Cabernet-Merlot, Port Style: Bottling

Port Bottling

Due to a recent influx of fresh grapes, it's time to clear up some carboy space, and that means it's time to bottle my port.

Bottle Sanitation

The last thing you want is to bottle your hard-earned wine in a bottle with some questionable company (hairs, gunk, wild bacteria, etc.), so it's always a good rule to sanitize and inspect your bottles before bottling.

I use Iodophor rinse-free sanitizer for all my sanitation needs.

I consider this a special batch. Port is one of my favorite ways to enjoy a grape, and it's a type of wine that you sip slowly and drink small amounts of. So, I thought it would make sense to bottle it in 375mL "bellissima"-style bottles instead of the standard 750mL bottles. This way, I'm able to dole out the wine over a longer span of time (since there's more bottles) and be a bit more permissive with giving in and popping one open.

Sure, they hold half the volume and cost twice as much, but I've already invested quite a bit in this batch that it's worth investing the extra bit to make sure that this is a wine that I'm able to enjoy for a good long time.

Oh yeah, and the bottles look really slick and classy.

Simply submerge the bottles in the solution, drain them, and let them drip-dry for a while. Thanks to my dad, I have a lovely bottle tree for this task. Sure beats balancing 30 bottles on their necks, let me tell you.

 

Looks like some artsy lawn ornament

 

Siphoning

 

A day or two prior, I had already racked the port off of the little sediment that it had. Normally at this phase, you transfer the wine off of whatever sediment remains, add some stabilizing agent, backsweeten it (add simple syrup, to taste), etc.. However, with this wine, the brandy that I added works very well as a fining agent, so most of the suspended sediment is already gone. The alcohol content also works to stabilize the wine, as there's too much alcohol now for bacteria or yeast to survive, despite there still being residual sugar.

 The bottles are all clean, and the floor is... pretty clean.

So I line up the bottles on the floor, and place the carboy on the table or a chair, and then I let gravity do the work. I put an auto-siphon into the carboy attached to some tubing, which is then attached to a bottling thief. The auto-siphon is a two-piece contraption that you can pump to start the flow of the wine through the tubing. The thief is a small piece of plastic with a nubbin on the end that only allows wine to flow when it's being pressed onto the bottom of the bottle. Bottling without these two pieces of equipment can be quite a hassle and a mess.

Corking

Corks matter. There are many different kinds, materials, sizes, qualities. There are synthetics, which don't need to be aged sideways, there are different grains of cork where the larger the grain, the more likely they are to crumble or break. Different bottles also require different sizes of corks. Put a too-small cork in a bottle, and you'll have the illusion that it's sealed, but it will actually be letting air in slowly, allowing it to spoil.

For this batch, I'm using #9-sized corks made of the highest quality real cork material that I have access to. They cost about twice as much as other corks (well, a lot more, considering corks come included in the kits), but I want to ensure that these bottles of port can stand the test of time.

After sanitizing all the corks, I use this double-lever corker and carefully-but-forcefully press the corks into the necks of the bottles. The corker pushes the cork down through a non-stick funnel that uniformly compresses it as it's pushed down. If you push it down swiftly enough, the whole cork is pressed nicely into the neck with none sticking out the top.

In the end, the 4.3gal of port ended up making 24 x 375mL bottles and 10 x 750mL bottles. Not a bad haul, all things considered. I look forward to popping these open for many years to come for all those special occasions that life has to offer.
 

Beautiful, deep, clear color.

All that's left is to decide on the cap color, name, and label, and these guys can go find a place for themselves on the wine rack.


Update: There's always one bottle that's not full enough to cork that I get to enjoy drinking down. Let me tell you that this stuff tastes absolutely fantastic. It's still got a small bit of the kit smell that I've come to expect that comes from the sulfites they put in the concentrate. The flavor, however, is very lovely, mellow, smooth, and sweet. Not raisin-y like a lot of ports, but still very wonderful in its own way. Very glad that this turned out to be better than average.

A Look Back on Labeling

Let's not go putting labels on things...

I find that one of the most rewarding parts of making my wines, as superficial as it is, is seeing the final product stacked up on my wine rack. The foils on the necks mark each one for what they are, and the labels on them, perfectly placed, are pieces of my own creation. It all comes together to look like a very polished, professional end product of months of working and waiting.

88 bottles and counting

A labelled batch of barolo with kit-supplied labels

All-in-all, the most fun I have here is designing the labels for my wines. Let's go through a few of my delightful little creations!

