1987 Seyval Blanc
September 2006 – Seyval is my favorite French-American hybrid. It makes an excellent dry white. Vidal is more versatile, but when it comes to dry white, Seyval beats out all the other hybrids.
Well … in my opinion, anyway!
Ingredients
| Fruit | 5 gallons Seyval juice, 4 quarts reserved |
| Pectic Enzyme | 2 tsp |
| Nutrient | 5 tsp nutrient + 3 tsp energizer |
| Yeast | Epernay II |
Method
| Started, yeast added | 10/08/1987 SG 1.070 |
| Racked | 10/11/1987 SG 1.010 |
| Racked, 1 gallon removed to make sparkling wine | 10/30/1987 SG 0.998 |
| 4 tsp pectic enzyme, 1 gallon pourback, oak chips added to main | 10/30/1987 SG 1.012 |
| Main racked | 10/06/1987 SG 1.012 |
| Sparkling bottled | 10/15/1988 SG — |
| Main filtered, #2 filter pad; Bottled. | 10/27/1988 SG 1.012 |
Notes
| Yield | 25 bottles + 5 bottles sparkling wine |
| Alcohol | 9.8% |
| Afterthoughts | The sparkling tasted ok, but it didn’t sparkle all that much. I used the method of adding additional sugar and champagne yeast and crown capped it in quart soda bottles. After it sat for the specified amount of time I put the bottles in the freezer for several hours, then one-by-one opened them, poured carefully and gently into clean champagne bottles, put in a plastic champagne cork, and wired it down. As I said with last year’s apple, I may try it again eventually … or I may not. |