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Make wine
Ok, I know, in the US you are not allowed to drink alcohol until 21 (which is strange, as you are allowed to get shot at and killed in Iraq at the age of 18), but kids just love making wine, and as my friend George confirms, making beer. Maybe it is just in our genetic encoding ...
A couple weeks ago Steve and Bob asked me if I want to buy some Pinot grapes with them, just 500lbs, good for about 15 cases of Pinot. The grapes came from Soledad, next to the Estancia vineyards in Monterrey country. We crushed them and put the must (with a brix of 26!) in two plastic barrels. Bob started the fermentation by adding the same yeast used in the execptional pinots we like best and then a little over a week later we did the press.
Then the work started - and here Michael was a big help. 
Cleanliness is a top priority and so we started off scrubbing and cleaning the press and all the carboys (5 - 7 gallon glass containers). We took turns scooping the fermented must into to press. The freerun jus yielded almost 2 carboys for each the two yeasts we used and we got got another carboy plus some to top off when we did the press, which was mostly done by my son Michael - a nice little workout. So the 500lbs grapes gave us about 36 gallons of wine - we will lose some during second fermenation, but intial tasting showed great promise. Also it was interesting to see the difference the yeast can make.
The cake was pretty small, after all 250lbs is apparently not that much.
The next step will be to
control the second fermentation, Steve and Bob will keep an eye on that and then in 6-12 months the bottleing, which needs people and time.
So, I am looking foreward to serve my own Pinot in a year!
I was looking for an article on how to make wine. I thought this article would be more explicit on the process. Can you add some more details on the process? Thank you.
salvia
Hi Salvia,
On the website I just post updates on our wine making progress - the best place to actually get some real information on how you have to make wine is in the book From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine
by Jeff Cox.
We are actually using his book to check we are doing it right
A couple weeks ago we finally bottled the Pinot and I could took 3 cases home. The wine still tastes great and I look forward to when it ages in the bottle. Now I just have to make a label.
It seems that the Financial Times cannot stop talking about Pinot Noir - their top political commentator Clive Crook links to a story HERE
as well as their wine columnist Jancis Robinson had a few great lines on Pinot HERE
We are definitively working on the right wine!
This weekend Steve and Bob called me up to help with the racking. Again Michael joined me and we pumped the wine from their carboys to newly cleaned fresh ones. The sediments and a little oak did not get to the new containers.
As an additional treat we could taste the wine to see how far a long it is. It was very interesting to see that one of the yeast we used brought out more flavors to the nose, the other yeast brought more flavors to the tongue, and the oak only became noticeable with the pressed wine.