Posts Tagged ‘Zinfandel’

Home made wine from Englewood, NEW JERSEY???#$%^

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

I recently wrote about working on my second batch of home made wine.  The Sangiovese & Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from California have been crushed, de-stemmed and had the yeast added.  The “must” is now fermenting away and based on the quality of the fruit, we are hopeful for our second vintage.

But today I want to write about year 1.  We decided upon things pretty late, which meant we were left to settle for whatever fruit was left.  We ended up picking up some Zinfandel that we were pretty excited about as well as some merlot that we were a little less excited about.  We  did our thing and the result was WINE.  How good was it you ask?  Good question.  It was youthful, simple, but seemed OK.  We were much happier with the Zinfandel than we were with the merlot.  But rather than spilling out the merlot we decided to try a Zin/Merlot blend.  It seemed to work so we bottled it and PRAYED…

haetz label

And you know what…???…it ain’t half bad.  Yes, it is a simple wine.  No, it is not age-worthy.  Yes, a lack of sulfites (good and bad) means a bottle open for more than 24 hours is vinegar and not wine.  But hey, if consumed within a few hours of opening the bottle it truly tastes pretty good.  Nice fruit.  Soft & round.  A nice wine.  SO, my big test.  I went to a party tonight and brought a bottle.  And people LOVED IT.  Everyone was super impressed that I (with my two partners) MADE this wine.  I was such a proud (psuedo) winemaker!

Happy home made wine tasting!

WTG

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Posted in Oenology & Viticulture, Wine STUFF | 2 Comments »

Home wine making

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

I love what I do.  Name it, if it is wine related I am working on it.  Amongst those things that I am doing are making small batches of wine with a pair of friends in one of their garages.  Whenever people hear that I am making my own wine they comment how “cool” it is.  Yes, it is cool, but it is not nearly as romantic as people expect it to be.  It is A LOT of hard work!

crusher destemmer

We started our Sunday out early, heading to a wine making shop that sells everything anyone needs to make wine.  We bought most of our equipment last year so this morning we pretty much only needed to pick up the fruit – nice ripe Cali grapes.   We tasted all the varietals they had and ultimately decided on Cabernet Sauvignon (real original, I know) and Sangiovese (the Italian varietal that makes wines such as Chianti or Brunello).  I was a little concerned that the cab might be a little underripe, and sure enough that seems to have been the case.  If I were a real pro I would have brought a refractometer (a cool little telescope looking device used to measure sugar levels) to test the sugar levels in the grapes.  But sadly I did not.  Fear not, the Sangiovese was GREAT – or so I hope.  I guess we’ll either make a super Tuscan like blend (Sangiovese together with the Cab) or come up with some other alternative.  Could be worse…

SO we got back with our newly purchased fruit and started crushing & destemming with a machine that looks like the one above.  Basically, it gently crushes the grapes and removes it from the stems, leaving what is known as “must”.  We measure out some sulfites to add to our “must” and leave it in open containers before adding the yeast.  And then we wait…

So basically, today consisted of lifting heavy crates of grapes. Getting sprayed with grape guts.  All while surrounded by bugs on a grape-sugar-high.  Oh, and a whole lot of cleaning.

The exciting part was actually bottling last years batch.  Last year we made a Zinfandel batch & a merlot batch.  Partly for simplicity sake and partly because it worked, we blended the two batches for a Zin/merlot blend.  And you know what…it is not half bad!  We bottled a whole bunch of it and even put on our fancy labels.  Now I’ve got about 5-6 cases worth of wine I’ll be drinking and giving away for a while.  Now THAT is fun…

Happy home made wine tasting!

WTG

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Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Wine Bar food options

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

A quick post tonight.

I was out at a wine bar last night with a business contact. We each ordered a glass of Ridge 3 vineyards Zinfandel. Those Ridge people really know their Zin.

Anyway, we also decided to go with their 4 cheese platter. We got to pick 4 cheeses from about 10 different options. And it came with some sort of dried date thing. All very nice, and still good so far.

HOWEVER, the platter also came with fruit. Fruit goes with wine, right? One thing. It had a very aesthetically pleasing granny smith apple cut into nice skinny slices. Now HOLD EVERYTHING. A wine bar served an apple, let alone granny smith??? PLEASE, anyone out their, correct me if I am wrong (which is entirely possible), but aren’t apples loaded with malic acid? Isn’t malic acid something which clashes with wines? Especially wines that have undergone malolactic fermentation (a process whereby the more harsh malic acid in wine is converted into the smoother lactic acid)???

This is just one example. But what I’d REALLY LOVE to hear (from anyone out there) is how you feel about food served at wine bars. Should all the food “complement” the wine, or does it not really matter???

Happy Hanukah to all who are celebrating!

WTG.

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