Bambina Fiona Barolo 

One of my first batches of wine was a kit barolo wine (they're all kit wines). This one turned out wonderful (to my amateur tastebuds), and my friend Melinda also thought it tasted really good. Like me, she likes her wines big, bold, and dry, and this one is just that.

The thing about Melinda at the time is that, well, she was pregnant, and she could only enjoy a few sips of it. So, I decided that, as kind of a "Congratulations!" and more of a "You're not pregnant anymore -- drink up!" present, I decided to dedicate a case of the barolo to her baby, Fiona Marie.

And thus, much like Fiona herself, my first custom-designed label came forth into the world.

A little on the traditional side, but it looks good on the bottle.

Not until you're older, little one!

Chi-Squared Chianti

Among many things, I am a scientist. So, when it came to bottle my chianti(-style) wine, I decided to go a bit of the nerd route. Chianti begins with 'chi', otherwise known as the greek letter χ.

Now, in statistics and theoretical models, we use a metric called a chi-squared test to determine how well a set of experimental data agrees with a theoretical model. It's one of many significance tests, which are tests for determining the probability that a given result could not have occurred by chance.

So, I decided to make a label inspired by this, adorned by the various chi-squared distributions themselves. All in all, I'd say it turned out beautifully.

To this day, this is the best wine that I've made, hands down. Best label, too.

Barolo El Cuñado

Thrilled by the success of my previous barolo, I quickly purchased another kit and pumped out another batch. I'm not terribly proud of this batch. It turned out a bit sweeter, with lower alcohol content, along with a bit of a musty kind of nose to it. It's definitely fine and drinkable, but it's no the shining star of my night sky, metaphorically speaking.

So, as I was mulling over some names for this one, there was one idea that stuck. A TV series that quickly became a personal favorite (and, frankly, changed my life a little) is FX's The League. It's a show about some friends that participate rather enthusiastically in a fantasy football league, and it's a great watch, if you've got the time.

One of the personalities in the show is a brother-in-law of one of the main characters. He's an absolutely foul human being, with no tact, dignity, or sense for social graces. His name is Rafi, but he's not-so-lovingly referred to as "Brolo El Cuñado". Sure, "El Cuñado" only means "the brother" or "the brother-in-law" in Spanish, but it sounds so much more foul and sinister than its meaning. And so, my rather punny wine name was decided.

 

 It's not very good. I find that to be fitting.

Big Fat Dog

I own a very large dog. There; that's the gist of it. About four years ago, my girlfriend, Carly, and I got puppy fever from watching Dogs 101, and we took the plunge and got our big fluffy newfoundland. We named him Charlemagne. Or, Charlie for short.

And now he's my best friend

When we were visiting with one of my friends and her kid, Joey, Charlie made quite the impression. Later, when we met up again, his mom asked him if he remembered me and my dog. He simply responded: "Yeah. Big FAT dog." Trust me, the comedy and catchiness is all in the emphatic delivery. 

What a kid. So, here's to you, Joey. Thanks for the inspiration.

I'd like to note that Charlie isn't overweight, thankyouverymuch.

 

Wines yet to come...

There's still some wines I have yet to name, and naming something is not a thing a take lightly. I want the names to be something that is a little fun, a little artsy, a little personal, and maybe a little professional-sounding. Here are the wines I have yet to name.

• Merlot (just bottled)
• Ruby Port-style Cabernet-Merlot (about to bottle)
• Syrah (my first fresh grape wine!)
• Old Vine Zinfindel (also fresh grape)

So, I'll be keeping my ears and eyes open for the perfect names for my babies. 

That's all for today.  Coming up next will be my posts about my foray into the heart of becoming an urban vintner -- making wine from fresh grapes.

Cabernet-Merlot, Port-Style: Degassing

Degassing

Because nobody ever paid money for a fizzy port wine

When yeast churns away, eating the sugars in the must, it not only makes the wonderful compound that is alcohol, but also releases carbon dioxide. While much of this CO2 bubbles on out of your airlock during the fermentation, a whole balloon-full remains dissolved inside the liquid. Fun factoid: good lord, there is a lot of CO2 in the ocean.

Imagine a fresh glass of ginger ale that you've set on the table -- all bubbly, fizzy, and effervescent. When you leave it out overnight, you might consider it gone flat, but if you look closely or shake it up a bit, you'll still see some bubbles form. Now, imagine four gallons of ginger ale. There's a lot of bubbles hiding up in that jug. Unless you're poppin' some Cristal or celebrating with some Dom Pérignon, people don't usually want their wine carbonated. Due to the lack of sugars in wine, the carbonic acid that hits the tongue as a result can lend a bitter flavor that clashes against the delicate flavor palette of the wine. So how do we get rid of it?

