Joy of Home Wine Making (48 page)

APERITIF WINES

Europe has developed many aperitif wines. These are wines that are meant to wake the appetite. Byrrh, Dubonnet, Campari, and vermouth all come to mind.

Some of them are fortified, and some aren’t. Some of them are very sweet, some are dry, some include a lot of herbs and taste almost medicinal. Herb and seed wines may actually qualify as aperitifs.

It is my sneaking suspicion that most aperitif wines started out as wines that didn’t make good table wines, so people decided to make “lemonade” out of their “lemons.” I could be wrong.

Almost any wine can be served as an aperitif; Champagne and
sherry are both accepted as aperitifs. You can also serve one of your fruitier wines like blackberry over ice with a twist of lemon or lime or orange.

You can also buy vermouth flavoring and experiment with adding it to one of your white wines.

SPARKLING WINES

It’s hard not to love a sparkling wine. There is just something about bubbles that fascinates, makes wine taste better, and lends a feeling of celebration to any festive occasion.

Real Champagne comes from the Champagne region of France. Everything else is sparkling wine. It might be made by the Champagne method, but it is still “merely” sparkling wine.

There are six basic ways to get the sparkle into wine:

• accident
  
• methode Champenois
  
• closed tank fermentation, a.k.a.
  cuvée close
  
• Andovin method
  
• carbon dioxide forced into the wine
  
• cheat
  

Accidents do happen. Sometimes you think you’ve fermented out the wine, and lo, after bottling and aging it, you open the wine and you get a pleasant gush. The wine is
petillant
, or fizzy. You could refrigerate the rest of that batch before you open it, hoping that none of the corks blow and that none of the bottles break. The best thing to do is to stabilize the wine and rebottle it. I’ve had a few surprises, but I’ve been lucky, losing only a few corks and some wine. However, I don’t recommend you do things by accident; it’s too dangerous and messy.

The traditional method,
methode Champenois
, takes time and skill. The grapes are grown in a region with chalky soil, then they are harvested and made into wine. Later in the winter the wines are blended to each house’s specification, and the wine is bottled in extra-strong bottles with a heavy cork that is tied down. Then the wine is allowed to ferment and build up carbon dioxide. It is
put upside down in a rack called a
pupitres
, which looks like a huge sandwich signboard with holes cut out at various angles.

A skilled worker gradually moves the bottle up the rack, shaking down the sediment till the bottles are upside-down and the sediment is lodged in the neck.

Then the cork is loosened, and the sediment is allowed to spurt out. Afterward the bottle is topped up with wine, and the
dosage
, a bit of sugar in syrup, is added. The bottles are corked again and allowed to ferment out.

Nowadays, most wineries using the Champagne method have modified things a bit by using a bottle cap instead of a cork the first time around and freezing the neck of the bottle so that when the sediment is propelled out, it goes out in a solid plug of ice; that way, not as much wine is lost.

The Andovin method is much simpler, but it requires a large empty freezer. It modifies the sediment procedure considerably by pouring the wine off the sediment into bottles containing frozen dosage. It is still a somewhat dangerous, tricky method.

These methods produce fine, long-lasting bubbles and don’t traumatize the wine.

I have tried the Champagne method and concluded that my nerves and coordination are not up to the excitement of this particular winemaking tradition. The shower stall ever afterward seemed to have a faint winy smell to it, as well.

As an older gentleman who makes 200 bottles of rhubarb sparkling wine every year explained to me, “God hates a coward.”

I had not thought of it as a religious issue before.

As you can see, there are dedicated amateur winemakers who love sparkling wines and seem to have no trouble with
methode Champenois
. If you want to try it, I suggest that you read a good book on the subject (see bibliography), get to know someone who uses this method, and get them to show you.

I only recently heard of the Andovin method, and one day I’ll try it, when the freezer isn’t full of fruit waiting to be made into wine. It is described in the Andersons’
Winemaking
book (see bibliography).

Cuvée close
is just not doable by amateurs. You need equipment only a commercial winery or a very rich person could afford to own.

