Rondo still not ready

A Brix reading of 15 by refractometer

I took Brix readings of the Rondo grapes this afternoon and the results are not encouraging. The first reading was just 15° Brix (SG 1.060) and the second was 19.2° (SG 1.080). 

The Brix measurement of a liquid fluctuates according to temperature. The Brix of a cold sample will measure higher than the same sample at room temperature. Therefore, our Brix is likely lower than my readings taken at 13.9C degrees as the device is calibrated to 20C. 

The highest temperature yesterday was 15.7C and today it's not made it past 14.2C with a northerly breeze. The temperature dropped to 12.1C overnight. With the days getting shorter, no sunshine and cold temps, it's not looking like we'll get into the 20s. We'll have to harvest and fortify with sugar. Not sure how to do those calculations so I've a new thing to learn again this year. 

Brix can be expressed as a percentage of sugar in the liquid. For instance, if a juice measures 20° Brix, that means the juice is 20% fermentable sugar. Although defined specifically as percent sugar (sucrose), all dissolved solids in the juice affect the Brix measurement.

How much sugar should you add to grape juice that already has 15 grams sugar per 100 ml, to ferment to make wine? When sugar ferments, roughly half becomes alcohol and the other half becomes carbon dioxide. So your 15g of sugar will make approximately 7.5 g of alcohol in 100 g (100 ml) of wine, giving a wine of around 7.5% alcohol. If you want to make a wine with 12% alcohol, you will need another 9 g of sugar per 100ml. You can get technical with molecular weights and so on or you can get a hydrometer and just add enough sugar to get a sensible starting gravity.

The Pinot Noir grapes are tiny hard balls not even close to veraison, so I think that's a fail for this year. Who knows what next year will bring.  At least the Solaris is bubbling away, which is very encouraging for the fermentation. My yeast was still good. 

Even the cat doesn't want to be outside today. 

Pressing the Rondo

The Rondo stopped bubbling so we decided to finally press it and transfer it to demijohns. We moved the must from the steel fermentation tank into the hydropress. We used the yellow buckets (sterilised) to collect the juice. After the juice stopped flowing on its own, Alex activated the hydropress. We collected one full bucket of juice. 

Very dark red. Nice scent. Bland taste. I tested the Brix and it came in at 9 but quite unclear. Specific gravity came in at 1.000. That shouldn't be. We transferred into two demijohns using the stainless steel funnel and a large glass measuring cup (all sterilised). The room temperature went from 20.7 to 21.8 while we worked. 

While cleaning up, we ran out of hot water, so we'll have another round of clean-up tomorrow. 

The weather yesterday was filthy and today lovely. Cool this morning -- almost nippy -- so we collected many of the vulnerable potted plants and transferred them to the polytunnel. The temperature hit 13.2C today compared with 16.5C yesterday and 18C for days before that. Unnatural.  

The vineyard is looking very colourful as all of the red grape vines have turned lovely colours. Curiously, the white vines remain green. 

The clear glass bottles arrived by courier today. The box was ripped and smashed but miraculously the bottles are intact. The green bottles and corks should arrive Friday.  Alex is next undertaking learning how to use the new equipment, especially the bottle washer and the heater. We won't be bottling for a while as we have to rack at least once, but I'm thinking of racking twice because the juice is quite cloudy. We'll see.

The origins of Rondo

Photo from Thomas Walk Vineyard website. 

I just came across this website for Thomas Walk Vineyard in the South of Ireland. The German winemaker Thomas Walk has been growing grapes and making wine for more than 30 years! They were the first to plant Rondo, formerly called “Amurensis Walk”.  It is not Vitis vinifera but rather Vitis amurensis which originated in Asia but was bred in what was once Czechoslovakia. This grape variety was further developed by the vine researcher Helmut Becker, the legendary "Reben-Becker", at the Geisenheim university located in the Rheingau. The variety is now called Rondo and forms the main crop of British viticulturists.

They have been practicing ecologic diversity and sustainability at Thomas Walk Vineyard since the beginning. Their method differs significantly from conventional viticulture and goes beyond the obligations of organic viticulture. They have published a table that highlights the differences between conventional, organic and their methods -- basically total sustainability. They don't use chemicals of any kind, they don't prune vigorously, and they strive for diversity rather than monoculture. Sounds familiar!

They are, however, very secretive and private. They ask for no visitors and sell their wines only through Germany. They do not plant cover crops, just cut what's there and leave as mulch. 

Despite several awards noted on their website, the few independent reviews online are not promising. Oh well. Perhaps I'll just have to try some and see for myself. 

Wine not?