1. Time: Time is the mender of broken hearts, and the degasser of bubbly wines. Wineries, and people that are not in a rush in general, don't usually have to worry about degassing their wines, because, well, their wines sit long enough that they don't have to worry about it.  From what I gather, if you're letting your wine sit on the order of 8-10 months, it will be as flat as a 2-dimensional object (if you'll permit a bit of Flatland humor). 

I'm young and impatient. Plus, I don't have the available carboys to just let one batch Bogart one of my jugs for a whole year...

2. Agitation: Anyone who has dropped a pop can -- anyone who's been a victim of the knock-your-buddy's-beer-bottle-rim prank -- anyone who's seen Stone Cold Steve Austin get ready for a match -- all these people know that when you knock or shake up or disturb a carbonated beverage, you cause a lot of the gas to nucleate and ascend to the top of the liquid. Wine is no different.

I've heard any number of methods for agitating the gas out of wine:

• Stir, stir, stir, stir your wine, and then stir it some more (and not the circular way; go back and forth)
• Put your carboy on the washer and set it to the spin cycle
• Attach a paddle to a power drill and let-er-rip

If you do any of these enough, you'll eventually get to a point where agitating your wine will result in no more bubbles forming. Your wine is then successfully degassed.

3. Vacuum: "horror vacui": Nature abhors a vacuum, my friends. Which is why, if you were able to suck all the gas out of the head space of a carboy, the carbon dioxide in the wine will bubble to the top as fast as it can to re-fill that space to a certain point. This is due to the solubility of gases in liquid at varying pressures, but I'll try not to bore you with those details. Too late? Oh well.

Basically, the idea here is to just pump out as much gas as you can out of the carboy by whatever means and let the CO2 remove itself at an extremely accelerated rate. There are any number of shiny, efficient, powerful vacuum pumps that would be well-suited for this purpose, but I am a mere grad student of limited financial means. So, I go the manual route.

I present, the wine-saver evacuator pump

This puppy is the Snail Wine Saver hand-powered vacuum pump, and at a $9 price tag, it fits comfortably into my budget. It's made to preserve individual bottles of wine, but let me tell you, that task is like asking Hercules to pick up toothpicks off the floor -- it's not using it to its potential! 

All you have to do is get a carboy bung with a hole the size of a wine bottle aperture, and BOOM, you've got a carboy vacuum pump. Just put the vacuum cap on the bung, put the bung on the carboy, and put the pump on the cap. Then, start pumping away and watch the foam froth up from out of nowhere. Just pump until it gets too difficult, and repeat every now and then over the next couple of weeks.

But wait, there's more! As an added benefit, if you have a wine that's done fermenting, you usually lose the protective barrier of CO2 that keeps your wine from oxidizing. This is why you don't often leave a lot of head space in the carboy for an ageing wine. With this method, however, you're actually pulling air out, forcing the atmosphere in the carboy to be mostly occupied by CO2 from the wine, and very little O2. It's a win-win!

Anyhow, if you haven't guessed yet, I prefer the vacuum pump approach. It quickens degassing while also having the added benefits of decreasing oxidation, and also eliminates the need of keeping my airlocks topped up with liquid. Where's the downside? (That question is rhetorical)

Four months later, this wine is completely degassed and looks as smooth as glass. Just about time to bottle!

Cabernet Merlot, Port-Style: Fortification

Fortification 

a.k.a., "Yo dawg, I heard you like booze in your booze..."

So, it's been almost four months since I start this batch of wine, and it's come along quite nicely.

Due to my poor book-keeping (which I intend to improve upon), all I remember is that, after adding the corn sugar, the wine petered out at a respectable 16% ABV. I tried keeping the yeast going strong by adding some yeast nutrient to it, to little effect.

So, after I saw the alcohol stay at 16% for a while, it was time to go out shopping for some brandy. At the shop, I reached on down to grab the biggest bottle I could find from the bottom shelf.  As I was scanning across them, I told myself that I'm going to end up having 40+ bottles of this stuff, and I'd be investing quite a bit of time and money into this batch. So, I rethought the situation and reached for the second-to-bottom shelf and grabbed some E&J VSOP Brandy (40% ABV).

Yeah, it's pretty much empty. There's a reason for that...

Using Pearson's Square, I figured out that since I have 4 gallons of 16% wine, I would need to add 0.56 gallons (2.12L) of 40% brandy in order to get it to at least 19%. So I racked the Cabernet-Merlot into a new carboy, poured myself a small glass of brandy, and then poured almost all the rest of two big bottles into the mix. Then, it was time to set the carboy down for the long haul, letting it degas and settle for a few months.