THICK COUNTRY WINES

How do I thicken my country wines?

This topic sprang to mind after this winter's reverie in one of those recent "NEVER AGAIN" moments when a "thick" head is the order of most of the following day.

I have been asked this very question many times over the years by various home wine-makers with insipid wines, and it is easily overcome with a little fore-thought.

There are basically three ways you can achieve more body, they all have to be considered at the starting stage, and are:

1 --- By using a can of grape juice instead of some of the water and sugar at the starting point.
2 --- Use blackberry related fruit as a percentage of the must.
3 --- Incorporate the boilings from mushy bananas!

There are perhaps other, more chemically biased methods, that can be used but it is best to steer clear of these and stick with the more natural methods.

The grape juice one seems to be well accepted these days, although this biases the flavour towards the grape extract that was used, and tends to be used for off-white wines.

If you are aiming at producing something like elderflower or dandelion wine, then you want a crisp, sharp white wine, and this method is not too good.

For the deep reds, blackberries and their relations, loganberries, tayberries and others produce a wine with body, and if any of these are added to a basic elderberry, say two pounds of elderberries to a pound of blackberries per gallon, then you will have an earlier (needing a little less maturing) deep red wine, with leanings towards a port wine.

For lighter reds, say raspberry, these fruits cannot be added as they will mask the colour and flavour most noticably and you will be rather unsatisfied with your end product.

However, this is where the third type fits in beautifully.

Mushy bananas........ I'm not kidding!!!!

It's an old idea and one that I have tried with all sorts of wines. It works beautifully with reds, with no noticable flavour imparted to the wines, but with whites (Yes, I even tried that too!) there is a residue of flavour remaining that is just discernable, so perhaps the grape juice idea is better suited here.

If you place around a pound of mushy, almost over-ripe and gooey, (just as they are starting to turn from brown to black inside) chopped bananas in a pan, cover with water (three pints or so) and simmer for around twenty minutes, that way extracting all the goodness from the bananas into the water, then use the cooled, banana-ified liquid to make up part of a one gallon batch for your wine fermentation purposes.

So one pound suits one gallon! You can use other quantities if you want to, but this works nicely for me.

This method works beautifully for the paler, off-whites, like carrot, parsnip, peach, apricot, raspberry, red currant and the likes. In fact any wine you make with either a pinkish or yellowish tinge is good.

Hope this helps,

George

10 year old?????

I'm sat here, on new year's eve, not really wanting to celebrate the coming new year (they call me misery, you know), with a bottle of supposedly 10 year old Tawny port sat on the right hand side of my monitor, and I was asking myself just what makes a tawny port.

If I wanted to make a similar offering myself, would it be made from my own grapes of mixed colour? That way producing the tawny effect.

Would it be some other method I am not aware of? Judging by the label on the bottle, I think not.

It appears the tawny port is simply a mixture of what grapes are available in a particular region, crushed and fermented, then chemically sulphited to end the fermentation at a certain level, that way saving some of the sugars available (with alcohol added, distilled from the poor mixes of vine production) and that way incorporating the sweetness from the present ceased ferment and the alcohol from past ferments, making a very palatable 20% tawny port.

This concoction is then matured in oak barrels for ten years (supposedly) and allows the producer to charge the public at large a higher price for this product.

Fine, the extra alcohol does quickly effect my addled brain, but this would happen if it was contained in any liquid that was drunk, so what of the flavour?

It's the old story! Very pleasant, but once you've taken your first glass (at the 20%), you do not taste anything more.

Oblivion beckons!!!!!

See you soon,

George

How To Prune Your Indoor And Outdoor Vines

Pruning an indoor vine is really an uncomplicated affair, unlike what may have built up in your mind as you contemplated the perplexities of pruning, led on by all the information overload there is surrounding us all.

My pruning method is very straight forward, in that I have what appears to be, in the winter-time, a single length of rope attached to the side and roof of my greenhouse.

This is because in its first year I allowed the grape vine to grow until it reached its natural length, hacked it back to 2/3rds its length, removed any side growths in the winter, and the following spring allowed it to grow in its length again. This was repeated for four years and then I stopped it in its tracks.

This forced any new growth, laterals that produce each year’s fruit, to push out from this main stem to bear fruit (although it did this when it reached three years old).

These fruit-bearing laterals were pinched out at a leaf beyond the first bunch of grapes, or at four leaves out from the stem if no fruit was showing (as odd ones do), that way limiting the amount of stem/leaf growth and causing the vine to put its energies into producing larger grapes, although the number of bunches produced does matter to a degree.

So at present, just after leaf-fall, I have what appears to be a length of rope with lots of twigs attached along its length (this years new growth), along with a further stem, pinched off at 1ft (30cm) at the tip of the ‘main stem’.

What I do between the new-year and the end of January, as that time is when the plant is at its deepest rest, is simply remove all of this year’s growth back to the ‘rope’, that way retaining the shape I had after my last winter’s pruning session.

I crop them close to the joint they emerged from, unlike most pundits recommend in their journals with “you must leave two or three buds showing on each lateral to produce new fruit the following year”.

It’s all hogwash! You don’t need to do that at all!

I don’t, and my greenhouse vines (I’ve got three in there) have produced fruit readily for the last twelve years or more (and my out-door ones too, although they are not looking like a single ‘rope’, but more like fans trapped between three heights of two wires (stapled to either side of the six, four-inch diameter support posts, (that’s three in a line about 15 feet apart, by two rows) with twigs attached randomly (this years fruit bearing laterals) hanging out in all directions, and will soon look like the basic fans again once they have this years growth removed.

