Ali Makes Wine Part IV: Labels

The Banana Pineapple Viognier "mist" wine I just bottled is really meant to be drunk within a year or so unless you add extra sulphites to it (which I didn't).  Because of this I figured I didn't have to come up with an impressive label to stand the test of time.  I wasn't feeling creative so that really worked in my favor!   I opted for a very basic banana/pineapple picture but I felt I had to do something to it.  As I think the Polaroid quilts I've been seeing around Blogland are interesting, I decided to incorporate that into the label.  This way its like the banana and pineapple are posing for pictures during a date at the school dance. 

Only one wine kit I've used came with its own labels, so I tinkered up the rest myself (albeit not with my own artwork so much).   You can order generic labels, but it can be a lot more fun to do your own, and if you are giving out wine to friends and family it feels great to have the bottle to show a bit more of your personality.  As I was trying to figure out what to do for this last wine, I thought I'd revisit my my previous "work".

The very first wine I made was not from a kit.  I went to a local market and bought a bunch of red & concord grapes, red & black plums, red & Rainier cherries for the main fruits, and raisins,  golden raisins & a banana for body.  Oh and on top of that a can of Welches grape juice.  It actually became quite drinkable after a year or so.   It takes a lot more work and care to wing it, so thats why I'm grateful for wine kits.

My husband really likes Fennec foxes, so I made my first ever Photoshopped project for the wine around them.  I am not a giant fan of Photoshop since I don't use it often enough to remember how to do what, but I managed to  get 5 different elements together in one photo & I love how silly my label turned out. 

This wine tasted much worse than the label looked!

Last years wine "cooler"

My first wine kit

My favorite label to date

Ali Makes Wine Part III: Bottling

checking for clarity

So the third part of making wine (unless you are aging it for long term before getting around to it) is bottling.  This is the part I like least, as its messy and involves quite a bit of cleaning, but it is satisfying to get it accomplished (and it does make the living room look prettier once it is wine equipment free!). 

The wine is ready to be bottled when it's perfectly clear, which is much easier to see with white wines than reds.  The wine also should be free of carbon dioxide, if not, it will keep be a bit bubbly when you uncork it. 

Aging wine before bottling does have the benefit of giving it time to release any residual CO2 so you can avoid potential fizzy wine.

floor corker

I've upgraded a couple things from the basics, mainly from a hand corker to a Portuguese floor corker my Sister-in-law got me for Christmas a couple of years ago (which means I can bottle the wine all by myself, and if I arrange everything right I can sit in one spot without moving around to fill and cork the bottles, where I used to have to have my husband hand cork or risk having the bottles sit out getting exposed to air for too long) and a Buon Vino Automatic Auto Bottle Gravity Filler, which stops filling a bottle at a certain level, so you don't accidentally overfill it. I did try upgrading to a gadget that squirts sanitizing liquid up into the bottle so I didn't have to soak them, but it never worked.

bottle tree

After washing and sanitizing your bottles, it's easiest to let them drip dry them on a bottle tree next to where you're going to be doing the bottling.

When its time to fill them,  I set up 5 or 6 bottles at a time in a large pot to minimize splashes or spills so it doesn't make too much of a mess (note, I always make QUITE a mess during this process anyway, with splashing sanitizer and all). Then it's an easy process to cork one bottle while waiting for the next to fill.

Waiting to be labeled

After all your wine is bottled, you then get to deal with the cleaning and sanitizing again of all your tools, the carboy, and the messy floor.   The bottles then sit upright for a few days to make sure that they don't have CO2 in and blow a cork out.  After you label them, you can store them on their sides or upside down (if you use actual cork) or you can store them upright if you use the plastic corks that are becoming more common in wine bottling.

This batch of wine made 26 bottles, I did not siphon off the wine off the residue on the bottom into a new container before bottling so the bits of solids at the bottom started mixing back into the wine when there was quite a bit left.  This ended up costing $3.50 a bottle with the corks, chemicals and all.

Last but not least (and certainly funnest!) will be labeling.

