The apricot wine has been bottled. We got an even 30 bottles and a few sips out of the carboy. Based on the small sip we took, our prediction is that it is going to be delicious. We'll know for sure in 6 - 12 months...
With the apricot bottled, we have moved on to two more projects. The first and more complex project is the fruit wine. We started 5 batches in 1-gallon carboys. Each of these should make about 5 bottles.
1) Mixed Berry
2) Strawberry
3) Blueberry
4) Raspberry
5) Raspberry from juice concentrate
We'll be bottling the juice concentrate wine soon because there is essentially no pulp involved. All of the others require at least 3 re-racks because there is a huge amount of sediment involved in using non-pre-musted fruits. The strawberry smells amazing but looks gross. They are all going to be very strong. Doing the measurement, they all dropped well under .99 in a short period of time. We also purchased some fruit-flavor enhancers for before we bottle to ensure the fruit flavor is still there.
The second project is a Chilean Malbec. We are using the large carboy to get about 30 bottles for this one. This particular recipe does not call for many steps. Only 2 reracks and not a large amount of time between them. We are going to be bottling this as soon as we pick up some corks and wash off the used bottles we have.
We'll probably be taking a small break after these batches to get through the summer months. If we can get our hands on some more fresh-picked berries (and Jersey is known for blueberries) we may end up making a few small batches here and there.
To date we have made 58 bottles -- and will be bottling approximately 55 more in the next couple weeks. I don't think I've ever imagined myself owning over 100 bottles of wine...... Going to have to start looking into building a nice winerack in the basement, something custom and cheap -- yet elegant.
We're working on developing a labelling system to be able to keep track of all these bottles. We're thinking of using brown recycled paper bags. Basically sharpy'ing on the date, wine type, batch and bottle number -- and then spraymounting it to the bottle. We don't want anything fancy and we'd like it to be homemade.
Cheers.
2 comments:
Hey! I bought my parents a wine rack for Christmas a couple of years ago from Williams Sonoma (and it doesn't appear they carry it anymore). But I think it would be relatively easy to re-create (in fact, my dad says he is going to try). If I remember, next time I'm over at my parents' house I will take a picture of it.
Hey there Dan,
Thanks for the listing on your blog.
So how addicted to wine making are you at this point. I started last year and just seem to be collecting the stuff. Some of it has been bottled, while others are still sitting all sealed up in the secondary.
So far I like the strawberry Mead best.
Cheers,
Heinz
http://fermentedfruits.blogspot.com
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