In a forum discussion at WinePress.US, a winemaker noted he had an orange wine that had lots of air bubbles in it when he tried to take a hydrometer reading. Indeed, when he inserted a rod into it to degas it, an eruption of bubbles came up and caused an overflow out of the secondary. He would wait a while and attempt to degas it again, only to have another eruption of bubbles. It did not seem to him that any headway was being gained on the gas problem. The gas was undoubtedly CO2 which is usually produced in wine by either alcohol fermentation or malolactic fermentation (MLF). Various opinions were offered, including a hunch that MLF was occurring. I saw it quite differently.

I didn't think it was MLF. MLF is a bacterial fermentation in which very specialized organisms process malic acid into lactic acid. MLF can occur naturally if (1) the must contains malic acid in the first place, (2) the MLF bacteria was present on the grapes or other ingredients that went into the wine, and (3) the must is not sulfited beyond a certain point prior to MLF starting. But there wasn't any malic acid in the recipe (my Orange Wine [2] recipe) except what was in the raisins specified in the recipe, and that would not be enough to produce as much gas as was reported. Also, it was very unlikely that any ML bacteria came into the must through the orange juice, raisins or boiled banana slices the recipe called for. To rephrase Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate the possible, the explanation must reside in what is left. I think it was just CO2 produced by the yeast during the later stages of alcohol fermentation.

I asked the winemaker if he was using a cylinder-type airlock or S-type bubbler? If a cylinder-type, I would guess it was over-filled (has too much water in it -- it should be filled to the line in the middle and then the inner cup inserted and the cap snapped on). If the S-type, I would again bet it was overfilled for the conditions. The wine is obviously still fermenting, although at a very slow rate. If fermentation slows so dramatically that the CO2 being produced doesn't create enough pressure to move the water in the airlock, the CO2 will be absorbed into the wine. I recommended he pour all of the water out of the S-type airlock except just enough to barely seal the bottom "U" and see it this doesn't allow bubbles to escape. Also, I recommended stabilizing the wine now so that fermentation indeed stops altogether in a few weeks. Then he can degas the wine once and for all.

If the must has been sulfited to an aseptic level -- a level sufficient to kill the various bacteria winemakers are likely to encounter -- spontaneous (i.e. natural) MLF will not occur. A sulfited must can decline from 70 ppm SO2 to 15 ppm during fermentation and then undergo MLF, but only if you inoculate it with the MLF culture. The 70 ppm high will have effectively killed any wild MLF bacteria in the must unless the must had a dangerously high pH to begin with (3.8 to 4.0, for example), in which cases a much higher dose of SO2 was needed to create an aseptic environment.

In the normal scheme of things, MLF is not all that dramatic an event unless you happen to be a molecule of malic acid that gets consumed by the bacteria and turned into a molecule of lactic acid. In grapes, excluding "late harvest" grapes and certain predominately sub- temperate varieties that have little malic acid anyway, an MLF in the bottle will produce just enough fizz to let you know the wine is no longer perfectly still -- not enough to warrant Champagne flutes as the winemaker described. The same applies even more to an MLF in a secondary, where an airlock can at least offer an escape route for the CO2.

On the other hand, an apple or blackberry or other exclusively malic fruit that undergoes MLF can produce a noticeable amount of gas, but nothing like the winemaker described and rarely ever enough to raise a cork should it occur in the bottle. The affect on TA and pH is slight except in wholly malic wines and is most useful in grape wines where a slight malic edge needs to be honed. It has little affect on grape wines with jagged edges, as these are usually caused by too much tartaric acid.

I consider these observations important because far too many novice (and even experienced) winemakers are talking about spontaneous MLF occurring under conditions in which it should not. If you analyze the must -- that is, the sum of all the ingredients that went into it -- and its history (it was boiled, or made from concentrate, or aseptically sulfited with Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite), one can readily determine if natural MLF is even possible. When it isn't possible, then it almost certainly did not occur.

A winemaker asked me for a conversion factor for sugar, volume to weight. This is quite simple. Using U.S. measures, two level cups of finely granulated refined sugar weighs one pound. Thus, eight ounces of the same weighs 1/2 pound, and one dry ounce (volume) equates to one ounce by weight.

Two pounds of refined sugar dissolved in one U.S. gallon of water has a specific gravity of 1.090. Thus, one pound of refined sugar dissolved in one U.S. gallon of water has a specific gravity of 1.045.

I specified finely granulated refined sugar for a reason. This sugar is fine enough that the measures given above work out perfectly. If regular granulated refined sugar is used, the air spaces between the gains of crystal are ever so slightly larger and the volume changes. I use two level cups plus 3/4 teaspoon of regular granulated refined sugar to measure one pound volumetrically. In truth, I rarely ever use the regular grind of sugar, even though it is usually a few pennies cheaper per pound -- even more if it is beet sugar rather than cane sugar. It is simply easier and faster to dissolve the finely granulated sugar than the coarser "regular" grind. And the volume measures work out evenly, as was already said.

• WinePress.US Forums, an index of winemaking forums (I usually visit General Wine Making)
• Sugars in Winemaking, more on sugars

This past weekend was spent with winemakers and affectionados, as the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild hosted its annual Fall Competition. I truly do feel sorry for everyone that doesn't belong to a winemaking club. It's difficult to find a finer group of generous, unselfish folks.

As promised, here are some more of the emails and postings I've made recently.

I was asked about the strength used for sanitizing winemaking equipment, bottles and countertops and how to measure potassium metabisulfite for a 10% sulfite solution.

I use a solution made by adding one level teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to one gallon of water. A 2-minute exposure to this will kill any known bacteria or mold likely to be in a kitchen or winery. This solution is undoubtedlyly stronger than it needs to be, but I just want to be sure the job is done when I use it. Its use hurts nothing. After use, I then pour it back into a capped gallon jug and reuse it. It lasts much longer than I keep it, which is around 3-4 months.

A 10% sulfite solution is easy to make if you have precise scales. A liter of water weighs 1,000 grams, so add 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of potassium metabisulfite to one liter of water. For a 5% sulfite solution, use 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of potassium metabisulfite to one liter of water.

When a winemaker in Jamaica told me he had dumped a batch of Thompson Seedless Grape Wine wine because it had oxidized heavily, I told him the first grape wine I ever made was with Thompson Seedless. It, too, oxidized badly. I uncorked it, resulfited it to prevent further degradation, fortified it to 18%, and then sweetened it to around 1.020. It was a very nice sherry-type wine.

I've done the same with oxidized blackberry, black cherry and red grape wines to make very nice tawny-style ports. With a little more work (actually, a lot more), you can make passable Madeira- or Marsala-type wines.

