2018 Black Forest Port
July 2018
I purchased this kit last year — I enjoy the port-style kits and wanted a raspberry chocolate … but it wasn’t available. Cherry chocolate may prove to be better!
April 2020 – I seriously dislike the labels I did. I printed them on pre-gummed label paper with a light blue background on an inkjet printer. Compared to the more recent labels I’ve printed on plain paper on a color laserjet, the old ones do not compare. So I slightly re-designed the labels, soaked the old ones off, and applied new ones. MUCH better!
Ingredients
| Kit | R J Spagnols Black Forest Dessert Wine kit |
| Additives | bentonite, metabisulphite, sorbate, kieselsol, chitosan (included in kit) |
| Yeast | Lalvin EC-1118 yeast (included in kit) |
| Sulphite | As needed |
Method
| Emptied grape juice bag into fermenter, squeezing the bag to get out as much as possible. No water is added to this kit. Stirred for 1 minute.
Sprinkled bentonite on top, avoiding clumping. Stirred bentonite into the must. Sprinkled yeast on top, did not stir in. |
07/15/2018 SG 1.110 |
| Racked wine, moved to 3.5 gallon carboy. | 07/20/2018 SG 1.020 |
| Racked wine. Added sulphite and sorbate. Stirred for 2 minutes.
Added F Pack, stirred for 2 minutes. Added Kieselsol, stirred 1 minute. Waited 5 minutes, added chitosan, stirred gently. Racked into 3.5 gallon carboy. |
07/28/2018 SG 0.994 Final SG 1.040 |
| Racked wine.
Added 1/4 tsp metabisulphite and bottled. |
08/18/2018 SG 1.040 |
Notes
| Yield | 29 split bottles |
| Alcohol | 15.8% |
| Residual Sugar | 5.0% |
| Winemaking Notes | I bottled this one a bit too quickly. Hopefully there won’t be any sediment in the bottles. |
| 12/21/2021 | My fear of sediment in the bottle was unfounded — I’ve used about half of this batch and have experienced no sediment.
At nearly 3.5 years in the bottle, this wine is very nice. Supposedly these wines are early drinkers, but given the sugar and ABV, I expect that the wine is good for another 5 years. I won’t have any left by then, but if I did, it would be fine. |