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If you have a vine that is overgrown, you have to be hard with it, cut back hard on some – if not most – of the thinner, newer growth, otherwise you will get very little fruit, if any at all, in years to come.

Simply cut it into the shape you want it, not as nature wants it – it’s own inclination is to replace the growth you remove and at the same time spread everywhere, so you will not do any damage to it, providing you do not cut it below a few feet above the ground through the main stem.

Controlling your grape vine is the key to producing grapes.

The same applies to outdoor grape vines!

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One more point… Are you feeding your vine the wrong food?

In an attempt to produce more fruit and help their grape vines, most people do it without realising, and may well be doing more harm than good!



More practical information about growing and caring for grape vines can be found at http://www.vines-make-wines.com

George Hughes

JUMPING THE GUN

Having inspected my vines this evening, I found there were one or two new buds and leaves showing, despite the few frosty nights of late.

This is all down to the relatively mild weather we are having.

It is a little early to be taking cuttings and doing any winter pruning on my vines, as this is usually done around Christmas time, sometimes in the new year, when the plant is fully dormant.

I was perhaps jumping the gun a little here, so that I could show any interested readers precisely what I do to take cuttings.

Perhaps next time.

The wine is still bubbling quite steadily, and there is not much to report on it really.

Till next time of.

George

AN UPDATE ON MY HOME WINEMAKING

So far the progress of my winemaking has reached three five-gallon batches on the go, along with a five-gallon batch of cider (there was such a glut of apples this year).

The first was a blend, a winemakers dream, of my greenhouse vines, being Black Hamburg, Seyval Blanc and Merlot.

This has had a second one-pound batch of sugar added, once the fermentation came to almost a stand-still, and once the bubbles in the winemakers fermenter subside again, it will be due for its next racking to remove any sediment.

There is another barrel containing neat Seyval Blanc juice (from the outdoor vines), with no skins allowed near – it is a white wine, so no tannins from skins, pips or stalks are needed. This must was a little sweeter than the mixed one, but I have still added sugar to bring the S.G. up to 1.040 before adding the yeast. This one, being a white, has a slightly acid taste to it, which is how it is supposed to be.

The other batch is the Merlot (the outdoors again), but this one had the skins left in for about 5 days before it was strained and the skins pressed to extract the juice, and again I added the needed sugar to raise the S.G. to the starting level and the yeast.

These musts are literally grape juice with added sugar and yeast, and absolutely nothing else.

They are all bubbling away nicely now, and I am considering using the balance of the grapes I have in the freezer to produce more in a few gallon demi-johns I have spare. I may have to top up the barrels as the winemaking progresses owing to the racking, so getting a spare gallon on the go will keep the levels topped up.

I always find that in winemaking, it is usually the winemaking equipment that I run short of first, and I always finish up scratching round for something to start a new batch off in.

Til next time,

George

COMPETITIVE SPIRITS? - OR WHAT?

If you are easily offended, forgive me, but this is a true glimpse of my thoughts.

As I lay they, before I’d even opened my eyes, sort of between being asleep and awake first thing in the morning, with thoughts flitting briefly through my mind, one thought in particular loitered longer than the rest and tarried awhile.

It was all brought about from something I’d read the day before, of how people used to bury a dead body, a donkey, dog, anything like that, to use the body as a fertiliser to produce abundant grapes with.

Then it occurred to me that it wouldn’t bother me in the least if my body fed a vine when I died.

It’s a bit too late to be bothered isn’t it? After all, when you’re dead, you’re dead, aren’t you? It’s not as if I’d care much then anyway!

Then I thought of a graveyard, with all those bodies just lying there rotting and doing nothing; you know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that.

My next thought was it was such a waste. I kept thinking of the grapes that would grow in a place like that! My mouth was watering with these thoughts.

Perhaps there should be a competition with having everyone who is in there having a vine planted nearby, so the one who produced the best grapes would receive…..

Nahhh….. It wouldn’t work, would it?

Next fleeting topic…..

Til next time,

George

ARE YOU KILLING YOUR VINE WITH KINDNESS ?

Mature vines require fertiliser in the usual way, but with one exception.

Young vines, up to around two years old, need a normal balanced fertiliser like Grow More or something similar, as this provides enough nitrogen, along with the phosherous and potassium the plant needs to get going, to provide vigorous growth early on in its life.

Beyond this two-year-old stage, then a different amount of nitrogen is required so that the plant will begin to produce the grapes you want.

By providing less nitrogen, the plant will remain healthier, owing to less infestations and insects trying to eat the new growth (there is less produced by the vine), and therefore less colonisation because of the reduced opportunity to set up home.

If you over-feed with the balanced fertiliser, your vine may well develop beautifully above ground for the first four or five years, making you the proud owner of such a vigorous vine producing grapes galore, but below ground can be quite a different matter.

If the root structure is limited owing to the vine putting most of its energy into top growth (above ground), then half way through a growing season, when your vine is most under stress, your vine may well look on the point of collapse, owing to the roots not being developed enough to provide the fruit and leaves, along with any new growth, with all the nutrients they need.

It will look as though you are in the middle of a severe drought, even though you may have watered your vine regularly.

At this point your vine is virtually doomed because of the fertiliser you have been using.

Generally speaking, most garden plants thrive on a balanced fertiliser, but vines are a little different.

There are a few easy ways round this, but the simplest option is to reduce the nitrogen after year two, that way allowing the roots to develop rather than the top of the plant.

Til next time

George