Madeira wines are high in alcohol (18-20%) and slowly baked in special buildings called estufas -- the wines are kept at temperatures ranging from 101 to 140 degrees F. for several months. If you live in the hot South, you can achieve similar results by bulk storing your wines in a garage or out-building during the hot summer months.

Some Madeiras also used a solera system of blending, where a cask has one-tenth of it's volume replaced each year with an equal amount of younger wine. After ten years, the cask is fully soleraized. It can be further aged, but not further blended.

Marsala wines are actually made with very specific grapes grown only at the extreme western tip of Sicily around the city of Marsala (Grillo, Catarratto, Inzolia and Damaschino for golden and amber Marsala; Pignatello, Calabrese, Nerello Mascalese, Nero d’Avola for ruby red Marsala), but other grapes can be used for "Marsala-type" wines. Depending on the style of Marsala, these usually have an alcohol content no less than 14% but often 18-20%, with residual sugar ranging from bone dry to dessert sweetness. They are aged 8 months to 10 years in oak, and are blended using the solera system. Thus, it is not possible to make a single vintage Marsala.

Well-made Marsalas can achieve a long life (over 100 years), while quality Madeiras can mature to 150 years and longer. However, do not expect such age from homemade wines of these types.

When asked why a stabilized wine continued to drop lees for over a month, I replied that when you stabilize a wine with potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate in conjunction with potassium or sodium metabisulfite (or Campden tablets), you are fixing the yeast population as of that moment. The living yeast in the must or wine are thereafter incapable of reproducing. That is the effect produced by stabilization. They yeast continue to live, but die naturally after a while -- hours to weeks. Because they can no longer reproduce, the entire colony eventually dies. As it dies off, dead yeast cells settle and form the very fine lees.

Living yeast cells are individually invisible to the eye except under powerful magnification. A single drop of heavily fermenting must can easily contain 150,000 yeast cells and will probably look cloudy. The cloudiness is caused not by the yeast themselves, but by the microscopic bubbles of CO2 gas they are emitting as fermentation waste. In a carboy, these bubbles are so close together that they combine rapidly into larger bubbles -- which get even larger as they rise. Within a few inches they become large enough to actually see. By the time they get near the top of the carboy, they are quite large compared to what they were originally. The bubbles breaking the suface of a 30,000-liter fermentation tank can be so large the surface looks like it is boiling. If you stabilized this batch at this time, you would not see a reduction in fermentation rate for several days, and it would probably drop heavy lees for two or three weeks -- lighter lees for up to six.

Most commercial wineries use (1) chilling, fining and racking, (2) sterile filtration, (3) heating, or (4) sorbates to remove yeast once fermentation has ceased and the wine clears. Using the first method alone still leaves a fairly substantial yeast population in the wine, so for sweet wines they usually follow through with sterile filtration or sorbating. The wines are then held 30 days and the wine is processed through a cell counter. If less than 10 cells per 750 mL remain, the wine will probably be bottled and released. If 10 or more cells per 750 mL are found, the wine is retained an additional 60 days to ensure the risk of re-fermentation is past.

I had a still wine that had finished dropping lees and had then been racked twice but not chilled, filtered or been sorbated. At that point I set it in a bulk aging area and left it there for 14 months. I then chaptalized it to a semi-sweet and bottled it. Two moths later I entered a bottle in competition where it was disqualified as being entered in the wrong category -- entered as a still wine instead of sparkling. Yes, whatever yeast remained began reproducing and recolonized the batch. I had never seen yeast live that long without dropping at least a fine dusting of lees, but they did. I now use two of the four stabilizing methods for my off-dry and sweet wines.

• Winemaking Recipes, includes 4 sherry-type wines from scratch
• Winemaking Recipes (Cont'd), includes 2 Madeira-type and 2 sherry-type wines
• Winemaking Recipes (Cont'd), includes a port-type wine
• Types of Madeira Wines, an excellent guide
• Marsala Wines, Frazzitta's site, but representative
• Marsala, an overview from DiWineTaste

In plowing through the ton of email backed up on me I ran across some very good questions which, in turn, prompted me to answer as I could. I'll try to address a few of them here as I have time, but first I need to address a problem that has surfaced.

Spam is not just a creeping problem, it is an epidemic. There are many strategies for combating spam, but Earthlink users are more and more opting to use a service that requires the sender to log into a webmail site and register to send them email. They then "preapprove" the sender and add them to a list of approved senders. While I admire this approach to combating spam, I cannot subscribe to it.

Let me explain. The computer I use to answer emails pertaining to my web site or WineBlog is behind a double firewall. The security I enjoy on this machine is non- negotiable; I cannot turn it on and off, and it will not connect to the Earthlink webmail site. Indeed, it will not log into any webmail site. This is a security feature designed to protect a very large network against computer viruses, worms and trojan horses, which can bypass email antivirus protection by coming in over webmail.

As a result, I cannot get placed on your preapproved senders lists and my answers to your questions end up being killed by Earthlink. I wasted at least an hour yesterday answering four emails which were so killed. I have very little time to answer emails as it is, so I really resent wasting what little time I have writing answers that will never be read. So I have had to adopt a new rule:

If you are an Earthlink user and use this extreme anti-spam measure, then put me on your preapproved senders list yourself, before you write to me, or don't bother writing. You're asking me for advice or information, so either allow me to answer you or ask someone else.

I received two different but similar questions pertaining to the shelf life of wines. One concerned sugar and the other concerned acidity. One wanted to know why an expert had written that very dry wines had a short shelf life, while the other wanted to know why I had written that low acid wines also had a short shelf life. The answers are self-supporting.

The shelf life of wines -- that is, their ability to retain their freshness and drinkability while aging and growing more complex -- is determined by the preservative elements they contain. Primarily, these preservatives are alcohol, acid and sugar, although tannins also have lesser preservative qualities. The final preservative found in most wines is sulfur dioxide, which is usually introduced by the winemaker.

Alcohol has long been known as a preservative. Most winemaking books include a statement about alcohol preservation, such as, "Wines containing 12% alcohol by volume are self-preserving." Actually, the number is lower than that, but the point is made.

Sugar has also long been known as a preservative -- jams and jellies have very long lives until exposed to air. In wine, off-dry or semi-sweet wines generally have longer shelf lives than dry wines, while sweet ports, sherries and other dessert wines enjoy even longer potential lives.

Acidity as a preservative actually refers to its ability to deter spoilage bacteria. In wine, both alcohol and acidity work in concert to this end. Acetobacter aceti and related species that convert ethanol to acetic acid in the presence of air are unaffected by either alcohol or acids in wines, but are stopped cold by aseptic levels of sulfur dioxide.

