Wine production in Ireland

Old Roots Vineyard in County Wexford planted more than 11,000 vines in 2015, the same year we planted our first ten. They are producing wine and bottling in small bottles for the hospitality trade. They have 8 varieties and planting more. Their winery, which has capacity for 25,000 bottles, first produced wine in 2019 and RTE interviewed them about winemaking in Ireland. 

In the article, they mention there are others including in Mayo. That would be us!

Meanwhile, an article in the Guardian reveals there are 24 vineyards in Yorkshire and 2 in Scotland. According to the Guardian, there are now 943 vineyards in the UK, almost triple the number 20 years ago, according to a report published in June 2023 by WineGB.

Brits shifting to new varieties

Chardonnay grapes
BerndtF, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are among the grapes being cultivated in England with notable success. Pinot gris (Pinot grigio) is another. Lesser-known varieties like Pinot Meunier are also making it to the table, taking the British still wine production out of the white and into the red realm. And short-season varieties like Madeline Angevine and Baccus may be worth trying.  This is very encouraging as it means we were on the right track. Here are a few new varieties highlighted by Decanter. And I definitely want to sample the Bolney Wine Estate Pinot gris.

And then there's also Sweden which is coming along fast as a wine-producing region. A fine place to make ice wine. They grow mainly Solaris and Rondo, which we know all about. And they make the point that their grapes get a long day of sunlight up there, as do we. Let's hope for a good season. 

Alex and I both had some respiratory illness over Christmas, most likely RSV by the symptoms, so we're ending the year with a bummer, but we'll be getting out into the vineyard as soon as it clears up. Time to start pruning.  

I hope you all had a good Christmas, and here's to hoping for a much-improved year in 2023. 

Our dormant vineyard last week

Views from the top of our hill. 

CO2 capture during fermentation

As our wine was bubbling away, the COP 26 conference was getting underway and climate change was being discussed everywhere. Alex and I had just been talking about the potential benefits of regenerative agriculture and joking about selling carbon credits, when he said, "Of course, the process of making wine is not carbon neutral." 

Hmmm, I thought. Right. Fermentation gives off CO2 but how much? Certainly, 4 demijohns aren't going to break the bank and we can absorb the CO2 created with the sequestration of carbon on our land. We'll plant another tree or ten. 

And then I saw an article today that one winery has started capturing and storing the carbon from fermentation tanks. God, are we on the cusp of something pretty amazing! The technology exists and is being applied to brewing beer, where the carbon can just be put back into the liquid for carbonation. So it can be adapted to winemaking as well. And now it has been.

The Trefethen Family Vineyard has adopted carbon capture technology and is conducting an experiment to see how it works in winemaking. Earthly Labs' "CiCi" is a carbon capture system designed specifically for brewing. It captures CO2 from fermentation, transforms it into a liquid, purifies it and stores it for reuse. This is the first winery using this system. Other wineries use other systems. 

Although winemaking doesn't involve huge volumes of CO2, the pollutant-free CO2 that is produced forms in a way that makes capture pretty easy. Apparently, every year, someone in a winery dies of asphyxiation so there are safety reasons for removing the CO2 as well. Capturing, removing and storing or selling the CO2 could turn winemaking into a negative emissions industry. 

So many people are experimenting with sustainability issues, that a nonprofit called Port Protocol has been formed to keep track of initiatives. Visit the Porto Protocol website for practical content on all subjects related to climate solutions and sustainability in viticulture and vinification. 

Smart Viticulture is a very interesting consulting firm that is a member of the Porto Protocol. 

Steps in making wine

The first step in making wine is planting the vines and tending to them for five years before expecting a harvest. You lose your first measly harvest to the birds because you decided to wait one more day for the sugar to increase around year 4. You get a small but encouraging harvest at year 5. Now finally in year 6, there are plenty of grapes because having learned your lesson, you've protected them from the birds using raptor kites flying above, shiny CDs hanging among the grape clusters, a scarecrow, and a metal heron standing tall below. Perhaps you wrap them in mesh bags or cover the whole vineyard with mesh. Finally, the day comes when they test ripe enough measured with a refractometer. We have finally experienced that pleasure. 

This is my new list of steps to making wine so I don't have to start from scratch next year. We have decided not to use Campden tablets or any chemicals in the process. We will use them only for the sterilisation of the equipment.

1. Harvest grapes - we found that needle nose anvil shears or Cultivation Scissors are the handiest
2. Rinse grapes and let them dry and sterilize all equipment
3. Press grapes to release juice called must (by hand, by Moulin, or by fruit press)
4. Measure specific gravity (SG)
1. Pour some juice through a sieve into the testing cylinder
2. Drop hydrometer into the liquid so it floats
3. Read the SG
5. Pour red crushed grapes into a sterilised brewing bucket
6. Cover the bucket and leave for 24 hours
7. Make yeast starter
1. Boil water and allow to cool
2. Dissolve 1 tbsp sugar in 1/2 cup of water
3. Add wine yeast to the sugar solution 
4. Cover and allow to bubble for about an hour
8. If SG <1.010 consider adding sugar.  Make sugar syrup with filtered boiled water to compensate for SG (see next post for calculations)
9. Add sugar syrup and yeast starter to grapes
10. Cover the bucket and leave at room temperature (or on a heated pad if necessary)
11. Stir bucket daily, pressing grapes down into the liquid as they rise
12. After 6 days, pass juice through muslin cloth in a sieve - squeeze all juice out of grapes
13. Measure SG
14. Pour the juice into sterilized demijohns - fill as much as possible to reduce contact with air.
15. Dissolve sugar in cool boiled water to compensate for SG (see next post)
16. Add sugar water to the wine in the demijohns and set aside at room temperature to settle and ferment for several weeks.
17. Use the plastic tube to siphon the wine into clean glass secondary fermentation containers. The purpose is to separate the wine from the sediment as it ferments. Called racking.
18. Continue racking for 2-3 months until the wine runs clear.
19. Run the wine into bottles using cleaned plastic tubing, leaving space for cork and a half-inch more
20. Insert corks or screw caps
21. Store upright for the first three days
22. After 3 days, store bottles on their sides ideally at 55 degrees F (13 degrees C).
23. White wine ready to drink after 6 months. Red wine should be aged at least 1 year.

