Damage

There was a bad storm last week with very large hailstones which caused a lot of damage to the fruit.

Harvest 2016

This year the white grapes were hit badly by mildew resulting from a lot of rain during a very hot July. Interestingly, only a few of the red grape vines were hit (we have a mix of Kékfrankos, Portugieser aka Kékoportó, and Zweigelt). We sold what survived from the white, and kept the red grapes for wine. They were picked 25th September. They could have stayed on the vines longer to take advantage of the Indian Summer weather, but I was available only that week.

Mainly due to time pressure - but also in order to experiment a bit - the grapes were left on the skins for just 3 days before pressing. The outcome ought to be more like a Rosé wine than a red. In total there was in the region of 75 litres after pressing. This is down from well over 100l in a good year.

The 75l was too much for one of my plastic fermentation containers so I half-filled two.  After primary fermentation, the resulting wine will be moved to an 80l barrel.

Sugar levels were quite low which is strange, after quite a hot summer and very warm September.  I hope nothing wrong with my Mustfokmérő (Must degree measurement device). Must get a spare for next time around.

And I had a little panic. After 24 hours, the juice in one of the containers appeared to be fermenting and the other one was quiet... then next morning, it was the other way round. A few days later, although I was not there, I was told both had been fermenting but one went quiet while the other was still active . This is odd. Possibly they were affected by temperature - the containers are in the Pressing House where it was warm during the day and quite cold at night. Or possibly related to the fact that one of the containers had the free-run juice, the other had the juice from pressing (although that seems a bit odd) - next time I will mix them anyhow.

2014, 2015

I didn't post in 2014 or 2015 for a reason.

The entire crop in 2014 succumbed to Mildew.  I managed to salvage about 35-40 litres which I preserved as juice rather than make a wine.

In 2015 there was a bumper crop. Unfortunately I was working abroad and we sold it all.

A profitable business?

At the end of the summer I started to look for a buyer for the white grapes and some of the wine in the cellar. This year we decided to make wine only with the red grapes as it's a lot of work with both the white and red, and the red on it's own should deliver more than enough wine for my own use. Meanwhile, most of the barrels were already full with previous year's wine, and I didn't know what to do with them.

In the end I sold 300 litres of white from 2011 and 2012, and 250 kg of white grapes. Not for a great deal of money, and if I was to calculate how much I invested in the work to grow and harvest them, it would hardly be profitable. Still, I must say I had a proud feeling, selling my wine for real hard cash!

So this year we harvested and pressed only the red grapes, resulting in about 110-120 litres which after the first racking should nicely fill a 100l barrel.  Unfortunately the red wine from the past two years has gone slightly vinegary, one reason can be too much air in those barrels as the quantity of the wine did not fill them completely.  In future I will make sure the barrels are full, and also to mix in some sulphur at each racking to kill off harmful bacteria.

The wine which has gone off can be converted to Pálinka, so this is under consideration!

Barrel Refurbishment

A few weeks ago we took all the barrels up from the cellar, washed them down, painted the rings and put sunflower oil on the wood.  They look great now.