A woman wrote to me about using POM-brand pomegranate juice to make wine with. She said, "The juice is pricey, but I think it might still be more economical than the 30-45 pomegranates a person would need for a 3 gallon batch." She essentially wanted to know how many pomegranates each bottle of POM represented. I had seen the juice in several supermarkets, but really had no idea what the answer to her question was. I basically told here this. Some time later she informed me she had written to the POM Company's customer service and they had responded: "Each 16 oz bottle contains the juice of approximately five crushed pomegranates. Thus, one 8-ounce serving would contain the juice of 2.5 pomegranates."

Based on this information, she then proposed a recipe for a 3-gallon batch. I made a few comments and that was that. I intend to make wine from this juice just to know it better. After I have done so, I will publish the recipe. However, if you want to get a head start on me, sources of the juice and an alternative concentrate are linked below.

• 3 lbs mesquite beans
• 1 11-oz can Welch's 100% White Grape frozen concentrate
• 1-1/2 lbs granulated sugar
• water to make up one gallon
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Montrachet wine yeast

Wash the bean pods and break them into one-inch pieces. Put them into a large cooking pot and cover them with about 3 quarts of water. Simmer slowly for one hour, covered. Strain the beans off and discard or use to make jelly. Pour the water into a primary and stir into it half the sugar and the Welch's frozen concentrate. Stir well to dissolve the sugar. Cover with cloth and set aside to cool. When at room temperature, add acid blend and yeast nutrient. Stir to dissolve these ingredients and add activated yeast starter and recover. Stir daily for about 5 days and stir in remaining sugar until dissolved. Transfer to secondary, top up, and fit airlock. Rack into clean secondary, top up and refit airlock every 30 days for next 4 months. Stabilize, sweeten if desired, bottle and allow to age one year before drinking. This wine will keep well, getting better as it ages. [Author's own recipe]

• 3 lbs mesquite bean pieces previously used to make wine
• 6 cups water
• 4-1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tblsp lemon juice
• package of pectin

  Add water to bean pod pieces and simmer one hour, mashing the pieces as possible with a potato masher during the simmering time. Strain off liquid and measure. Either simmer longer to reduce quantity to 4 cups or add water to make 4 cups. Stir in sugar and lemon juice. When thoroughly dissolved, add pectin according to the directions that came with it. I cannot predict which pectin you use so cannot say what adjustments you might have to make, but I had to mix a powdered pectin with 3/4 cup of water, bring it to a boil, add an additional 1/2 cup of sugar to the mesquite- water mixture, add the pectin, and bring it to a 3-minute boil. It set up beautifully and is a most delicious jelly.

  • Using Your Hydrometer, the page in question
  • Mesquite Bean Wine, my other recipe
  • Mesquite Bean Wine, my site, but Dorothy Alatorre's recipe
  
  

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  August 17th, 2005
  
  

  A reader complained that most of his country wines are "too harsh" for his taste. He said at first he thought it was acid, but he tested the acid each time and it was fine. He wondered if it could be tannin.

  I really couldn't resist. I explained that the usual description for tannin was "astringent," not "harsh." I myself used to call it harsh -- or bitter -- but then a wine snob educated me and explained -- not too nicely either -- that the correct word was "astringent." I've used it ever since and am glad I have. It helps to use the right word on certain occasions -- when judging wines, for example.

  Why Tannin?
  
  

  I've written here before about tannin (see my entry of May 20, 2004). Tannin gives a wine that certain "bite" that helps differentiate it from fruit juice. A little tannin is essential in my book, but then that's just me. If you don't really care for the "bite" in wine, eliminate the tannin.

  But tannin serves another purpose. It promotes the ability of a wine to age well, but in this it is not alone and other factors are equally important. But if you intend to drink your wine without setting a few bottles aside for a couple of years down the road, then it really doesn't matter if the tannin is in there or not.

  Finally, tannin plays a minor but important role in the balance of a wine. As I said back in May of 2004, tannins are phenolic compounds with a bitter taste and astringent mouthfeel. In balance, tannins can help wines age and lend structure and texture to them, especially when they form complexes with anthocyanins (pigments). When we speak of a wine's balance, we should think of a balance scale with acids and tannins on one side and alcohols, sugars and glycerin on the other. Put another way, the sour and bitter tastes are on one side and the sweet tastes are on the other. The word "balance" implies a certain equilibrium should exist between these two opposing sides of the scale. When you eliminate the tannins altogether, you must rely on acids to hold down one side of the balance scale. When you do that, the acids really need to be perfect.

  Okay, so what do you do if you have wines, like the fellow who wrote to me, that have tannins in them and you decide you'd rather not have them there after all? Can you take them out? Sure you can..

  Tannins are negatively charged compounds. To remove them, you need to add a positively charged compound. The opposite charges attract each other, bind weakly, and their combined mass causes them to succumb to the force of gravity and settle to the bottom of the carboy. Gelatin, albumin (egg white), casein, Isinglass, chitin (Chitosan), and Sparkolloid are all positively charged fining agents that will remove some, if not all, of the tannins from your wine.

  Mesquite
  
  

  When I say mesquite, most of my winemaking friends think of one or two things. They either think of mesquite wood or mesquite beans or both. Because I happen to like the taste of mesquite wood in wine, I tend to promote it over the alternative -- oak.

  My introduction to mesquite wood as a wine flavoring came from Bob Denson, the winemaker at Poteet Country Winery in Poteet, Texas. Some years ago he served me a superb mustang wine aged with mesquite and I never looked back. Since then I've aged more than a few wines with mesquite and have avidly promoted it writings and talks. I have many friends that now use it,

  Bob Denson originally wanted to barrel age his mustang in mesquite, but when he priced the barrels at around $1700 each he visited a mesquite wood worker in Uvalde, Texas and obtained bags of mesquite shavings. He gave me some and since then I have made more. Here's how to do it.

  Age a fairly straight section of a mesquite branch, 4-6 inches in diameter and 1-2 feet long. I age them a year, but 6 months is probably long enough. In your workshop, use a chisel and hammer to remove the bark. Sweep up the bark and discard it before going any further. With a band or circular saw remove an inch or so from each end of the section. Then use an electric planer to remove the dark outer surface of the wood to a depth of at least a quarter-inch. Only fresh, red wood should be visible all the way around. Again, sweep up the sawdust and litter and discard them. Spray the floor around the planer with a 5% sulfite solutions and let it dry. Then turn on the planer and start making chips. But watch those fingers.... Alternatively, you can clamp the section in a bench vise and hand plane the wood into shavings.

  An acquaintance in Arizona rips the wood into thin planks and makes mesquite cubes. He uses a propane torch to lightly toast the cubes. I don't toast the shavings or chips. It isn't oak and I don't think of it in the same terms as I do oak, but the toasting might be okay. I haven't tasted his mesquite wine and he hasn't tasted mine, so who knows? Use the chips or shavings as you would use oak chips.

