Vineyard 93. I’ve been a bit slow with this vineyard blog (since vineyard 92) but there is a reason for that. Namely that we’ve been waiting for the grapes to ripen sufficiently to pick them and make the wine. This simple sentence covers a multitude of happenings.
Mainly the netting (and still we have rabbits and grouse) which remains a complete pain to put on and manoeuvre into place. But mostly now we’re concerned with measuring the sugar (although not the acid) of the grapes trying to make a sensible / informed decision about when to pick.
Considering how hot it’s been over the summer I’m surprised that the grapes aren’t riper than the refractometer says they are. The Solaris are about 15% sugar and the Rondo slightly less*. Strangely the grapes were riper and were picked earlier than this in 2018 (our best year so far) but I had thought that this year would be comparable weather-wise. Although we don’t have as large a crop mainly because we lost so many vines due to trunk disease in 2019. Such are the complications of life at the margins as we call it.
Anyway we have a fair few grapes this year but the problem is that the different varieties are ripening at various speeds. So Solaris about now (or actually Saturday), Rondo in maybe another couple of weeks and Madeline Angevine about the same.
So we’re picking some on Saturday which means we have to have the wine-making equipment ready. Why you ask, do you need equipment when you typically get other ‘proper’ wine-makers to make your wine? Good question, the answer is we couldn’t get anybody to make it for us, at least none of our local / regulars. They’ve all had bountiful harvests and don’t want any additional tasks. Nor could I sell it or even give the grapes away.
I had vaguely hoped I might persuade my gamekeeper chum across the dale, to set up his wine-making, estate wine enterprise this year but no. He wasn’t going to pick his first grapes until next year so didn’t want to get ahead of himself and fair enough but his decision did take my final option out of the equation.
Soo it’s either let them rot or make it ourselves. Ignorance, and we have plenty of that, as they say is bliss so we started to collect equipment from past years. We bought another press and a pump and filter, purchased yeast, pectin and Campden tablets, washed and sterilised all that we were likely to use in making this first batch (Solaris) of wine in the garage, including our plastic tanks / vats / barrels and set it all up in the garage (which we spent a considerable amount of time clearing out and cleaning up. What fun and we were only just beginning.
I’ve included a photo of most (with additional press but not pump) of the equipment in our garage. The first step is of course to pick the grapes, fill up the van (hopefully), drive back to our Leeds house /garage and begin the wine-making process. This starts with crushing, de-stemming and then pressing. But all this is in the future although not that far in the future. Crikey.
So part two of this adventure (a new one even for us) is to start actually making the wine. The children helped with the crushing / de-stemming in the big red machine (on the left of photo above). Then the next day Mrs Summerhouse and I (mostly, I admit, her) began to press the grapes. Just one accident and ten litres of juice on the garage floor when one of the buckets broke as I attempted to pour the contents into our big tank. See additional photo at the end.
So far we have about 30 litres of juice and I have to make decisions about adding the yeast and any other chemicals we might see fit. I can’t say the books are much help here even Home wine-making for dummies is proving complex. But we press on.
Our emotions at this stage bearing in mind that this is only white grapes we’ve picked vary between disappointment along the lines of is that all we’ve got to thank God that’s all we’ve got because if we screw up it’s only a relatively small amount of juice gone to waste (like that on the garage floor).
*Tip. Do the measurements at room temperature for improved readings.
Vineyard 93 summary
There’s more fun to come but I’ll save reports on that until the next blog. They tell me some people are quite content to lead a quiet and relaxed retirement. Now why can’t we do that?
