Earth is heating up

 

From Statista Infographics

NASA is monitoring all kinds of climate statistics. The latest data on temperature show that August of this year was 2.14C degrees higher than a selected average of measurements from the 1880s until now. Small wonder that California is burning. The epic scale of the wildfires is growing with the increase in temperature and this year reached a shocking new milestone -- one of the fires, The August Complex, on the border between San Francisco and Oregon has burned more than 1 million acres. The total acres burned this year so far is double any previous figure, at a staggering 4 million acres burnt. 

New York Times

New York Times

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. 

Making the wine

Lovely morning but heavy rain due all afternoon

I've been reading up about how to make wine at home. Unfortunately, none of the descriptions covers our situation so we have had to punt. We mashed the grapes by hand and with a sterilized wooden meat tenderizer. That worked reasonably well. For ten days, the grapes have fermented. Alex stirred daily and the bubbling going through the fermentation airlock was at times scary and loud but very satisfying. 

I bought yeast and Campden tablets. But how to extract the liquid from the vat after the first fermentation? Alex decided my muslin bag for making apple jelly was just the thing. Well in no book have I seen this, but it's worth a try. We found a nice demijohn at Ross House and cleaned it up. It looked like it hadn't been used in 30 years. Full of dead bugs and spiders. But it cleaned up beautifully and I sterilized it with the stuff that came with the winemaking kit. 

Alex found some predrilled stoppers from his old oyster growing days and they happened to fit the demijohn and the airlocks perfectly. Stage 2 would be completed without additional expenditure. And as the final steps of stabilising the wine won't be necessary -- we're going to have maybe 2 bottles if we're lucky -- we should be bottling on about a week. I'll report the specific gravity in the next post after we've measured it. 

BTW, YouTube has loads of useful how-to videos:  https://youtu.be/n7tauROWh0Y  

California is burning again

Horrible fires in California have killed people and destroyed structures. At least 19 wineries have been destroyed or damaged by the Glass fire. As the fire made its way across wine country, about 70,000 people were evacuated. Vintners who’d fled the blaze returned to the area to discover in many cases that their life’s work had been destroyed. Here’s the latest on the winery and restaurant burning, businesses damaged or lost in the fire.

In some cases, the vines were charred but the buildings stood. In other cases, the buildings were destroyed with minimal damage to the vineyards. So unpredictable, yet so deja vu. People are leaving California never to return, after several years of repeated hell. Oregon and Washington states are ablaze as well, all this while America's cities are being destroyed by angry mobs. 

Bob and Jody Lipkin, owners of Lattitudes & Attitudes sailing magazine, for which we write often, lost everything. They left with their two cats and one van, leaving everything else behind as they evacuated with the fire cresting the hills around their home. Fortunately, they were insured. 

 #GlassFire: 51,266 acres, 2% contained.

#ZoggFire: 55,046 acres, 9% contained. #CreekFire: 307,051 acres, 44% contained. #BearFire/#NorthComplex: 314,949 acres, 79% contained. (#NorthComplexWestZone: 84,595 acres, 95% contained.) #BobcatFire: 114,438 acres, 63% contained.

So what's next in making our wine

Hydrometer suspended in grape juice

The wine must has to ferment for about 2 weeks in the first stage. When fermentation stops, you have to test the specific gravity. When making wine, the Start Gravity should be 1.070 (normal finished ABV will be 10.5%) to 1.090 (normal finished ABV will be 13%). Finish Gravity should be 0.990 (for dry wines) to 1.005 (for sweet wines). 

I've seen many recommend that wine should be fermented down to dryness. If you like a sweeter wine, you can then add sugar or grape juice at the end to reach your preferred sweetness. It is a dangerous business stopping the fermentation early. 

So the hydrometer is probably the most essential piece of equipment to make wine with success. I've ordered a spare as I can imagine that it's pretty easy to break. I've also read about how to read the hydrometer properly. You have to make sure your hydrometer is floating freely and not stuck against the cylinder. You read at the bottom of the meniscus not the top (I remember that from chem class). It measures the Specific Gravity (SG) of the liquid being fermented. This will then in turn give you a guide to the Alcohol by Volume (ABV) you will be able to produce. The hydrometer is used throughout the fermentation to ensure sugar is being converted into alcohol. As more sugar is converted to alcohol, the SG will fall.

The Alcohol by Volume (ABV) is calculated by subtracting the start gravity from the finish gravity and dividing this figure by 7.362. For example, the starting point for our wine is 1.100 and if this ferments down to 0.990, the drop will be 110 points. This divided by 7.362 is 14.94% ABV. That should kick a punch. 

You have to make certain the fermentation is complete and stopped at the right time. Sometimes fermentation slows down or stops too early. A stuck fermentation is one that falls short of reaching the expected final gravity, and as with many things brewing, the term is relative. A wine that stops at 1.000 probably suffers more from poor instrument calibration than it does from stuck yeast. A 1.100 wine that stops at 1.045, though, still has a way to go and needs some help.

There are tricks that one can use to restart the fermentation process. One is temperature. If the hydrometer is placed in water at 20°C, it will read 1.000.  Most people only use the hydrometer as a guide but if you want to be really accurate then this should be done with a liquid temperature of 20°C. If the liquid is 5°C higher then add 0.001 and similarly if its 5°C lower then delete 0.001.

Warming up the must is probably the most reliable way to restart a stalled fermentation. Some yeast strains are more temperature-sensitive than others and may require some warmth to complete the job. Some strain are famous for refusing to budge until they are warmed as high as 95°F (35°C). Some British yeasts are stubbornly flocculent; it’s worth giving the must a good swirl a couple of times a day just to keep the yeast cells in suspension until they’re done.

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

Rondo harvest time

Alex bought mesh bags to put over the grape clusters and has been tying them on. This is to protect the grapes from the birds as the grapes ripen. Seems like a lot of work to me, but worth it if we get our first harvest. 

The weather has been pretty miserable. Chilly, wet and windy. In the first four days of September, Newport Furnace had 51.8mm rain. That's about a third of the monthly average. I hope that doesn't affect the harvest. To pass the time during heavy rain showers, Alex sent me a video to watch.  It's pretty badly done but at least it shows that the Rondo grapes grown in the UK do not get much bigger than those we have in our first harvest. 

The next thing I am going to learn about is the relationship between fungi below the surface and vines on the surface. A study has shown that trees of distinct genotypes develop relationships with specific fungi that help them survive adverse weather conditions. They form symbiotic relationships which makes so much sense to me and is a great reason not to continually disturb the soil. This study led me to others about vines. 

A study from 2018 shows that "Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi associate naturally with grapevines in a symbiosis whose importance for vineyard performance is becoming increasingly clear. Decades of research attest to the role of AM fungi in increasing nutrient supply for host plants and in providing protection from soil-borne pathogens."  This I have to study in much greater detail.