1997 Carmine Batch #1
December 2007 – This year I went bonkers making wine, trying a bit of everything. I purchased 274 lbs of Carmine from a small vineyard west of Winston-Salem, and made it into 2 batches – using different yeasts for each batch.
Then I did a second run off the skins of each, so I had a bumper crop of carmine.
Ingredients
| Fruit | 183 lbs Carmine |
| Sulfite | 2 tsp |
| Yeast | Wyeast 2028 |
Method
| Crushed all 274 lbs of grapes, added sulfite. Divided pulp into 2 fermenters, 183 lbs into Batch #1 (this log) and 91 lbs into Batch #2.
Inoculated with Wyeast 2028. [used Lalvin EC-1118 for Batch #2] |
09/13/1997 SG 1.080 |
| Lightly pressed fruit getting 13 gallons wine.
Added 3/4 tsp sulfite and 6-1/2 tsp pectic enzyme. |
09/20/1997 SG 1.004 |
| Added 6 cups sugar. | 09/21/1997 SG 1.010 |
| Racked. | 10/19/1997 SG 0.996 |
| Racked. | 02/21/1998 SG 0.995 |
| Bottled. | 06/16/1998 SG 0.995 |
Notes
| Yield | 56 bottles |
| Alcohol | 12.4% |
| Afterthoughts | Every last bottle of Batch #2 spoiled in the fall of 1998, some 4 months after bottling. The second run from Batch #2 didn’t spoil, so the problem appears to have been introduced some time after pressing. |
| I didn’t care for this carmine, possibly because the vines were very young (3-4 years). Oddly enough the second run batches tasted better than the first! |