Making red wine with the Regent

 

Pressing my first crop of Regent grapes yielded more wine than expected

This is the first year I’ve harvested a crop from my 14 Regent vines. I’ve no experience with this black grape, so I’m keeping detailed notes of every step of the way from harvest through fermentation to the finished wine. I remember many years ago I made a very good white wine in my second attempt with the same grapes. I wanted to repeat the process the following year in the hope of arriving at or close to the same result. Unfortunately I had kept no record of the condition of the grapes or the path I’d taken with them so I’ve never managed to get anywhere near to that memorable wine again.

So, these were the vital statistics and first steps in the process so far this year with the Regent grapes (and a little Pinot Noir on a stray vine) from the allotment:

1. 120 lbs Regent and 10 lbs Pinot Noir harvested on 30 September.
2. After 24 hours standing in covered pails outdoors, bunches are all destemmed by hand, mouldy grapes discarded, and all berries, Regent and Pinot Noir,  held together in one large food grade plastic barrel, covered by a secured cloth in an unheated shed (temperature ranging between  9 and 18 degrees Celsius through the day and night time)
3. Two handfuls of berries are crushed by hand and the juice measured by hydrometer at 1060 Specific Gravity (7.6% potential alcohol).
4. A starter batch of fermenting Regent grape juice that was prepared a couple of weeks earlier is poured over the berries in the barrel. The barrel is stirred thoroughly by hand to coat all the fruit with the juice collecting at the bottom. There is no  crushing or pressing of the fruit at this stage.  
5. Fermentation spreads rapidly through the juice within 24 hours. The skins of the berries were slightly broken when they were pulled off their stems. So the fermentation spreads inside the berries and works its way through the sugars there outwards towards the skin. This kind of fermentation of whole berries entirely without their stems (or with just a portion of them still in whole bunches) is called maceration carbonique. It proceeds at a lower and more even temperature than is normally the case with red wine fermentation and it usually leads to a softer, more aromatic wine. I am taking this approach the first time round with the Regent grape so that the fermentation will be slow and even over time, rather than peaking in a feverish hot episode. I am at work all day through the week, so this way I will be able to look after the fermentation and  decide just when to the wine has taken enough colour and flavours from the skins and the must can be pressed.
6. Unrefined organic granulated cane sugar is added to bring up the potential alcohol level to 12.6%. This is done as soon as the fermentation is well underway. The sugar is simply poured in and stirred for a few minutes. I estimate that 130 lbs of grapes will give me 5 gallons of clear wine after fermentation, pressing and racking twice or thrice off the lees. So I add 5 lbs of sugar which, according to my table (see it in my blog on 20 September 2009), will raise the specific gravity from 1060 to 1090, which will give 12.6% alcohol after fermentation to dryness.
7. The carbon dioxide rising from the fermenting juice lifts the mass of berries to the surface. This ”cap” is now plunged back into the must every 4 hours if possible, every 8 hours at least.
8. Each time the cap is plunged a cupped handful of the juice-wine is tasted: as sugar gives way slowly towards dryness a more concentrated taste of fruit comes forward – in this case something like dark cherry with a mildly burnished edge.
9.  On 9 October, eight days after the fermentation took off, the liquid has a deep crimson hue and  it tastes definitely like young wine, not juice. It is time to press it out and remove the skins altogether. Over two-thirds of the contents of the barrel is now liquid, which is just poured through a sieve into a big glass fermentation vessel.  The remaining skins go through the press in three batches. Each batch is pressed twice. The first press gives an easy run of wine.  The cake inside the press is then broken up, repositioned and pressed  again for an additional run of wine. This second run is harsher than the first, so no attempt is made to squeeze every last drop out of the skins. On the second, and sometimes third press of the cake, less is always better.  The resulting wine will be finer.
10. Overall, I pressed out 7.5 gallons of young wine, I considerably more than I expected from 130 lbs of grapes. After the wine is has fermented and settled down about 20% of this volume, or 1.5 gallons, will be removed as sediment. This will leave, I estimate now,  6 gallons of clean wine rather than 5 gallons that I had originally estimated. So the 5 lbs of sugar I added  to the must on I October will bring up the potential alcohol level to around 12%, not the 12.6% I first planned for. That’s okay, 12% alcohol in a medium bodied, softer tasting, earlier drinking wine should be just right.
11. The onion shaped demijohn I’ve poured the 36 litres into has a capacity of 54 litres, which leaves enough room above the wine for any turbulence during the ongoing fermentation. I fit a fermentation lock in its neck, sealing any gaps between the plastic lock and the cork with candle wax.

Now to get my son Max to help me pick it up and carry it safely indoors to the cellar. There it will sit for the coming year in the dark. I will turn the light on only to look in on it, top up the fermentation lock regularly with water (and a bit of a Camden tablet in the lock, not the wine), and to rack the wine off the sediment.

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