We processed the grapes by hand and got half a bowl of white and a big pot full of red. They were delicious by the way!

We crushed the grapes with the Mouli and got a glass full of green juice from the Solaris, which we drank. We got a jar full of must from the Rondo which Alex topped off with a little water and some yeast dissolved in 3/4 cup of boiled lukewarm water. The must is thick and we couldn't put it in a 5L demijohn, so we used my 2L apple cider vinegar jar, which promptly overflowed overnight. We then split it into two jars with plastic pull-on lids which let the air escape. 

The only good news is that the Brix measurement by refractometer is precisely 20. 

How do farmers do it year after year?

Disappointing harvest

Shrivelled grapes

We couldn't harvest yesterday because Alex had to show Ross House with little notice. We had a lot of commitments this week, and I hadn't looked at the grapes in two days. I thought it would give more of them a chance to reach a brix of 20 as they were hovering around 19 three days ago. 

When we started picking the Rondo this morning, it quickly became apparent that we'd had a crop failure. Without rain for so long, in those two days, most of them turned into raisins.  I was gutted. We only had a few good bunches. Very tasty, but hardly enough for a bottle or two. 

A good bunch

The full harvest of Rondo.

Meanwhile, the Solaris also reached veraison. We picked what was there -- so little for the number of vines -- but our yield was barely half a bucket. Lots of hens and chicks but really tasty and sweet. Most were from the younger vines not the older ones. I just don't understand what went wrong. There was no early frost or major storms. 

You can see the damage to the foliage caused by the drought. The only good news is that the birds didn't eat all of the grapes. Our strategies must have worked:

• Kites flying overhead
• Heron on the ground
• CDs fluttering around the vines
• No bird food in the garden for the last two months
• Cats prowling far and wide

Curiously, some of the vines are flowering again. They are really confused by this late warmth and sunshine. 

Flowering Solaris

Flower buds on Rondo

Vines suffering from drought

The Pinot Noir is encouraging 

Veraison is beginning

Chardonnay still hard as a rock and sour

Veraison not evident

Hens and chicks

No transparency

Visiting honey bees

The vineyard vista is still magnificent

Farming during anthropogenic climate weirdness is going to be a challenge. 

Welsh Solaris receives a 98 from Decanter

A vineyard in Wales 'Gwinllan Conwy Vineyard' scored a 98 from Decanter World Wine Awards for their Solaris 2019. I wish we had known about this vineyard when we visited Conwy a couple of years ago. That score won them the bronze medal in the prestigious competition in 2021. It builds on medals won recently at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) for their Pefriog and Solaris products. 

Montgomery Vineyard, also in Wales, produces high-quality Rondo red and pink. Their 2018 Sparkling White Seyval Blanc won a Silver medal in the IWC, with 90 points. They also make a Seyval and Solaris mix, and a Pinot Noir. Their sparkling rosé 2017 won the best wine in Wales and their still rosé, red and white wines have also received top accolades.

White Castle Vineyard won an IWC silver medal and a gold in the Decanter World Wine Awards 2021 for its 2018 Pinot Noir Reserve. Their Siegerrebe 2021 white took silver in the WineGB Awards 2022.

In fact, there are almost 30 vineyards in Wales now. Most are in South Wales but a few are in the North.  As far back as 2012, a wine from the Ancre Hill Estate in Monmouthshire, one of few vineyards in the UK using biodynamic growing, was voted the best sparkling wine in the world at the Bollicine del Mondo International Competition in Italy.

What is truly fascinating is that almost all started with Rondo and Solaris and soon moved on to other grapes, in particular Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Maybe we're not so crazy after all? What has me confused is the Ancre Hill Estates Orange Wine is mostly Albariño but why is it orange? 

So if they can make great wines in Wales, we should be able to do the same in Ireland!

See the USA...

Rondo bud break

We took our first trip to the US in several years last week. Bizarre travelling again. Just 7 days but packed with activities, including renewing my US driving license, fixing a bank account's data and seeing the cherry trees in bloom in DC. 

Upon return, one of the first things I did was water in the polytunnel and check the vineyard. I was astounded at the changes since we left, despite some rather cold and blustery weather, with F11 wind last night. We flew in with 40-knot gusts buffeting the place but the pilots did very well. 

Bud burst with the Rondo is well underway. The Solaris is slightly behind, with the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir trailing well behind and the Albarino looking sickly. 

Solaris

Chardonnay

Pinot Noir

Albarino, but it's the only one

The fruit trees are well underway to flowering and leafing. Let the Spring begin. 

Cherry blossoms in the USA capital, Washington DC.