Forcing in carbon dioxide—which is how most cheap sparkling
wines (and soda pops) are made—works fine and is easily achieved at home by using a soda syphon. Cool the bottle of wine for several hours in the refrigerator, then open it and pour it into the soda syphon. Cool that for a few more hours, and there you are, sparkling wine! The bubbles are large and don’t last as long as those produced by the traditional method, but it works.

Then there is that method known in the scientific world as
cheating
.

Cheating
has a long and noble history in the world of professional and home winemaking. It works pretty darned well if you don’t mind the possibility of a little sediment now and then and some extra work.

If you have ever made beer or hard cider, you are probably on to me now.

To
cheat
, you make a nice dry wine of about 10 percent alcohol and the all-important
dosage
, before bottling it in champagne bottles as you would beer, using either bottle caps or plastic champagne stoppers and wires.

First, you need to make the wine. Use any of the light-colored wines from part two, or even the frozen juice wines from part one. You want a wine that you already know you like, that will ferment out dry, and that will taste fine when young. Some that I have tried are apple, peach, potato, apricot, citrus, mead, strawberry, raspberry, and Pink Plonk. Uncomplicated single-fruit wines such as apple seem to work out best.

Other wines that have traditionally been used to make sparkling wines are gooseberry, rhubarb, elderflower, dandelion, white grape, plum, and pineapple.

There is absolutely no reason why you can’t make sparkling red wines. Remember that most of our fruit reds are actually dark rosés.

However, there is a reason why you can’t make sparkling sherry or port: once you’ve fortified them, the alcohol will kill off any dosage you add.

When making sparkling wine, champagne yeast is nice but not essential. Champagne yeast ferments out fast and leaves a firm deposit, which is why it has become champagne yeast. However, there is no reason why you can’t use another yeast.

The way to proceed is to keep the PA at 10 percent or so, so you
know
it will ferment out and leave room for the dosage. Don’t
get cute and try for more alcohol or sweetness. Don’t use sodium metabisulphite after you’ve added the yeast in the initial fermentation. The acidity should be 0.60-0.75.

Put the wine into a glass secondary fermenter and let it go for six months at least, racking twice. Ferment it out dry, dry, dry and clear, clear, clear. Rack the wine into a sanitized primary fermenter.

Then add NO MORE than HALF A CUP (NOT HALF A POUND!!!!) of sugar to five gallons, or 1½ tablespoons per gallon. Stir it in well. If you like, you can make it into a syrup first, to make sure it gets distributed evenly. There should still be enough live yeast in the wine to take care of the sugar. Traditionally more yeast is used, but I rarely have a problem working with young wines, and I don’t think adding the yeast is a safe thing to do in this method.

Rack the wine into sanitized champagne bottles that have been rinsed out with boiling water after you have sanitized them. You don’t want to kill off the leftover yeast in the wine.

You can get champagne bottles from the wine supply store, some caterers and restaurants, or friends who have just had a wedding or large New Year’s party. Clean the bottles and soak them carefully, just as you would any wine bottle. Champagne bottles tend to get more mold in them because no one ever rinses them out after festivities. Sigh.

NEVER USE NORMAL WINE BOTTLES!!!!! They weren’t meant for this job. Don’t use beer bottles, either. There is too much potential for mistakes, which, with the percent of sugar we are using when making the wine, could be disastrous.

For capping you will need a bottle capper that will accommodate champagne bottles, and champagne bottles that will accommodate crown caps. Most of them will. You can buy a capper at most wine and beer supply stores. They’re known as bench cappers, because you use them on a workbench. They cost more than the simpler handheld capper, though usually well under fifty dollars.

To use the plastic champagne corks, you just have to whack in the cork gently with a padded mallet, and wire it down with a soft-wire assembly, which you can usually get at your wine supply store along with the plastic corks.

I would prefer that you use the champagne corks, because
know if you’ve made a mistake, the cork will go before the bottle does.

If by some wonderful chance you have access to cork champagne corks and have the device you need to insert them, please do so.

