Growing grapes and making wine in Bellevue
Posted in storage and aging, tasting on May 21st, 2008
Back in March, I wrote about freezing wine: that it can preserve an open bottle and even improve it. It was something I had to see to believe, and I did. I froze a half-full bottle of red wine for over a month, thawed it out, shook it up (that’s one of the steps!), and […]
Posted in commercial wine, tasting on Mar 19th, 2008
I’ve written about Olympic Cellars before. They’re the winery being threatened by the United State Olympic Committee for using the word “Olympic” in their name. They also make a cranberry wine. Well the Lady of the House and I have recently tried some of their wine, and the Dungeness Red (a 2004 Lemberger) really stands […]
Posted in storage and aging, tasting on Mar 12th, 2008
An open bottle of wine and no time to drink it
Julian Shultz at the Oxford Wine Room has endured a lot of friendly, and not so friendly, needling to tell us about freezing wine. Not only can an opened bottle, that would otherwise be ruined by oxidation, be preserved by freezing, it will be improved […]
Posted in enology, mead, measurement & testing, storage and aging, tasting, winemaking on Feb 7th, 2008
I looked in on five meads yesterday to see if they were ready to bottle. I was looking for clarity, I tasted them to see if they were pleasant to drink, and I measured the specific gravity (SG), pH, and titratable acidity (TA).
Name
SG
pH
TA (g/L)
2004 Plain Mead
1.001
3.05
5
2005 Apple Mead
0.995
3.39
5.2
2006 Experiment (boiled)
1.000
3.27
6
2006 Experiment (no heat)
1.000
3.29
5.3
2006 Grape Mead
1.000
3.51
5+
Ready […]
Posted in tasting on Feb 1st, 2008
Which wines are right for Valentine’s Day? The ones you sip with chocolate, of course! I have some ideas about that, but it might be better to consult an expert. There’s none better than wine writer Natalie MacLean, who describes wine as,
liquid sensuality: Its heady bouquet stimulates the appetite and its velvet caress soothes that […]
Posted in commercial wine, competitions and events, tasting on Jan 29th, 2008
Red wine and pizza!
Ok, it’s not often you go to a football game and hear one of the vendors bellowing, “Ice cold Chenin Blanc here!” Beer is the beverage of choice for tailgate parties, but wine definitely has it’s place in your Superbowl festivities. What could better with pizza than a full bodied red? It’s […]
Posted in tasting on Jan 16th, 2008
Grow the best grapes
Making good wine is expensive, but not in the way you might think. Oh sure, the things that top growers do to improve the quality of their harvest add to the cost. They analyze the soil and amend it to enhance their crop. They prune and train their vines, even to the […]
Posted in commercial wine, tasting on Dec 10th, 2007
Consumer Reports and Pacific Northwest Magazine both published lists of recommended wines recently. One Washington State wine made both lists, and that got me curious enough to try it. Columbia Crest Two Vines Riesling is described as a “sweet, dessert-style wine with fruit balanced by acid.” A description like that doesn’t exactly make me want […]
Posted in apple wine, herb wine, rhubarb wine, tasting, winemaking on Nov 13th, 2007
Maybe getting caught short, when I racked my mead the other day, was a blessing in disguise. Having half a gallon of mead in a 1-gallon jug, with all that head space threatening to oxidize it, motivated me to rack four other 1-gallon batches. Some of these had been sitting on lees longer than I […]
Posted in tasting, winemaking on Nov 1st, 2007
One of the things I enjoy about being a wine maker is out of the box wine making. For example, most Riesling is sweet, and even “dry” Riesling often has residual sugar. It’s an acidic grape, and winemakers will tell you that they add just enough sugar to balance that acidity. The idea is to […]