Shier Winery

The finished Oaked Riesling bottles. Adding the shrinkwrap cap over the cork by dipping the bottle in boiling water. Driving the cork into the filled bottle. Allowing the wine to flow down into a bottle. Connecting a bottle to the spring-loaded wine supply line. The pictures show the story of the 25 bottles of Oaked Riesling. Thanks to Alicia for her photojournalism. I think the acid is still a bit high on this batch, but I imagine the wine will only get better with chilling and age. I only used half the Polyclar this time, but still managed to get a fairly good pale gold color. I think the slightly darker hue goes with the added oak chip flavoring. I received sad news from Greg Snell, CEO of ProVina and the Silicon Valley inventor of the WinePod. With all of the venture capital gone dry, ProVina hit a wall. Greg had to lay off all of his employees and suspend all operations. There will no longer be any support for the WinePod. It disappoints me that when someone steps up and devel...

Six months since the grapes were picked. Today the wine is bottled. I am thrilled that the taste and color have met my expectations. Very satisfying to get this far. Loading the filters into the pump assembly. Connecting the tubes to the chilled and unfiltered wine. Running the pump and filtering the wine. The finished wine in blue bottles with labels. Nice! The bottles in a case. Carboy 1 is history. We bottled the wine after coarse grain filtering using a Buon Vino motorized pump and filter. The result was 25 bottles and 1/2 half bottle. I used the half bottle to top off carboy 3. I labeled the other 25 bottles and placed them in cases. 50 more bottles to go (including the Oak Riesling) and then no more winemaking until the fall. In the meantime, I am planning a lot of hard cider and maybe an experimental beer.

The designs above will be tested on the first run of bottles.

Tartaric crystals added to a small wine sample. Pouring in the tartaric doped sample. The acid fizzes as it hits the wine. Ice packed around the carboy for maximum coldness. To the fridge for cool down. Looking vibrant, but needs Polyclar treatment to get that pale golden color.

Today we opened the test bottle pictured below during the IP lunch meeting at work. About 7-8 people sampled the wine. The reviews were good. Not only were the tasters a bit shocked that the wine did not suck, but I was a bit surprised since the test bottle came directly from the bottom of the carboy from the last racking. It was loaded with excess tartaric, with large crystals clearly visible in the bottle. The wine is young, but the flavor is there. I think it is just a matter of aging, mellowing and dialing the color back a bit from orange to yellow.

Actually, the lightning came after my success with the acid reduction. I followed the advice of Tom Mitchell and added tartaric acid to one carboy, bringing the pH from 3.4 down to 3.2. Then I packed the carboy in garbage bags with ice and loaded the bags and carboy into the fridge. One week later I racked the wine off beautiful crispy glacier-like tartaric crystals. The taste is vastly improved, with a mild bite, but no grapefruit aftertaste. Aging will help, but I didn't even need a TA acid test to know that the wine is now remakably close to bottling condition. In fact, after racking off the crystals, I decided to bottle the leftover wine from the bottom of the barrel for some pre-bottling feedback at work. The only finishing touch from here, besides aging in bottles, will be to try to get the color right. For that, I plan to use a clarifier PVPP known as Polyclar. Polyclar removes haze causing polyphenols as well as yeast cells, which give the wine an orange glow tint. I'm ...

I spoke with Tom Mitchell , the owner of Fall Bright vineyard, where I purchased the Riesling juice. Turns out that Tom purchased a portion of the 2008 Riesling grapes from another vineyard in the area, which he said was not his usual practice (now he tells me). He said that others who purchased the Riesling had experienced similar issues with acid, but mostly found the color to be too dark for their taste. He said he was conducting test to see about acheiving the proper color. I gave Tom an explanation of my starting and ending TA and pH numbers and the steps I had taken thus far. His recommendation was unique. He explained that I was likely not getting enough of a reduction from my cold stabilization because the pH was too high. He recommended lowering the pH to 3.2 by actually adding more tartaric acid to the wine. He said that when I place the carboy back in freezing conditions for one week, the acid will drop. I will give it a try. Since it is too late in the season to stabilize ...