  All over South Texas the mesquite beans are falling. We have eight trees on our property and collected a few pounds last weekend for wine and jelly. The jelly is fabulous and the wine is worth making. It does need to be aged a year before drinking. This year I'm going to do something I've never done. I'm going to age my mesquite wine with mesquite chips. It should be interesting.

  • Mesquite Bean Wine, my recipe
  • Mesquite Bean Wine, my site, but Dorothy Alatorre's recipe
  
  

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  August 1st, 2005
  
  

  I received the following email not too long ago: "I was reading a wine book and it listed wines from flowers that are poisonous. Lilac was listed. I have made lilac wine and have consumed it. I got the recipe from your site. Is the book wrong?"

  I bet I address the issue of toxicity at least 10 times a year in writings of one form or another. It occurred to me that I really haven't done it here in a thorough way, so this would be a good time -- especially after flirting with the issue in my last entry (on Day Lily Wine).

  Toxic Does Not Mean Poisonous
  
  

  Some years back I received a request for a lilac wine recipe. I had one (and 5 bottles of the wine gathering dust in a wine rack), but I declined sending it because I had come across a web site that said the flowers were toxic.

  Toxic does not mean poisonous. It is unfortunate so many people use the two words interchangeably. It is especially unfortunate when they set themselves up as an authority by publishing a list of either edible or non-edible plants and use the word "poisonous" when they should have used "toxic." For example, elderberries are toxic, but only a couple of species are toxic enough to actually make you wish you hadn't eaten them (or made wine from them).

  After a great deal of research, and many letters (and emails) later, I arrived at the following understanding.

  There are many sites out there that claim to list non-edible plants. If you examine them in enough detail, you might discover -- as I did -- that there are three original lists of non-edible plants. All other lists are variations of these three. Some we authors try to be all inclusive and combine two or even all three lists, but offer no explanation of how the lists were compiled or what they might mean. It is the three original lists that you have to examine and ignore all the rest. It took me a week to track down the original three lists, but I lost their names and URLs some months back when my computer crashed. But I did learn something before the crash.

  The Three Lists
  
  

  One list contains every plant that could find ever having been reported to cause illness in humans and animals. If one reads the entries instead of simply copying the listed names of plants, one will see that the author evaluates the data and says things like, "has been reported to cause illness in cattle grazing exclusively on this plant," or, "purgative toxicity confirmed for felines." This is the most helpful database I have ever found for toxic effects of plants, and I hope to stumble across it again some day.

  Another list contains toxicity reports for humans only, but also includes dermatological toxicity (from skin irritation to extreme rash, caused by skin contact to the sap, oils, or hairs on the plant). This, too, is a very useful list because it tells you the effect and relative dose for ingestion toxins, which is really all you should be concerned with. We all know that stinging nettles and poison ivy cause skin problems, but you can make wine from nettle tops without a problem. Not so with poison ivy because the oils that cause skin problems have an ingestion effect too. Web authors who use this site as a source are prone to simply copy the names of plants mentioned on the original site without comment or weight. In other words, nettles, poison ivy and deadly nightshade all get listed equally, but so do lilacs, elderberries and day lilies.

  The third list identifies the compounds of toxicity and reports every plant that contains any of them. This list is next to useless for the winemaker, as it contains the following compounds by class:

  • Alkaloids: considering that over 40% of the plant families contain alkaloids, this list contains coffee, tea, cocoa, and a lot of things we ingest all the time.
  • Glycosides: many glycosides are not toxic at all, but a large number (about 800) contain poisonous cyanoid compounds. The problem is the amount, where the compounds are located, and the dose required to cause problems. That list contains apricots, cherries, plums, apples, peaches, and tomatoes, to name just a few. The cyanoids are, of course, in their seeds or, in the case of tomatoes, in the green, raw fruit and stems.
  • Oxalates and Oxalic Acid: even heavenly laden plants can be eaten in moderation; beets and rhubarb are listed.
  • Tannins and Phenols: let's see...grapes, elderberries, blueberries, and a host of others are included. If this makes sense raise your hand.
  • Resins and Volatile Oils: plants listed here are really bad dudes and ingestion in quantity can cause death, so this is one true category of concern (includes poinsettias and rhododendrons).
  Let the Reader Beware
  
  

  The bottom line is that you really need to do in-depth research when it comes to toxic plants. Many, many lists contain the names of really common plants when in reality it is cats that are affected by them, or grazing sheep, or an oil in their roots that you would never encounter in a normal lifetime. The wise thing to do is stay away from simple lists and search out descriptive entries that actually tell you what it is about the plant that warrants avoidance and why. You may just discover, as I did, that some toxic plants lose all of their toxicity when cooked.

  An excellent reference book for any winemaker's library is Common Poison Plants and Mushrooms of North America.

  In answering the original question, I discovered that it was entirely unlikely (although still possible) anyone would get sick drinking lilac wine in moderation. I drank all of mine long ago and have made it several times since.

  • Plants for a Future Database Search, not one of the three lists, but very good
  • Toxic House Plant List, not the best, but useful
  • Toxic Garden Plant List, same category as above (I question "Chrysanthemum" on the list)
  
  

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  July 22nd, 2005
  
  

  Last month my wife and I met a lovely couple who grow over 1,500 varieties of day lily and several hundred varieties of hydrangea. Coincidentally, a reader recently asked if I had a recipe for day lily wine. The two events are not related. Walking through a garden with over 1,500 varieties of day lily did not give me any special knowledge of the flower, except to learn there are an estimated 60,000 varieties of day lily in the world. But it did spark an interest in the flower, and since then I have learned more about it.

  Now, it so happens that I do have a recipe for day lily wine. The problem with day lilies is that while most -- but not all -- species are edible, some cause nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. My sources say you have to gorge yourself on the bad ones to experience this, or eat some of the green stem attached to the flower base. My problem is that I don’t know which are and which are not edible. But I learned that the very first day lilies imported to Colonial America were edible and quickly escaped into the wild. The large clumps of wild day lilies found throughout the Eastern United States and Canada are descendants of those early escapees. Known botanically as Hemerocallis fulva, the common day lily is perfectly safe to eat and make wine with. As for me, I have only made wine from flowers given to me and certified as edible. If you know that your lilies are edible, then you might try the following recipe.