Twist on the wire hoods carefully so that you fasten them snugly, but don’t break the wire. Rinse the bottles off and let them dry, then label them and lay them in a moderately warm, quiet place for a while. You don’t have to lay them on their sides like regularly corked bottles if you don’t want to, but it doesn’t hurt.

If you are nervous, you can put the bottles near a floor drain with a heavy cardboard box over them for a couple of weeks. After years of experience in making beer, wine, and soda pop, I’m pretty sure everything will be OK.

After a month or two, you can try a bottle, just to see how it is doing, but you are better off waiting three to six months.

Before opening, refrigerate the bottle, standing it upright in the refrigerator for two to three hours, or ice it for an hour or so in an ice bucket. If you used a cap, open the wine over the sink, with glasses handy.

If you used the plastic corks, carefully remove the wire. As the Flying Karamazov Brothers say during one of their acts when opening a champagne bottle, the prophylactic is off! Get a pair of pliers or one of those rubber disks for opening jars, and ease the cork out over the sink. ALWAYS make sure the cork is not pointing at anyone, including yourself, and not at anything breakable, either.

And there you are. Sparkling wine. Cheers!

If you enjoyed this section, then I encourage you to study further. Get some books on the subject of sparkling wines and learn all you can, including the proper methods, from other people.

NOTE: For making hard cider, perry, or soda pop, use glass beer or glass soda bottles that will take a crown cap, and sanitize them just like wine bottles. Rack in the fermented-out cider, perry, or soda pop, and cap the bottles with sterilized crown caps. Turn each bottle on its side to check for leaks. Store upright for at least two weeks for soda, two months for cider and perry. Chill before opening or you’ll be sorry!

All of this is described more carefully in the last chapter under soda pop, but it’s pretty simple.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Extra Helpings

COMPETITIONS AND JUDGING

Y
ou might be interested in competitions and judging. It’s a good way to test your palate and your winemaking skills. Even if you don’t compete yourself, it’s always fascinating to see what wins. Alas, unless you are a judge, you probably won’t get to taste the winners or losers.

Amateur wines are frequently judged on the Davis system, named after the Davis campus of the University of California, which has done many good things for winemaking in general and home winemaking specifically.

Even if you never intend to enter a competition, it is useful to know how wines are generally judged. The Davis system is based on a 20-point scale. Canada and Europe use a different scale, but the idea is the same.

• Appearance or clarity = 1 or 2 points
  A bit of sediment on the bottom is allowed, but the wine itself should be absolutely bright and clear. “Star-bright” is the usual phrase.
  
• Aroma and bouquet = 5 points
  This gets tricky, depending on if it is a young wine or an older one. You should be able to smell the ingredients, and the general overall smell should be pleasant, as well. Any chemical or off smells costs points.
  
• Astringency = 1 point
  This refers to tannin, not acidity. You don’t want the wine to have a puckery effect in the mouth nor do you want it to be insipid. Red wines have more astringency, white ones, less. A young red could have a lot.
  
• Body = 2 points
  How does the wine feel in the mouth, aside from the sugar and tannin? Can you tell there is something there besides water? Red wines call for more body, while most whites are expected to be on the thin side.
  
• Color = 1 point
  Red wines should be red, never brown. White wines can vary from really white to gold. Rosé should be a nice color, not tan or muddy. How spinach wine is judged I have no idea. There are no plaid wines.
  
• Flavor and balance = 5 points
  Does this taste like wine? Or does it taste like yeast, aluminum siding, mice, rubber, caramel corn, or old athletic shoes? Even if you don’t like red wines, can you tell this tastes good (for a red)?
  
• Sugar = 1 point
  This depends on the type of wine the label declares it to be. If it is a sweet port, it should be sweet. If it is a dry table wine, it should be dry.
  
• Total acid = 2 points
  Again, this depends on the type of wine. White wines are usually higher in acid than reds. Don’t confuse acid with tannin.
  
• General impression = 2 points
  Well, would you buy it? Would you trade for it? Would you take it as a gift with a smile of joy or a polite, tight grin—and pour it down the sink later?