fermentation would have also added more complexity. I also should have avoided the temptation to chaptalize (adding sugar to up the alcohol). Stupid internet advice.

Most fruit wines lack acidity and have little shelf life. Thus the blueberry acidity will help the wine age. The hint of sulfur lingers from using too many campden tablets for so little must. My frantic fear of spoilage will help preserve the wine in the long run.

It seems odd that my wine does not taste like blueberries. However, most wines do not taste like grapes. They taste of the process: the added acidities, oak, yeast strains, microxygenation machines, and chemical tweaking. I realize that blueberry "flavored" wines and beers that I have had use blueberry concentrates, distillates, or worse, chemical blends like ethyl safranate, butyl-2-butenoate, and ethyl-3-hydroxybutyrate. Yum!

Regardless, my bottles need corks. Time to give them one last inert gas spray and cork them.

With the bottles corked, I rest them sideways to ensure the corks get properly moist. Otherwise, air could get in or wine could leak.

A week later I cap the bottles with remaining foils from my kit. No nibbling mice or bunnies will eat my corks...this time. Some sediment survived the racking, but we could all use a little more patience. Decanting or just pouring slowly would suffice.In the end, going from fruit to ferment to fining to finishing was plain scary. So much more could go wrong compared to kit wine. This was not a sterilized bag-o-juice, chemically balanced to perfection and paired with packets for each step.

With more involvement and knowledge about your source materials, the harder it becomes. Picking the berries by hand forced me to worry about every detail. I had to choose between different berries, yeast strains, cleansers and fining agents. I took it personally when fermentation would not start. I rinsed equipment religiously, until the rotten-egg reek of sulfur went away. I sulked around the house for days concerned about adding sugar, water or acids. Every choice seemed wrong.

Yet every thing worked out.

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1.03.01

CRUSTACEOUS.KINDNESS

A day after cheating the fates and re-fermenting with sugar, I rack the must back into the first fermentation tank. After a sound sleep, I wake to check the Specific Gravity.Like my morning paper, another day of reading a near 1.000 SG leaves few surprises. With no CO2 bubbling about, I rack the must back into the glass carboy to kick out loitering bubbles.

After a day of "real" work, I come home and look for CO2 bubbles and off smells.
The next step requires stabilizing the must. The yeasts need to stay dead, or I will have another riot of Pompeii-amphitheatric proportions. So I turn to chemical warfare.Last time, I blindly used a packet of metabisulfite & Vitamin (E) C, which stabilized the Barbarescocanadianwelches. I think. This time, my arms included potassium sorbate and a sulphite (in the handy form of a Campden Potassium Metabisulphite tablet). Combining the sorbate and the sulphite will create sorbic acid. Like the love child of Juno and Jupiter, my Mars-like acid will halt any further yeast orgies.With yeasts vanquished, their CO2 no longer blankets and protects the must from oxidizing. I would like to avoid blueberry vinegar. Instead of panicking like last time (over topping off the must with "real" wine, or worse, water), I turn again to my trusty Private Preserve can-o-neutral gasses.
After an over-thorough spray, I cap the airlock and wait for tomorrow's fun.
A new rise of Sol's chariot sees me ready to clear the must. Proteins and yeast cells still float about in a haze of negative energy. Kieselsol and Chitosan led the charge last time, positively zapping the yeasts, which, in turn, bound into heavy lees and sank. Great. Regrettably, Chitosan comes from crustacean shells, while Kieselsol is liquid silicon dioxide. Why kill crabs and, um, silicons, when more crab-friendly alternatives exist?
Thus, I choose Sparkolloid Powder. Sparkolloid mixes polysaccharides (from fungi or seaweed) with diatomaceous earth (hard shell algae fossils). Without offending any central nervous systems, I boil water and add the powder.

This whole fining process would not be necessary with more time and wine. But with too much airspace, hot summer days and my impatience, I needed to speed it up. So I stir in the Sparkolloid, re-spray the must, airlock it and wait.

A week will reveal whether any of this worked.

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.

SEVEN.SLEEPERS

Seven in the morning. I stumble out of bed. Tubs and tubes litter the living room and dining table. I glance at the airlock. No popping or gurgling. No heady scents of bread and fruit. Dead yeasts have sat at the bottom of a fermenter caked in oxyclean for two days.

I pop the lid, hesitant to see what bacterial outbreak has occurred. Yet, behold!

Life! HA! HA! Take that trying to do something! Something did it all on its own!

A worry persists however. Not starting the yeasts immediately allows other bacteria to join in. They can add off flavors. I have no idea what nasties might be breeding in there. To avoid wasting time with a bad batch, I will taste the must later.

For now, let the yeast cells work their slightly gross-looking magic. In addition to making alcohol out of sugar, the yeasts draw out color, tannins and further flavors from the skins. Although it looks like a liver-after-auspices, I leave in the sack of skins. This leaches out more, well, blueberryness.

