Adding must to the press

Since arriving back from our visit to the Catalonia region of Spain, where we visited with winemakers and cava producers, we have been busy with our own winemaking. Late last week we visited a company in Jessup, Maryland that sells wine grapes in 36-pound lugs and grape juice to home winemakers.

We were looking for a white grape variety that we could use in our recently buried qvevri. We finally settled for a Muscat grape, not exactly what we wanted but since it is getting late in the season it will do for our qvevri 2014 vintage. At the warehouse, it was suggested that we wait for the cold, refrigerated grapes to warm up a little – about 24 hours. We also needed to purchase the “correct” yeast as well as the clay to seal the top of the qvevri.

The day after purchasing the Muscat, we began hand destemming the grapes. The destemming for two lugs of grapes took two of us three hours to destem – much longer than what I originally thought it would take! As we destemmed we sorted the grapes into three groups: those that would go into the qvevri, those that we would press and those that we would use as raisins.

We crushed the grapes and added them to the sanitized qvevri, added yeast and then covered with a circular piece of Plexiglas with an airlock inserted. The Plexiglas is fastened to the qvevri with a moist clay coil. The cover needs to be removed two to three times a day for punch down until fermentation is completed. The must began to ferment the first day and a cap formed the second day.

This past weekend we went to Tin Lizzie Wineworks where we spent an hour pressing our Bordeaux blend into a French oak barrel which is now ready to have the wine racked off the gross lees.  While we were pressing the grapes we tasted a bit of the wine and it is definitely promising to be a great wine when it is finished and aged about two years.

After pressing our grapes we returned home with some leftover grape skins and seeds. Adding dissolved sugar water to the skins, we are attempting to make a “second run” wine. Two years ago we made a “second run” wine and we were very pleased. We hope this years “second run” wine will be as good. We discovered it’s a great way to make an affordable, everyday wine.

If you enjoy wine and want to learn more about it, I recommend making a carboy of wine at home. Check out our Wine Trail Traveler winemaking website.

Cheers!
Kathy