  Day Lily Wine
  
  
  • 2-1/2 qts day lily petals, lightly packed
  • 1 11-1/2 oz can of Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
  • 6-1/2 pts water
  • 1 lb 10 oz granulated sugar
  • 2 tsp acid blend
  • 1/8 tsp powdered grape tannin
  • 1 tsp yeast nutrient
  • Champagne or Hock wine yeast

  Pick petals only and wash. Be careful to remove all green portions of stem, as this will cause illness. Put petals in nylon straining bag, tie closed, and set in primary. Meanwhile, bring one quart of water to a boil and stir in sugar until dissolved. Remove from heat and quickly pour over nylon bag in primary. Cover primary and set aside for five minutes. Add remaining water and white grape juice concentrate to cool the must. Stir in the remaining ingredients and activated yeast, cover, and put in a warm place for five days, squeezing bag gently each day. Drip drain and discard petals. Pour liquid into secondary fermentation vessel and fit airlock. When wine clears, rack into clean secondary, top up and refit airlock. Rack, top up and refit airlock every 30 days as long as even a fine dusting of lees form. When wine stops throwing sediment for 30 days, rack into bottles and age 6-12 months before tasting. [Author's own recipe.]

  This recipe makes a wine with 12-1/2% alcohol by volume. Do not make it stronger than this or the alcohol will mask the flavor of the flower.

  I like this wine slightly sweet, and by "slightly" I mean with a specific gravity of 1.002 to 1.004. Serve it chilled. When the season is right, serve it on the patio with a salad garnished with day lily petals.

  • Stalking the Wild Day Lily, edible flowers, edible roots
  • Day Lily Flowers, a primer
  • Day Lily, photos of the wild flower
  • Daylilies, growing them
  • The American Hemerocallis Society, for the day lily enthusiast
  
  

  ---

  
  July 8th, 2005
  
  

  I received a good question the other day. "I have been trying to find some ways to sweeten wine with sugar before bottling. My wife loves very sweet dessert type wines. I have read a lot, but nobody really discusses sweetening to ones proper taste. I have a friend who uses a syrup. He uses white table sugar and some other ingredients that you boil to make the syrup. My batch of syrup did not taste as good as his. So I have been trying to find some different ways to add sugar to sweeten my wine before bottling. Do you have any syrup type recipes that could be made from sugar or any other ways to sweeten my wine to taste?"

  Sweetening can be a problem, but need not be. Here are some thoughts on the subject:

  Stabilize First
  
  

  First, be very sure the wine is stabilized before adding sugar to it or it will start fermenting again, a potentially explosive situation if you sweeten and then bottle it. It takes both potassium metabisulfite (or crushed Campden tablets) and potassium sorbate and a little time to stabilize a wine.

  One crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and 1/2 teaspoon of potassium sorbate (also dissolved) per gallon of wine will do the trick, but this only prevents the existing live yeast from reproducing and keeping the colony going. Until they die out, these existing yeast are quite capable of restarting fermentation. So, stabilize, wait a couple of weeks, sweeten to taste, and then wait another couple of weeks just to be sure the airlock doesn't start bubbling again.

  I always rack my wine one last time before bottling, as racking removes more yeast from the wine than any other thing you can do. You will almost always see a very fines dusting of sediment on the bottom of the secondary after you stabilize and wait. That dust is the yeast that weren't able to reproduce before expiring.

  Simple Syrup
  
  

  Second, you can sweeten with just sugar or you can make a simple syrup. You make a syrup with two parts sugar dissolved in one part of water (as in two cups of sugar in one cup of water). You should boil the water, remove from the heat, add the sugar, and stir like heck to make the syrup, as that much sugar doesn't easily dissolve in cold or warm water.

  Here's a helpful hint. If you have a really strong blender (we have a Bosch), put the sugar in it, turn it on high for 2-3 minutes or until the sugar becomes powder, and then add the prescribed amount of warm-to-hot (not boiling) water and turn it on low until the sugar dissolves completely. Do NOT use commercial powdered sugar, as it contains corn starch to keep the sugar from re-solidifying and corn starch will permanently cloud your wine.

  Allow the simple syrup to cool to room temperature (not in a refrigerator or it might start re-crystallizing) before continuing.

  Sweetening to Taste
  
  

  Third, measure how much liquid it takes to fill your hydrometer test jar to within three inches of the top. It take about a cup to fill mine that far. Measure out that much wine into a large water glass and stir into it two tablespoons of simple syrup. Fill the hydrometer test jar with this sweetened wine and measure the specific gravity. Write that number on a piece of paper and set a wine glass on top of the number. Pour about one inch of wine from the hydrometer test jar into that wine glass and pour the remaining wine back into the large water glass.

  Replace the amount of wine you poured into the wine glass so you have as much as you started with last time and stir into it two more tablespoons of simple syrup. Again pour it into the hydrometer test jar and measure the specific gravity. Write the number on a piece of paper and again set an empty wine glass on the number. Pour an inch of wine into the glass and return the rest to the water glass.

  Again replace what you used and add two more tablespoons of simple syrup. Stir, pour into the hydrometer test jar, and repeat the previous procedures. Do this until you have four or five wine glasses sitting on their specific gravity figures. Now taste them in the order they were filled (first glass to the last) and note the one that tasted best to you. It will be the one you tasted just before you picked up the one that was too sweet. Look at it's specific gravity. That's the specific gravity you want to sweeten your wine to.

  Hitting a target specific gravity is not hard, but it does take time and patience. Unfortunately, I can't simply construct a look-up table for you saying to add this much simple syrup to achieve that specific gravity reading because not all wines will be equally dry to begin with. You just have to add some, stir, measure, and adjust until you are very close to the target s.g. Then add syrup, stir real good, wait 15-20 minutes, and stir again. This time when you measure the specific gravity the syrup will be better integrated into the wine and the reading will be more accurate.

  Here's another consideration. Over time, all wines mellow out somewhat and actually taste a little sweeter that they did when first bottled. If you plan on keeping the wine for a couple of years, you might want to back off the target sweetness just a hair to allow for this. For example, if the target s.g. is 1.012, you might want to sweeten it to 1.011 or even 1.010 to allow for this perception.

  • Bottling the Wine, other things to think about
  
  

  ---

  
  June 21st, 2005
  
  

  A reader wrote, "I made about 25 gallons of pear wine last year. The wine is a light yellow color and has a weird kerosene smell to it. What is up with that?" The problem I have is that I would really like to have some of the wine to smell and taste. What you call "kerosene" may register differently to me. Nonetheless, I tried to answer as best I could.

  A Matter of Smell
  
  

  There is one wine that is more frequently identified with a kerosene smell than any other, and it is Niagara grape wine. I do not really know the reason for this, but have been told it has to do with skin-juice contact -- that pressing the grapes immediately after crushing them will eliminate it. Riesling, it has been pointed out, will develop a slight kerosene bouquet in about three years. No one really seems to know why. However, the reader was speaking of pear wine, not Niagara or Riesling.

