Wild Wine PArt 5 - Picture Heavy

[British Red]

13/08/06 - Day 26

Ding dong the wicked yeast is dead!


Sorry, bit of a “Wizard of Oz” moment there

Right, our wine has been racked off and the yeast is dead. We know its “sharp” because all the sugar has been fermented. But we have stopped any further fermentation by stabilising the must. So now we go to work on the flavour. We are going to use two materials here. Sugar syrup and Glycerin. Sugar syrup reduces “sharpness” from the mixture and Glycerin removes acidity, thinness and “bite”. I can’t describe their effects, you will find out other than imagine a sour chilli then a sweet chilli – that’s the effect of adding sugar. Now remove the chilli. That’s adding Glycerin.

The most important tool of all here will be a glass. We’ll pour a tiny amount of wine from the demijohn into the glass. We’ll taste it – if its too sour we’ll add a spoonful of sugar syrup, if too sharp, a spoonful of glycerin. We can add more if its not enough – we can’t take it out if we overdo it so a tiny amount at a time and patience is called for here.

So Glycerin – here it is – buy it from you local chemist / pharmacy / drugstore.

Sugar syrup we need to make. Measurements don’t matter here. Chuck a load of sugar in a jug – no more than quarter full.

Boil a kettle. We are trying to add just enough water to dissolve all the sugar. Its less than you might think. So add a tiny amount.

Stir hard with a spoon. Is the liquid still cloudy? Have we got granules sticking to the spoon like this?

If we have it needs a tiny bit more water – when we have added enough water it will go like this

Now we add a spoon of glycerin (if the must takes a little sharp)

Now here is the important bit. You are adding no more than 5ml at a time – or 1 in 1,000 of 5 litres that we are working with. Don’t get impatient. 2 spoons of Glycerin is usually enough. But alternate Glycerin with sugar syrup and taste EVERY time. After each additional spoonful we cork and shake the demijohn. This serves two purposes – firstly it mixes the must, secondly it helps any dissolved Co2 leave the must. Dissolved CO2 impedes clearing so this is very important. You will probably need more sugar syrup than Glycerin. That’s fine. I’m not going to publish measurements – it’s a taste thing. Blackcurrants are quite sour – this needed a fair bit of syrup to replace the natural fruit sugars.

Remember to taste after every spoonful – its like watching a set of scales tip, you get a sense of when the taste is nearly right –then suddenly it is – don’t add more!

Now we have a great tasting wine – but its still cloudy! Lets get a clear, shining wine now. To do this, we will use a two step process – Fining then Filtering. Fining means clearing settling yeast and fruit particles out from the wine and filtering “polishes” the final liquid.

The finings we will use are a two part process – the first part “clumps” the yeast together – the second settles these clumps. There are many natural products that can do this – egg white (albumen), isinglass etc. Lets just call them A (clumping) and B (settling)

We add 5 ml of the clumping agent to each demijohn. We’ll then leave the demijohns for 24 hours and add 5ml of the settling agent, shaking the demijohn well between additions.. After this, with 7 days or so, we’ll be ready to rack off for a second time and filter.

So, more in a week or so