30 November 2007
[Epi 17] TintoTV - how to start a wine kit!!!
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So, as the blackberry, strawberry, and Welch’s wine continue to age in their 1 gallon carboy, and with the weather cooling down, Stephany and I have decided to take a new step with our home winemaking: making wine from a wine kit!!! This is exciting now because we are making a bigger batch (6 gallons this time instead of 1 gallon) and we are now dealing with a product from wine grapes: vitis vinifera!
What are wine kits? Well, in a nutshell, there exist some companies that cater to home winemakers (like Winexpert, Cellar Craft, RJ Spagnols, Mosti Mondiale, etc…) that actually invest in juice from specific vineyards around the world. The juice is from the grapes in those vineyards and the company and the vineyard owners do all of the grape crushing and maceration for us (to extract any necessary color and tannin and more from the grapes/skins). The juice is then preserved for us and sometimes concentrated (in a fancy way, they remove some of the water from the juice to better package it and it is up to us to reconstitute the concentrate). The juice is then packaged with other ingredients such as oak and yeast and left for us to be the winemakers! So, like some other wineries, we are actually sourcing our juice from particular vineyards, and we are using the aforementioned companies as middle-men to help us out. These kits come in all sorts of flavors and varietals, check out this page just as an example .
Stephany and I, big fans of Argentina and of their local wine, chose to make Winexpert Argentine Malbec from their “Selection International” line. The kit comes with 4 gallons of concentrate; by adding 2 gallons of water, we have reconstituted the concentrate to actual grape juice from Argentina! Now there are many ways to customize the making of these kits, and I actually encourage it (it’s good to see individuality in different wine makers). There are some do’s and don’t‘s but we’ll learn those as we go along. The kit does come with its own set of instructions to make all 30 bottles and we are going to follow them pretty closely.
Today? The preparing for primary fermentation for our first wine kit!
- add 2 liters of hot water to the bottom of your sanitized primary fermenter while slowly adding package #1 (bentonite – a clarifying agent) – stir vigorously to break up clumps
- add juice concentrate (and stir vigorously – the concentrate is thick so you really need to mix it with the water)
- use water to rinse juice-bag and pour out residual concentrate juice
- keep stirring
- top off primary fermenter with water so that total liquid is 6 gallons
- take specific gravity reading
- add oak powder/dust and stir into juice!!!
- pitch the yeast! (yes we did use a yeast starter based on the Premier Cuvee yeast strand that came with the kit).
That’s it! About 25-30 bottles of our own Argentine malbec is underway and will be ready to bottle in as little as 6 weeks (though we’ll be more patient with the bulk aging). Leave us a comment, let us know how we did, and if you have any questions or any tips!
Cheers!
-Stephany and Nico
Great jobs guys!!! The show was great and the kit seems really cool, although I think I’m a bigger fan of the oak chips than the powder that came with the kit (but this is coming from one who has never tried making wine) – the chips just looked cooler. Keep up the good work … P.S. Ignorant question, how will the cooler weather affect the process in this batch and the other smaller batches you guys alredy have going?
— Juan Carlos Dec 1 #
You’ll did that well. Nico that was about a 40lb. box. I think you did well to leave it in the box for support and handling. That oak sawdust makes me nervous. I forsee problems in siphoning with that there unless it all settled to the bottom. I agree with Juan that I like the chips better. Wel’ll see how it turns out. thanks.
— Harry Hebert Dec 1 #
Nico & Steph, Have fun with the kit. I just finished my first kit, a WE Pinot Noir. I am starting a Gamay Beaujolais and adding raisins this time. I found out about your site on WinePress and read about tweaking kits there. I read somewhere that the oak had to be dust in order to effect the flavor in the short time it will be in contact with the wine. It will settle out and things will be fine.
— Jay Gulotta Dec 6 #
Nice show. I’ll be trying a kit soon. I’ve had some that has been really great. Good luck and thanks for all of your efforts. I appreciate it and look forward to more.
— Tom C. Dec 8 #
Great job guys. You put a lot more work into stirring in the oak powder than I do!
— PeterZ Jan 11 #