  Ascorbic acid (vitamin C), I've been told, is often added to wine to shift disulfide odors to mercaptans, which can then be removed with copper. Wines with disulfides smell like rubber, vegetables, kerosene, cat urine, or just vaguely dirty. According to my source, ascorbic acid interferes with iodine SO2 tests, giving a false high result. The source does not recommend using ascorbic acid in grape juice immediately after crush (or press for white grapes) as an antioxidant because it scavenges oxygen needed by yeasts during their growth stage. I cannot confirm these claims.

  Another source told me that Rieslings get the smell of kerosene from a chemical called 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydrona­phthalene (TDN for short). The uninformed consider these wines to be a poorly made, but this is normal for Riesling. Again, I cannot confirm this as being true.

  The above explanations have been reviewed by a very good chemist who says they are "reasonable," but cannot confirm they are true in the context to which they were inserted, but that is good enough for me at this time. I'm trying to be helpful, not authoritative.

  Could it Be the Pears?
  
  

  The problem, of course, is that these do not necessarily explain the smell in the pear wine. I have made and tasted a great deal of pear wine. Most of my pear wine was from hard, cooking pears (Keiffer, Carnes, or Pineapple pears), but some was from softer, sweeter eating pears. I have learned over the years that neither of these are not the best pears for perry or wine, but they are what I had at hand. But I do not know what kind of pears the reader with the problem used. It might (or might not) make a difference.

  A rather lengthy web search produced the following classification of pears, from Grafton and Cunningham's Perry Pear Varieties web page (second link, below):

  • Sweet pears have low acidity; around 0.2% (w/v) (calculated as malic acid), and fairly low tannin content; below 0.15%(w/v).
  • Medium Sharp pears have an acidity of between 0.2% and 0.6% (w/v) and a tannin content of below 0.15% (w/v).
  • Bittersweet pears have an acidity of below 0.45% (w/v) and a tannin content of above 0.2% (w/v). Very few pear varieties fall into this category.
  • Bittersharp (Astringent-sharp) pears have an acidity of greater than 0.45% (w/v) and a tannin content of greater than 0.2% (w/v). These pears have a penetrating flavour which is very striking since the tannin is astringent rather than bitter. This category of pear is unsuitable for eating (due to the harsh flavour) but makes the best perries.

  Despite following many internal and external links, I could find nothing on the pears themselves that would account for the smell of kerosene (with over 3,000 varieties worldwide, the referenced site lists only a few dozen and so is not inclusive by any means). But elsewhere, I discovered something interesting....

  In the care and maintenance of the pear orchard, as with grape vineyards and gardens in general, trees are treated variously for disease and insect pests. One of the treatments for pear trees is "kerosene emulsion." As the name implies, it is made with kerosene itself (as well as several other ingredients). The directions I found said to spray on foliage 10 or even 15 times in the season. And so I wonder if the reader's problem could have been more direct. Could the pears simply not have been washed well enough...?

  • Pear Wine, my generic recipe
  • Perry Pear Varieties, if they work for perry, they work for wine
  • Perry Making, fact sheet, by Lehm Berg Winery
  • All About Pears, really fun reading
  • Pruning, Spraying, Harvesting, search the page for "kerosene"
  
  

  ---

  
  June 11th, 2005
  
  Well, mustang grapes, they ain't too sweet
  But that mustang wine just can't be beat
  (lyrics of "Mustang Wine" by Steve Earle)
  
  

  I have been watching the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition ever since its inception and have never seen a mustang grape wine place in the Native American Wines categories. This year I thought I would at least introduce the judges to this wonderful Texas staple, even if it didn't place. I was quite surprised to receive a Gold Medal in the mail, along with the judging sheets for my single entry. The only comment among the three judges -- at least the only one conveyed to me -- was, "Much better taste than aroma."

  Yes, grapes of the Vitis mustangensis species do have an unusual aroma that takes a little getting used to if you are unfamiliar with it. In this regard, it is similar to the Vitis labrusca species in that it has an unusual aroma, but the aroma of the mustang is nothing like that of the labruscas. They are quite different and unique, yet signatures unto themselves.

  The WineMaker International judging sheets, like every judging sheet I have ever seen, allows the evaluation of both aroma and bouquet. This competition allows up to 6 points for this most important characteristic, for we all know that smell and taste are the two features of a wine that allow the most enjoyment where it counts -- in the consumption. The WineMaker International sheet allows for the following awarding of points:

  • Exceptional -- Wonderful characteristic aroma of grape variety or wine type. Outstanding and complex bouquet. Exceptional balance of aroma and bouquet. (6 points)
  • Excellent -- Strong characteristic aroma of grape variety or wine type. Complex bouquet. Good balance of aroma and bouquet. (5 points)
  • Good -- Good characteristic aroma of grape variety or wine type. Admirable bouquet. (4 points)
  • Pleasant -- Good characteristic aroma of grape variety or wine type. Pleasant bouquet. (3 points)
  • Acceptable -- No perceptable aroma or bouquet or with slight off odors. (2 points)
  • Needs Improvement -- Off odors very detectable. (1 point)
  • Objectionable -- Offensive odors. (0 points)

  When I entered this wine, I also set aside a bottle to enter in the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild (SARWG) 2005 Spring Competition, as this would yield a true test of how good a mustang wine it actually was. SARWG's judges are very familiar with the mustang grape and most of them make it's wine. The wine placed 1st Place in the SARWG competition and was judged for (but did not win) Best of Show. In evaluating its aroma and bouquet, it earned the highest points allowable. The three WineMaker International judges found the aroma and bouquet to be Excellent (5 points), Acceptable (2 points), and Good (4 points). In other words, they did not know what mustang wine is supposed to smell like. But that is okay. They at least appreciated its taste, appearance and aftertaste, and it did very well in "overall impression."

  For an introductory evaluation, it wasn't bad at all. I only hope that others will enter mustang wines in this competition in future years. It is an important Texas grape, yet is virtually unknown outside this region of the country. It's time it "got around."

  • Mustang Grape Wines, my recipes
  • Mustang Wine, two versions of the song
  • Mustang Grapes, fact sheet, by Lehm Berg Winery
  • Lonestar Native Wine, Lehm Berg's mustang blend
  
  

  ---

  
  June 6th, 2005
  

  I received two emails in two days asking where my new Blogs are. My apologies to all who look for them and only find the old ones. Life has been busy, and time has been in short supply. But I'll try to get back into writing for you.

  I received an email this morning from a grape grower "up north" who was complaining that his vines are not flowering as much this year as last. I had to think about that a moment. His grapes are just now in flower. Wow! My bunch grapes have fully grown bunches that will undergo verasion in 6-8 weeks. My mustang grapes will ripen around the end of this month and will start dropping grapes in about 6 weeks. By the end of August, I will have a hard time finding a grape still hanging. Such is the difference between South Texas and "up north." I am blessed.

