Bottling Day

Not Earth Day, not Oceans Day but Bottling Day. Today was the day we finally managed to bottle our wines from 2021. We had intended to bottle after six months but life and death both got in the way. 

The red has a beautiful colour and nose. A bit sharp on the tongue but not undrinkable. Let's hope it ages well from here on. 

The white has an interesting colour, sort of rose, and nose as well, but to me it tasted more like a dessert wine. Alex just thought it had a strange flavour. We only have 2.5 bottles of it so no great loss, but it's back to the drawing board. I think it is time to take a course in winemaking now that I know what questions to ask. 

The Brix reading was 14 for the white and 15 for the red.  That would make the alcohol content 2.8% for the white and 3% for the red if I am calculating it correctly. It's hard to remember how to do something when you only do it once per year. 

The specific gravity was 1.010 for the white and 1.020 for the red. Not nearly enough and the hygrometer indicated it was the finishing SG for beer in both cases! Oh my. I hope it does not spoil with too low an alcohol content. How did we get it right the first time? 

We got 18 bottles of red plus one for the remainder with dregs to settle out. It was six bottles plus a little extra for each of the three demijohns of red. 

Naturally, we made a mess in the pantry as I was doing the filling while Alex was watching the volume in the demijohns. At least now we have room in the pantry again. Next year, we should have a shed in which to work and store our winemaking equipment. That will make it more reasonable. 

English Wine & Food Festival

2022 Program will be available for download

English Wine Week is just around the corner. The vineyards of England have come on strong and are ready to showcase their product. Organised by the Thames & Chilterns Vineyards Association, at least a dozen vintners will be represented. A one-day ticket is just £6 and children enter free. 

If it's not already in your diary, English Wine Week runs from Saturday 18th to Sunday 26th June! There are lots of events planned including wine tastings, workshops, food stalls and local producers' exhibits, crafts as well as live music. To see what's on, visit the website. 

With two weekends and all the days in between, there are plenty of opportunities to get out to vineyards, not to mention the bars and restaurants that usually join in the fun, too. There will be specific events organised and vineyards that are open to the public will be delighted to welcome visitors that week.

... and finally Hampshire Fizz Festival will be on 24th of July at Black Chalk Wine.

The physics of champagne

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Champagne should be considered a mini-laboratory for the physics of fluids.” 

Physicist Robert Georges says that uncorking a champagne bottle produces supersonic shock waves. (New Scientist)

AIP Press release: Uncorking Champagne Produces Supersonic Shock Waves

Reference: AIP Physics of Fluids paper "Computational Fluid Dynamic simulation of the supersonic CO2 flow during champagne cork popping" Abdessamad Benidar,  Robert Georges, Vinayak Narayan Kulkarni, Daniel Cordier, and  Gérard Liger-Belair, Physics of Fluids (in press) (2022); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0089774

I am fascinated by what people choose to study. It stands to reason that French scientists would choose to study champagne corks popping. After all, it has its fringe benefits. I am certain they do not simply discard the champagne, n'est pas?

But the most fascinating aspect is that no one has studied the physics of a champagne cork popping  before. I heard a statistic that the most common injury in Britain is now eye damage caused by errant corks popping. A cork travels about 50 mph as it exits the bottle. That can cause a lot of damage, even permanent blindness. The average bottle of champagne holds 6.2 bar (about 90 psi) of pressure, about three times the pressure in a car tire and enough to propel the cork 42 feet, according to one study. You would have thought someone would have studied the entire sequence of holding a bottle of champagne to popping the cork, to injuries sustained, and finally to the art of drinking the bubbly. 

Apparently, the consumption of champagne has become very chic in GB, most likely as a result of their high degree of success in producing the bubbly in the UK. Indeed, consumption in GB has been steadily increasing. Traditionally, Americans have been less in favour of the bubbly while the French consumed it with abandon. While sales of champagne plummeted in France in 2020, the pandemic had the opposite effect in many other parts of the world, especially the US and Russia where sales of sparkling wines and other luxury goods skyrocketed. People were working from home and fueling their staycations with champagne and sushi. 

Well, here we have it. While some study the physical effects of champagne behaviour, fluid dynamics in our house consist of swallowing without choking. I guess we'll have to be careful with our wines. 

Beaurocraptic nonsense

A wreck sunk by a German U Boat during WW I off the coast of GB is found to have many bottles of fine French wines aboard. Except the salvage company who discovered the find cannot get permission to salvage the bottles, some worth potentially thousands each. What a load of rubbish. These guys are cleaning up the ocean floor and they are not given permission to remove the bottles?  

The story, however, brings me to a comment in the article that water happens to be the finest storage medium for wine bottles. Here we have our vineyard by the sea. Perhaps our perfect storage ground is right out there. Look out for those sea monsters, though. 

Wine in a can

Cameron Diaz quit acting to get a normal life. So what does she do now?  She sells wine. In cans. She doesn't grow grapes. She doesn't have a vineyard. She doesn't make wine. She doesn't blend wines. She sells the wines others make for her in Europe. She sells them in cans and in bottles, too. 

Very interesting concept. Essentially, cans make it easy to ship and recycle, and it's less expensive than glass. As one critic describes it, it's basically plonk in a can. Just rose and white. The brand Avaline is available in some 5000 retail outlets in the US. I suppose it helps to be Cameron Diaz when you are looking to get into a new market.

She recently ran into trouble with the feds when she and her business partner, Katherine Power, claimed that Avaline is 'clean wine'. The Federal Govt didn't like that it suggested health benefits. So they now promote it as just organic wine. They buy from vineyards in Europe where organic wines are commonly produced. It's curious that the US market for organic wines is limited. 

Meanwhile, the natural wines business has apparently been proliferating unchecked in the US and remains undefined. While in France, they've decided to add a natural wine category to the defined types of wines -- biodynamic and organic. Natural winemakers will be able to get official, though voluntary, certification of natural wine in France. Wines that join the approved trade syndicate and follow its rules governing viticulture and winemaking will be able to label their wines with the logo of Vin Méthode Nature.

Apparently, the different categories are defined by their sulfur content...

UC Davis building $5.25M greenhouse for grapevines

A valuable grapevine collection is housed at the University of California, Davis. Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis accumulated a diverse group of grapevines through long-term collaboration with university scientists and viticulturists and the wine industry in a mutual effort to identify, acquire and develop high-quality wine and table grapes. 

 

Now they are building a $5.25M greenhouse to protect the vines from diseases and pests. Seems like a strange thing to do, but I guess they know what they're doing. 

They've also produced a book about their collection which details the varieties in stock. 

The flowers are coming

June 1 and the clusters are forming on the vines. It's so encouraging. 

The rest of the orchard is a mixed bag this year. The pear tree is dying. The cherries have more fruit than ever. The favourite apple tree has none. The little apple has many on two branches and none on the others. The big apple is just now blooming. Who knows? Farming is tough.