1989 White Blend
June 2021 – When I made this wine, I certainly did not understand blending. Actually, I don’t recall exactly what I was thinking when I chose the wines for this blend.
If I had it to do over, I’d make a carboy each of Seyval, Ravat 51, and Vidal. After bulk aging for 6 months I’d do taste testing.
Based upon my experience, if I was to do a field blend, I’d go with 5 gallons Seyval, 2 gallons Ravat 51, and 2 gallons Vidal. Maybe one of these days I’ll have a chance to experiment.
Ingredients
| Fruit | 2 gallons Seyval, 17.6 brix, 0.825 acid, 70ppm sulfite, pH 2.95 |
| Fruit | 5 gallons Cayuga, 19.6 brix, 0.855 acid, 70ppm sulfite, pH 2.90 |
| Fruit | 2 gallons Ravat 51, 24.6 brix, 1.095 acid, 70ppm sulfite, pH 3.15 |
| Yeast | Red Star Epernay II |
Method
| Yeast added to Seyval | 09/23/1989 SG 1.073 |
| Seyval racked | 10/04/1989 SG 1.000 |
| Yeast added to Cayuga | 10/07/1989 SG 1.081 |
| Yeast added to Ravat | 10/07/1989 SG 1.104 |
| Cayuga racked | 10/22/1989 SG 1.020 |
| Ravat Racked | 10/22/1989 SG 1.020 |
| Seyval & Ravat blended | 10/22/1989 SG 1.010 |
| Seyval/Ravat blend chaptalized with 1 cup sugar | 10/22/1989 SG 1.014 |
| Cayuga chaptalized with 3 cups sugar | 10/22/1989 SG 1.030 |
| Racked Cayuga, 1/4 tsp K-sulfite added. Racked blend, 1/4 tsp K-sulfite added. Kevin’s Cayuga separated, remainder blended in. | 10/22/1989 SG 0.996 |
| Racked, filtered w/#1 filter pad | 11/28/1989 SG 0.996 |
| Racked | 01/28/1990 SG 0.996 |
| Racked, Bentonite added, began cold stabilization of half batch in fridge. | 06/06/1990 SG 0.996 |
| Racked stabilized portion, began stabilization of remainder | 06/30/1990 SG 0.996 |
| Racked second portion, 1/4 tsp k-sulfite added; bottled. | 06/11/1990 SG 0.996 |
Notes
| Yield | 25 bottles bottles |
| Afterthoughts | Until I read through the winemaking notes I didn’t remember making wine for Kevin (my brother). I had trouble reconciling the 25 bottle output with the amount of juice I started with. 🙂 |
| October 2018 | My recollection of this wine was disappointment. Not that it didn’t come out well – it did. But the blend I did just didn’t go together well. At this time I was thinking about blending, but didn’t have enough background to really understand what I was doing. What I should have done is make 5 gallons of each, then when the wine was stable at 6 months, do bench mixes to figure the best blend(s). What I did was simply gamble. |