  A fellow Texas wrote and asked about making wine from mimosa flowers. The mimosa (Albizia julibrissin -- al-BIZ-zee-uh joo-lih-BRISS-in) tree is native to Asia, from Iran to China, and is also known as the Silk Tree. It matures at 15-25 feet in height, 25-35 feet in spread and often has a flattened crown. It is low branching with open, spreading foliage with delicate, fern-like leaves. The pink, silky flowers are globular, pompom-like, very fragrant, and attractants of butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees. Its light, dappled shade and tropical effect make it popular as a deck or patio tree. It can withstand drought and strong winds and grows well in the American South. It now grows wild throughout much of the eastern half of the United States.

  Its leaves and flowers are used for tea. The flowers can be cooked as a vegetable. While I have never seen a recipe for mimosa wine, I have developed one that makes a very nice, light wine that is best served chilled. The recipe makes a 10-11% alcohol wine -- any stronger and you may have a balance problem.

  Mimosa Flower Wine
  
  
  • 2 quarts loosely packed mimosa flowers
  • 1 11-oz can 100% white grape juice concentrate, frozen
  • 1 lb 3 oz granulated sugar (to s.g. 1.076)
  • 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
  • 1/8 tsp grape tannin
  • 6-1/2 pints water
  • 1 crushed Campden tablet
  • 1 tsp yeast nutrient
  • 1 pkt Hock or Champagne wine yeast

  Wash the flowers and put in nylon straining bag with a dozen marbles for weight, tie bag, and place in primary. Heat 1 quart water and dissolve sugar. Cool with frozen grape juice concentrate and remaining water and add to primary. Add remaining ingredients except yeast and stir well. Cover primary and wait 10-12 hours before adding activated yeast. Recover primary, move to a warm place and stir daily. When specific gravity drops to 1.015 or below, drip-drain bag and transfer wine to secondary. Affix airlock and move to cooler (but not cold) place. Rack after 30 days and again after another 30 days, topping up and refitting airlock each time. If fermentation has finished, wine should be clear or begin to clear, although pollen will continue to settle for another 2-3 months. Rack again 90 days after wine has cleared, top up and reattach airlock. Set aside another 90 days to bulk age. Stabilize, sweeten to taste (excellent at 1.010) and rack into bottles. May taste after 6 months in bottle. [Author's own recipe]

  • Mimosa, characteristics and photos
  • Medicinal Herbs: Mimosa Tree, interesting information
  • Mimosa, as an exotic pest plant
  • Florida Mimosa, nice photograph
  
  

  ---

  
  May 17th, 2005
  

  I received a very nice email back on May 2nd from a reader who pointed out an error in the "Extended Instructions for Making Wines from Kits" published here on December 18th, 2003. He was not the first to point out the error, but for one reason or another I always neglected to correct it until now.

  For the curious, the error was in referring to the quantity of wine made by most kits as 5 gallons when in fact it is 6 gallons. This is not a huge error, but it was an error nonetheless.

  The fact that I just read, answered and acted upon the gentleman's email today, when it was sent on the 2nd, speaks volumes for my schedule. Frequent trips, a backlog of work at home and at my day-job, and a strong desire to spend some time with my wife in the evenings add up to a huge backlog of email. I answered 106 emails over the past four days and still have over 150 waiting to be answered. Please don't write me unless absolutely necessary, and even then be prepared to wait a while for a reply.

  Tamarind Wine Revisited
  
  

  Another reader, recalling my blog last December about Tamarind Wine, wanted to point me to a published recipe. I appreciate this gesture immensely. She found the recipe on the About Mead website's posting of Mead Lover's Digest #779, which contained the recipe. Here it is:

  • 6 oz. tamarind pulp
  • 2 lb. sugar
  • 1 tsp. pectic enzyme
  • 1 tsp. yeast nutrient
  • wine yeast

  Simmer the tamarind in 1/2 gallon of water for five or ten minutes, strain. Into the liquid, stir the sugar and nutrient. Cool and add the pectic enzyme and yeast. Top up with water to make one gallon. (From Worldwide Winemaking Recipes).

  My own Tamarindo WIne is still mellowing and I am not prepared to report on it yet. Let me just say the recipes are similar but not the same. Stay tuned....

  • Mead Lover's Digest #779, the post with the Tamarind recipe
  
  

  ---

  
  April 15th, 2005
  

  Well, it's tax day, I sent our return to the IRS this morning, and now I'm relaxing with a glass of semi-sweet Orange Wine. It's an outstanding wine, if I do say so myself. It took a 1st place in Fruit Wines Dry last Sunday at the Spring Competition of the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild. What a tough competition this has become.

  In the Guild, the word Regional is interpreted broadly. Best of Show (Grape Wine) was won handily by Rob Overley of La Coste, Teaxs with an excellent home-grown Champanel, but Best of Show (Non-Grape Wine) was captured by Vernon Speer of Jefferson City, Missouri. Vernon joined the Guild about two weeks before the competition and sent four wines to get a "reality check" on how his skills were developing. Pretty well, I'd say -- all four placed, and he took the Big Kahuna to boot. According to the BOS judges, his Cranberry (Dry) narrowly beat my Hazelnut Mead for top honors, but beat it he did. The winemaker with the most placings was Luke Clark of Leesville, Louisiana, who went home with 12 (I counted them) ribbons.

  I've been asked to publish the recipe for the Hazelnut Mead, one of six wines I entered. All six placed, but the Mead was special. It's been aging for two years and has mellowed out really well.

  An Evolving Mead
  
  

  My intention was to make a varietal mead with a white clover honey I purchased from Homebrew Adventures. About the time the honey arrived, I bought a bag of hazelnuts at Sun Harvest, a health food supermarket, in San Antone. I mixed five gallons of must and began fermentation in a primary, as I always do. The initial specific gravity was 1.090. This was transferred to secondary on the 8th day. I did not record the yeast I used, but believe it was Côte des Blancs; in any case it was a very low foamer. A few days later I purchased some absolutely beautiful vanilla beans and decided to draw off a gallon of the mead for fermentation with the beans. This would leave me with four gallons in a 5-gallon carboy -- disaster waiting to happen -- and that's when I thought of the hazelnuts.

