Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in apple wine on Sep 29th, 2008
Normally I use my own apples to supplement store bought juice in my apple wine, but this year I had more fruit available so I decided to make it exclusively from my own apples. I followed the same procedure as last year.
Ingredients
12.8 lb (5.8 kg) of roxbury russet, ashmead kernel, and liberty apples
0.25 tsp tannin
0.5 [...]
Posted in commercial wine, maintenance & cleaning, storage and aging on Sep 23rd, 2008
My dad has been keeping this big old bottle of wine that none of us knows much about. According to the label it’s a 1978 red table wine from Piedmont, Italy. It also says, “Ribezzo Barbera D’Asti.” It’s a 12-liter bottle, and I [...]
Posted in commercial wine, tasting on Sep 15th, 2008
For those of you who don’t know, Costco is a chain of warehouse stores, mainly in the US and Canada, that allows you to buy in bulk from a limited selection at terrific prices. It can be a good place to buy wine, but I hadn’t seen them sell it under there own label – [...]
Posted in measurement & testing on Sep 8th, 2008
So what’s that contraption pictured above? I wrote about it back in February, and I think it’s a better way to measure titratable acidity (TA). It works by adding a measured sample of wine to sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). The baking soda reacts with acid in the sample, giving off carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in [...]
Posted in bonsai vineyard on Sep 1st, 2008
I photograph my grape vines as closeups, so the leaves and clusters are clearly visible. Here I took in the entire vine, with a devilishly handsome model to provide a sense of size and proportion The vines in my bonsai vineyard look like this except that most of them are in 5-gallon plastic [...]