The second stage

We racked the wine into the demijohn and corked it with the oyster farm cork with fermentation airlock. It smelled very good and Alex said he tasted it yesterday and it was good. But the specific gravity was 1.02 so we have a little ways to go to get to 0.99. It might be just a little cool in the pantry area. It will remain there for about two weeks before stabilizing. 

There is not much more to this stage so we'll just wait and hope it continues to ferment a little more. Meanwhile, the remaining grapes, those that were way behind ripening, are not ready to pick and eat. 

Harvest time and making wine

 

Alex holding a small bunch

Hey, great news. We had our first grape harvest after 5 years of waiting on Saturday, September 19th. This is what it looked like. The bags seemed to work. We had a sort of double-blind comparison.  We bagged many but left some. The bagged ones were much nicer than the unbagged ones which seemed to have been largely picked by the birds again. Some of the ones that hadn't been eaten, looked like raisins. But we got a yield of three buckets from the 5 vines.

About 3 buckets worth from 5 Rondo vines

I think we really did not expect a harvest as we hadn't read up on how to use the equipment I had bought last year. Our starter kit contained 2 monstrously large plastic vats (when compared to the volume of grapes), some sterilizer, a stirring paddle, some tubing, a sampling pipette, yeast packet, bottle washer, and hydrometer and graduated glass test cylinder. It did not contain Campden tablets. Campden Tablets are sodium metabisulphate, which prevents oxidation and bacterial infection when bottling wine or cider. It provides long term stability to the brew. So we are going without them for the first phase. 

Sulfites comprise a range of sulfur compounds -- particularly sulfur dioxide (SO2) -- that are a natural by-product of the fermentation process. They work as a preservative against certain yeast and bacteria which will quickly destroy a wine if they start to multiply. But fermentation alone doesn’t produce enough sulfite to preserve a wine for more than a few weeks or months in the bottle, so winemakers add extra in order to keep microbes at bay. A well-made dry red wine typically has about 50 mg/l of sulfites. Wines with lower acidity need more sulfites than higher acidity wines. At pH 3.6 and above, wines are much less stable, and sulfites are necessary for shelf-life. 

I sterilised all the equipment per instructions I found online, and I washed the grapes and discarded any that were unsuitable. A few were mouldy, so I picked them off and washed the rest. I hope that's what one does. Alex picked the grapes off the stems and put them in the sterilized vat.

I had bought a book for beginner winemakers and at least we found a recipe and instructions. We crushed the grapes partly by hand, and then I used the flat end of my wooden meat mallet, sterilized, of course, to complete the press. We were going to use the apple press but were advised against that by the book. 

The specific gravity was 0.9 and the goal was 1.09, so we estimated the amount of sugar water required and got to 1.1 on the first try. We were pleased with that. I placed the lid on with the airlock engaged.  It's good to have the first try of winemaking on a small batch. 

I ordered Campden tablets for the next phase so hopefully, we will be okay if whatever contaminant doesn't destroy the must. Plenty of people don't use Campden tablets if they are producing wine with naturally occurring resident yeast. I've also now ordered a 5L demijohn for the next stage and a second of everything that could be easily broken per the advice of another knowledgeable blogger. So now we stir and wait. 

Perfect little packages and very sweet

Some were picked clean

A few weren't quite ripe

Some even unbagged were lovely

History of winemaking in Ireland

What an interesting surprise. I knew an article was going to be published as I did do an interview with the author, GABY GUEDEZ, but it was still quite a shock to scroll down and see myself quoted about growing grapes.... in an article entitled The Past, Present, and Future of Winemaking in Ireland. Gulp! Well, I'm in good company.

Particularly interesting was a reference to a study on The Feasibility of Ireland Becoming a Wine Producing Country Due To Climate Change published by the AcademicWino and written by James McWalter. His original blog post on his site no longer exists. He projects what will happen by 2030 and 2050 based on a metanalysis of the effects of climate change and suggests that Wexford is the place to watch for.

There's also a link to a Wine Goose Chase one-woman show about Ireland's role in the world of wine. We'll have to watch out for that, too.

Daria's Vineyard included in an article about winemaking in Ireland

A very interesting article written by Gaby Guedez for The Taste magazine on "The past, present and future of winemaking in Ireland" features this blog and our effort. We are honoured to be included in such a prestigious media outlet and well researched and written article. Many thanks, Gaby. We will keep you abreast of our progress.

http://thetaste.ie/wp/the-past-present-and-future-of-winemaking-in-ireland-july-edition/