To encourage my late-bloomers, I hop over to my local zymurgist (of course I have one). Back home, my yeast fine dine on Fermax Yeast Nutrient. Although grapes and blueberries have similar nutrients, I doubt my recent oxyclean debacle has left much food for the yeast feast.
Unlike Trimalcio's never-ending dinner, my yeasts eat quickly. Not enough distracting entertainments, orgies or sugars probably. I stir the must to re-oxygenate them. Without oxygen, yeasts will go to sleep.

More curious than brave, I taste the must. It is surprisingly fine. The yeasts and nutrient are there, but blueberry notes dominate. The body is medium, tannins low, acidity medium, CO2 fizz persists and sweetness still hangs around.
So I check the hydrometer in the (far more science-tastic than a wine bottle) test tube. We have crept to 1.020 S.G. Once it gets to 1.000 the yeasts will starve and sink to their grave.I check the forcast. A cold front is moving in for the night. This worries me. If the temperature drops near 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the yeast will slow down or die.

We have no thermostat with central heating. So I treat my patient with a humidifier and blanket.Welcome back yeasties!

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.

CLIFF.HANGER

From Benmarl Winery we drive thirty minutes to Whitecliff Vineyards. Hoping. The road curls over hills, twisting East and away from the tempering humidity of the Hudson. The sandstone and shale crescent of Shawangunk Ridge (from where the wine-region gets its regrettable "get gunked" tag line) hangs in the distance. This ridge likely traps the convection of warm air from the river just enough to grow grapes. Maybe.
Whitecliff's gravel drive slopes between western-facing vines and parks us around the back of the converted shed. The lot is a stage for their stainless presses and pumps. Proud in their farming roots and hard work (and costly equipment), Whitecliff has little to hide. We wrap around the massive, ridge facing deck and squeeze into the tasting room.

Inside, the tasting bar is mobbed and all the coffee, I mean wine tables, filled by chatting bachelorettes. We bob and weave our way to the counter. Behind it a lone twenty-something pours and drops bottles. Once he wraps up a pack of small-talking couples, he rolls over to us.

With two pages of wines to pick from, we stick to the Estate and Hudson Valley wines. Why try imported Long Island Malbec or Merlot?

The whites are honest.

The 2009 Traminette carries its Gewürztraminer (lit. "spiced Traminer") roots lightly, with the typical lychee, floral and ginger spice notes wafting about. However, the Cornell University crossing with the Franco-American Joannes Seyve 23.416 adds a watery white melon blandness to the Gewürz. A lack of ripeness might also be to blame.

The 2009 Chardonnay is crisp and fine. No oak or butter here, albeit a bit on the light side.

The 2009 off dry Riesling is fine, although the sweetness might make up for the lack of body.

Whitecliff's Estate Awosting White blends Seyval Blanc (another French hybrid that handles New York's cold) and Vignoles (ditto) into a dry white with enough wake-up acidity to stay interesting.

MASSIVE TANGENT ALERT:

[Phylloxera, a nasty sap-sucking aphid, had wiped out most of Europe's vines by the end of 19th century. Europe scrambled, crossing or grafting their classic Vitis vinifera grapes with hardier American varieties (Vitis aestivalis, rupestris, riparia and to a lesser extent, labrusca). Grafting French grapes onto American vines won out. So to pretend as if nothing had happened, EU wine regions excluded the hybrid grapes. But in cool climate, underegulated US wine regions these hardy new grapes flourished.]

Then there were Whitecliff's reds.

Their Estate Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc and Gamay Noir, all from 2008, looked pale and pink in the glass. As if to compensate, the Pinot had an inch of sediment left in the bottle. The cool climate acidity cut across the palate. Finally oak veneered the faint fruit in harsh, woody tannins and toast. Whitecliff's overly petite French barrels left nothing but forest in the glass.

For kicks (and an extra $2) I tried their Hudson Valley Estate Port, distilled just down the road at Tuthilltown Spirits. The Frontenac grape (a recent French-American hybrid of U. of Minnesota descent) is red and all acidity. Combine that with 22% alcohol, toasted oak and 5.2% residual sugar and you have a maraschino cherry factory that's burning to the ground to sip, very, very slowly.

While waiting for our pourer to stop talking about guitars, Whitecliff starts to clarify. The flanking couple follows Whitecliff's mailing list religiously. Since the winery makes roughly 1,500 cases a year, getting a hold of anything takes will. Yet brand affiliation seems strong.

Whitecliff' has the will to experiment and learn but at the cost of focus. Having Merlot or Malbec might meet customer demand for fruity, warmer climate reds, but labeling them Whitecliff Vineyards is a bit of a lie.
There is even a Redtail red that claims to be their thirteen dollar "answer to Yellowtail". But why drag yourself into that battle (7.5 million cases -vs- 1,500)? New York wines will never be the soft, full bodied and cheaply mass-produced wines of the Aussies because the sun and available vineyards are not here. Competing on that level distracts not only the customers but the winemaker from learning what their vineyards do best. Also, now that Australia's wine market has hit a hard patch, such comparisons only lower expectations of your wine.

The only way to win is to trust your grapes and your location. Sell on the merits that differentiate you from the rest and find ways to take your customers there.

Next Time: garage wine with Brimstone Hill.

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.