Shier Winery

  We had a visit from old friends from San Diego, Todd and Laurel Twemlow. Todd helped to put up some additional wire and lay plastic for the newer vines.  The tallest vine reaches nearly 6 feet.   The art of carving in fallen tree trunks.

As the vines approach the end of their first year... The buds are ready to burst any day now.

Budweiser runs ads on the 4 and 5 trains in New York touting its beechwood aging.  Beechwood chips are placed in the beer tanks for three weeks, which the ad states is "expensive."  It is, however, cheaper than aging Budweiser in old Kentucky beechwood barrels.  Wood chip aging is also much faster than waiting for a barrel to impart the same flavor.  I use toasted french oak chips in the Riesling, aging for two weeks.  The chips cost about $15 for a 10 pound bag (which are advertised for BBQing).  I tried toasting a little natural oak from trees cut down to make room for the grape vines, but my effort was not worth the result.  There are a number of oak species, some good for winemaking and others good for making poison.      Why shouldn't you drink from the bottom of the barrel? The yeast and spent oak chips make for a nasty brew.

The basement at the Shier provides a perfect environment.  With steady cool temperatures, the juice undegoes primary fermentation over three weeks.  The chopiness in the brix curve (the green) is most likely small measurement error as opposed to variation.  The temperature variations may be a result of overshoot and undershoot on the temperature controller.  A flat temperature line and a long slow sloping brix curve are best for Riesling.  I racked the wine to carboys on Sunday.  The brix is 1.77 and the taste is intense.  It's been a good year for Riesling.

We made a trip out to Keuka Lake on Saturday.  I picked up 16 gallons of Riesling juice and 5 gallons of Concord.  The Riesling looks perfect this year, with a hint of noble rot.  Brix is 23.5, so no need to add sugar.  The Concord was fairly inexpensive at only $4.75 a gallon.  I figured I would take a crack at making a better wine than Manischewitz.  The Concord brix was only 16.6, which means it needs a lot of added sugar.  Oh well, Manischewitz doesn't exactly set the bar very high.