Ali Makes Wine Part II: Stabilizing & Clearing

It's been a couple of weeks since I had to pay much attention to my wine Orchard Breezin' Banana Pineapple Viognier, and it's time for step two.  I'm making sure to write about this because I think making wine is fun, and it's relatively easy when you buy a wine kit.  I don't want to get in the habit of only posting about sewing.  Giving somebody a bottle of wine you made can be just as satisfying as finishing a quilt or wearing a new piece of clothing you made.

When a wine's specific gravity decreases to 0.998 or lower (a measurement of how dense the liquid is compared to water), it's time to move on to to stabilizing and clearing . This stops fermentation & transfers the wine off of the yeast to start the aging process before it's bottled.

For Orchard Breezin' kits this step happens around day 14.  On day 16 I had time to work on it so after transferring it to a 6 gallon bottle there were a number of chemicals to add - I have a stirring rod you put in a hand held drill so I don't have to hand stir everything.  It's also time to add the remainder of the banana & pineapple flavor pack to sweeten it.  Now it pretty much just sits and hangs out for a minimum of another two weeks.

tools soaking in sanitizing solution

Tools for this part are pretty minimal - a sanitized 6 gallon bottle (glass or PET plastic) A siphon to transfer the wine from the bucket to the bottle (gravity assisted, with the bucket 3 or so feet above the bottle), and a stirring stick to mix chemicals in and help drive off CO2 so it won't end up a sparkling wine..
The other new item used now is a bung (tee hee) which is a rubber cork that fits tightly in the bottle opening, the airlock goes into the bung to keep oxygen out.

cloudy after transfer

much clearer a few days later

Ali makes wine: Banana Pineapple Viognier

Wine kit

Grape Juice

So it's not wine time exactly, it's more of a "wine light" time.  It seems that there's a chance we will be relocating to another state soon, and I'm not sure I'll have time to wait out a nice long aging process. I haven't made a batch of wine for 9 months and I don't want to put it off until I know whether we are moving (have to stay ahead of these things!) so I ordered a wine kit.  I decided on something I'd had my eye on for over a year, Orchard Breezin's Banana Pineapple Viognier. 

K-pak, yeast and additives

Yes that is a cheezy name!  There are three "wine light"lines that I'm aware of - "Orchard Breezin" by RJ Spagnols "Summer Breeze" by Mosti Mondiale (which I haven't tried) and Cellar Crafts' "Island Mist".  I guess they need to have cheezy names so you're not surprised when you churn out more of a cooler instead of a wine. These kits are nice because they are inexpensive ($72 for the kit with shipping - yields up to 30 bottles) and are "drinkable" in four weeks.  

Checking the specific gravity

A lot of people change these kits into full alcohol wines by adding more sugar during the beginning steps.  You can get extra fancy and make or buy inverted sugar, but for the couple of "wine light" kits I've made before I just made sugar syrup for.  Wine making CAN get all mathmaticky and thinky, but I try to avoid that whenever possible and have managed to enjoy the process without worrying overmuch about the chemistry that can be involved. 

Juice all ready, yeast cast

I made two alterations to the kit's directions.
1. I boiled 1.5 cups of sugar in water, let it cool and added into the 6 gallon bucket
2. I put 2/3 of the included K-pak (basically sugar syrup with flavor, in this case banana and pineapple) into the juice mix.  This increases the alcohol level, and decreases the end sweetness (these kits can be overly sweet).  Orchard Breezin' normally ends with about 6.7% alcohol.  My specific gravity was reading about 1.074 which will end up being about a 10% alcohol.  Under the 12-14.5% of most commercial wines, but that's good, it means I'll be less likely to overindulge.

Airlocked and ready to go

Each wine kit has directions that are easy to follow about each step up to the bottling stage.  Beginning a wine is simple, you basically put your grape juice in a sanitized bucket and add water to 6 gallons (higher quality kits have more juice, some are a full 6 gallons of juice).  When the temperature of the juice is between 70-80F you sprinkle the yeast on it, cover it with the sanitized lid, put an airlock in it so CO2 escapes but nothing gets in, and then leave it alone. Now I just follow the schedule, and in two weeks and check the specific gravity again to see if the yeast is done working and it's time to go to the next step.