It’s bottling day! Yay!
Finally, I am able to bottle my first homemade red wine—the Carmenere you may or may not have read about in some of my previous entries. You may or may not also recall, I was a little worried about this wine, particularly since I had a semi-major “mishap” one morning involving a massive leak and some quick thinking. Basically, I had installed the spigot on my plastic carboy a little too tight, but for some reason it took weeks before any leaking occurred (kind of odd, but whatever). When I noticed the small leak, I tried to tighten the spigot even more, since at the time I thought it might actually be too loose. BAD idea! Wine started flowing out and I had to think quickly to get the wine transferred into a new container as quickly as possible and as sanitary as possible in the short amount of time I had.
I ended up getting the wine transferred into my primary fermenter, since that’s all I had available at that time. I did lose a little bit of wine, but considering how much I could have lost in that situation, I don’t think I lost much at all.
I was a little worried about keeping the wine in the primary fermenter for a couple of weeks, as I was concerned about possible contamination during the fast transfer, and the fact that there is a lot more surface area for oxygen to play around with on the wine than if it were in a more narrow carboy.
So, after waiting a week longer than I was scheduled to bottle due to some travel plans, the moment of truth had finally come! First, I took a final specific gravity reading with my hydrometer, and it was holding steady at 0.997. Good news, since I am convinced all fermentation was complete due to the fact that the specific gravity hadn’t changed in a long time.
Now, the taste—-was it going to be skunked? A little off somehow due to all the “trauma” it went through a couple of weeks prior? To my surprise, the wine actually tasted pretty nice!!! BIG sigh of relief there! I didn’t taste anything that was particularly concerning, and it tasted like it has a lot of potential for aging in the next few months.
I had purchased a couple of cases of wine bottles from ECKraus (since I had been too lazy to go collecting used bottles from wineries), and bottled 26 bottles of Carmenere!
As always, I didn’t filter the wine, since I don’t have a wine filtering system yet, but alas, what can ya do, right? The wine did look pretty clear, though it probably wouldn’t have hurt to run it through a filter to be extra certain. Only time will tell how it comes out, I suppose.
As long as the flavor and aromas develop in a positive manner over the next few months, I plan on serving this wine (in addition to other purchased wines) at my upcoming wedding. What a fun way to share my wine with my family and friends! I’ll certainly taste a bottle or two prior to wedding day as a sort of “quality control”, but hey, I would always serve this wine after everyone is sufficiently toasted so that they don’t notice anything off about it (if it is).
How are your homemade wines coming along?
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.