  I warmed the oven to 200 degrees F. and placed the shelled nuts in a pie tin in the oven. After 45 minutes, I removed them and let them cool. Then I cracked the nut kernels and put them back in the oven for 15 minutes. I rubbed them with paper towels to absorb the oil that beaded on the kernels. I placed the cracked kernels (about 20 ounces) in a one-gallon jug and the vanilla beans (chopped) in another one-gallon jug and siphoned a gallon of must into each. The remainder of the must went into a 3-gallon carboy. Dividing my initial ingredients by five, the recipe would look something like this:

  Hazelnut Mead
  
  
  • 20 oz cracked, dried hazelnut kernels
  • 2.4 lbs clover honey
  • water to make one gallon
  • 3 tsp acid blend
  • 1 tsp yeast nutrient
  • 1 crushed and dissolved Campden tablet
  • Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast

  Bring water to boil and add honey, stirring. When water returns to a boil, reduce heat to hold a simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Spoon off any scum that rises to the surface. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, make a yeast starter with a couple of tablespoons of the honey-water, a pinch of yeast nutrient and 1/2 cup of warm (not hot) water. When honey-water cools to 110 degrees F., transfer to primary and add all ingredients except yeast starter and hazelnuts. Stir to dissolve and cover with sanitized cloth for 6-8 hours. Add yeast starter and recover primary. On 8th day, put hazelnuts in secondary, stir the must to suspend any fallen yeast, and transfer must to secondary until surface is 4 inches below mouth. Attach airlock to secondary. Transfer remaining must to 375-mL bottle and attach airlock (in #3 bung). Ferment two months and check s.g. If below 1.020, strain off hazelnuts and combine musts. Allow sediments to settle and rack into sanitized secondary. Rack as required (I did it every two months) until mead clears, adding crushed and dissolved Campden tablet every other racking. Thereafter, rack every two months for six months. Sweeten with honey-syrup (2 parts honey dissolved in 1 part water) until s.g. is 1.006. Wait 30 days to ensure fermentation does not restart, add Campden if required, and bottle. Age in bottles for two years.

  • San Antonio Regional Wine Guild, competition results will be posted soon
  • Clover Honey, at Homebrew Adventures
  • Mead Recipes, from my site
  
  

  ---

  
  April 2nd, 2005
  

  My article, "Grape / Non-Grape Blends," in the April-May 2005 issue of WineMaker magazine was severely edited. Still, they did a good job of making a homogeneous article out of it, considering they cut about 30%. But, what they deleted was material I was extremely proud of. I had thought about posting the deleted material here, but it just doesn't stand alone very well.

  There is one piece of it, however, that does deserve mention. The article makes a somewhat off-handed mention of using the Pearson Square to calculate the ratio of spirit to wine to use when fortifying a wine. This is not how I wrote it. The explanation of the Peason Square was a somewhat major portion of the article.

  
  Feature: Blend Like a Pro
  
  

  The editor explained to me that they had recently published an article on the Peason Square and were therefore cutting this section, but the previous piece did not really say what my deleted section said. While I did indeed cover some of the same material, I went on to say that that the Pearson Square could be used to calculate ratios for blends to adjust for any measurable variable -- such as titratable acid (TA), pH, residual sugar, or even SO2. I thought this would be a rather major revelation for most readers of the magazine.

  
  Layout of the Peason Square
  
  

  The Pearson Square is normally used in winemaking to calculate how much brandy or other spirit we need to add to a wine to bring its alcohol level up to the range of Port. The figure above shows the Pearson Square for calculating for alcohol. If Wine1 (A) is a 40% alcohol by volume (abv) brandy, Wine2 (B) is a 10% abv Lenoir, and you wanted to blend them to create an 18% abv Port (C), simple math will tell you how much of each to add to the blend. Subtract the value of C from A to derive E, the amount of Wine1 you need. Subtract the value of B from C to derive D, the amount of Wine2 required. The figure below shows these calculated values. You would blend 8 parts (D) of the 10% wine (B) with 22 parts (E) of the 40% brandy (A) to derive an 18% Port (C).

  
  Using the Pearson Square
  
  

  But you can just as easily calculate the ratio of wines to blend together to correct known variables -- pH, for example. Just make A the pH of Wine1, B the pH of Wine2, and C the desired pH of the blend. Simple math will yield D (the parts of Wine2) and E (the parts of Wine1) -- the number of units (pints, liters, gallons, etc.) to blend together to achieve the desired pH (C).

  It is recommended that you blend an intermediate sample according to the calculated formula and let it rest for 2-3 weeks to allow the two wines to harmonize or integrate their individualities. Then taste the sample to determine if the calculations yielded the desired taste results. If not, you can play with small variations of the calculated formula, mix these, and let them rest as before to see if any of the results are more satisfying. The sample blends can be in any volumes that fit whatever small wine bottles you have on hand. For example, the author has screw-cap wine bottles in 125-ml, 175-ml, 187-ml, and 250-ml sizes for this and other purposes.

  Because using the Pearson Square to solve for TA or pH involves math with decimals, I have posted a number of JavaScript calculators on a new page on my web site to make it easy for you. The second link below takes you to it..

  • Grape / Non-Grape Blends, my article on blending wines
  • Blending Wines, the JavaScript calculators
  
  

  ---

  
  March 17th, 2005
  

  I've been using my Carboy Lifter to rack my elderberry and it truly is a back-saver. The Carboy Lifter is the invention of Martin Benke -- something I've needed for years.

  Martin's invention was born as an idea at a meeting of the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild (SARWG) last year. Martin and I were talking about new gadgets for winemakers and I said what I and many other winemakers need is a lift of some sort to lift our carboys. After several severe lower back "events," all stemming from a ruptured disc when I was still a young man, I finally decided I can't afford to lift a 6- or 6.5-gallon carboy any longer. Heck, when I lift a 5-gallon carboy I risk several days of agony.

  Martin took the idea home and a few months later told me at another SARWG meeting that he had built a carboy lift. I wanted to see it. He went out to his vehicle, got it, and demonstrated it to me. I wanted to buy it right then and there, but he wanted to test it a while to make sure it stood up to prolonged use. Last month, after making several modifications, he delivered the first ready-for-sale Lifter to me. I flat love it!

  
  6.5-gallons of elderberry on Carboy Lifter
  
  How Much Is Your Back Worth?
  
  

  The last three times I suffered a lower back "event" (that's what my neurologist calls them), I waited until the sciatic nerve pains pretty much encompassed my whole left leg and I could no longer find a tolerable position in which to stand, sit or lay. By then I was a basket case and deserved the frustration my doctor heaped upon me. But I gratefully accepted his prescription for a powerful pain reliever and forced myself to walk next door to the pharmacy for the medication. And every time I lift a big carboy, I risk going through the same ordeal. When I asked Martin how much he wanted for the Lifter, he said he had to get $150 just to make it worthwhile to build them. "Shucks," I said, "my back is worth twice that."

  The Carboy Lifter raises the carboy up to a height of just under 3 feet. It doesn't quite reach my kitchen counter, but does lift it up onto my dining room table and set it gently down. But it really doesn't need to be set on the table. The wine can be racked directly from the carboy while it is on the Lifter.

  The Carboy Lifter sits on 4 wheels for mobility and comes with two mini-pallets upon which to set the carboys. Extra pallets are available. Two forklift-like prongs slip into th