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My goals this weekend were two-fold:

1) Celebrate “Earth Hour” on Saturday - which my wife and I did indeed do (hope you did too)

2) Get caught up on all of those wine making activities that I haven’t had time for over the last several weeks (and I know I’m not the only one in this boat …)

This mainly included:

- Cleaning out our pantry in the basement under the stairs so that we had a nice, dark and cool space to age our wine (we like to “bulk age” our wine in the carboy so that the batch has a consistent flavour)

- Racking our current batches of wine that are in the aging process so that I could get them into our new found “aging room”

I am pleased to say that for the most part I was successful in achieving my goals this weekend, but the experience was even more satisfying then expected as it reminded me of several important things about wine making that I wanted to share with you all.

Why Do We Rack Our Wine During The Aging Process?

Well, the most obvious reason is to get rid of the sediment at the bottom of the carboy as it helps clear the wine ensuring that there is less sediment in the bottle. Now of course if you are a proponent of filtering your wine this is less of an issue for you, but I’m of the mind that if you age and rack your wine properly you really don’t need to filter your wine. This is a personal opinion of course ….

The other (and often forgotten reason) is that racking your wine allows for a little bit of oxygen to be added to your wine, which in fact allows your wine to “breath” - much like when you decant your wine before enjoying it. This should help your wine develop it’s bouquet and flavours as it ages.

Do I Need To Add Anything To Wine If I Plan On Aging It For More Then Six Months?

The simple answer is yes. If you would like to age your wine past 6 months you need to add a preservative to stave off oxidization, which will potentially ruin your wine. To do this simply add 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulphate to 1/2 cup of cool water then gently stir this solution into your carboy (this assumes you have 23 litres of wine).

I’ve Racked My Wine And Have An Airspace Left In The Carboy - Now What?

One of the reasons why we use carboys as the secondary and for aging is that it has narrow neck. This is to help reduce the airspace in the container to limit potential contact with oxygen thereby reducing the chance that your wine will spoil.

You’ll notice, however, that when you rack (transfer your wine from one container to the next leaving the sediment behind) that you’ll have less wine in the new carboy then what you originally had. This is simply because the sediment at the bottom of the carboy takes up some of the volume in the carboy, not to mention the fact that you’ll be leaving some of the wine behind from the bottom instead of risking having some of the sediment transfer over to the new carboy in the wine at the bottom.

You will want to top up your wine in the new carboy to within 5 cm of the bottom of the bung, so the question therefore becomes what do you use?

Here’s what I usually use (and I would be curious to hear what you use):

1) Sterile water - in my opinion though this waters down the wine depending on how much you have to add so I have been moving away from using it.

2) Similar wine to the one your making (either commercial or homemade) - it adds a unique, balanced flavour to the wine. This is what I did today with one of our wines we’re making from an expensive wine kit. It is the Stag’s Leap Merlot so I decided to added two bottles of Casa Lapostelle (a medium priced 2006 Chilean Merlot we quite like) with the hope that it will add a complex flavour to the wine. This was a little more expensive then we expected though as the wine we added cost $16 a bottle. So we’re now in for just under $200 for this wine kit so I hope it will turn out well - we justified the extra expense though as we’re still just over $6 a bottle for wine we expect will rival a $30 - $50 bottle of wine.

I’ve also heard of people making a cheaper matching wine kit to the one they’re making to specifically use as a “topper upper”. Interesting idea!

For our chocolate raspberry port I have purchased a cheap blended port to top things up once I rack it.

3) White or red grape concentrate (usually done with fruit wines) - This are usually included in the fruit wine recipes anyways to add a bit of fruitiness and depth so generally not a bad idea although I’ve heard some fruit wine advocates ask why you’d want a fruit wine to taste like a grape wine? Personal preference I guess.

4) Something else - This is where you can experiment a bit. For our crabapple wine, for example, I added two 500 ml cans of Strongbow dry cider and was also considering adding some unsweetened apple juice.

Which ones are right and which ones are wrong? I guess it really comes down to personal taste and you really won’t know how things turn out till you bottle your wine and try it for the first time.

Sometimes you wine and sometimes you lose but at least you can be comforted knowing that chances are you’ll still be able to use your wine in some fashion regardless. This could be as part of your cooking, as a wine spritzer in the summer (i.e. add Sprite or 7-Up to it) or you can even gussy it up with some drink crystals.

Remember to record what you’ve added and how much so that you can replicate your wine again if it turns out really well!

Anyhoo, just some ideas to throw your way this evening.

I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are on racking (i.e. how often during aging), wine filtering and what you use to up your wine during the aging process.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

- Scott

Now normally this Blog is reserved for topics relating to wine making but I thought I’d take a moment and discuss something more on the environmental end of things - Earth Hour!

I had heard something briefly on the news the other day about it but didn’t pay too close attention to it.

Then I was attending a business luncheon today and the main topic was relating to “Earth Hour”.

Since this was the second time I’d heard about in as many days I felt it was fate giving me a swift kick in the “behind” and telling me to pay attention!

When I got home from work today I told my wife about it and she quickly agreed that she wanted to participate as well.

So What Is “Earth Hour” Anyways?

Last year 2.3 million of our friends in Sydney, Australia turned off their lights simultaneously for 1 hour (coordinated by WWF-Australia) to show that it’s possible to take action on climate change.

The Result?

According to WWF-Australia, there was a 10% reduction on the electrical grid, saving 25,000 tonnes of CO2, which is the equivalent of taking approximately 50,000 cars off the road for an hour. Not bad!

Due to the success of the event last year the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) is promoting this across the world this month and hopes that you’ll participate as well!

To participate all you have to do is sign up at www.EarthHour.org and commit to turning off your lights at 8pm (local time) till 9pm on Saturday, March 29th (i.e. this coming Saturday).

You can also promote this to your friends and colleagues at work, as well as consider what else you can do in your home and at work to drive change in behaviour and practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Why Participate?

Participating in Earth Hour is a simple way to show that you want to be a part of the solution and sends a powerful message to others that, together, we can make a difference.

To Learn More About Earth Hour

Please visit www.earthhour.org to commit to turning your light’s off for one hour Saturday night and to learn more about this cool “little” event that the WWF is putting on.

You can also download a short 2-page summary of the event by going to:

www.wwf.ca/EarthHour/downloads/WWF_EH_Summary.pdf

If you are planning on participating I’d be interested to hear on Sunday how things went.

At the very least this is a great opportunity to have that romantic candle lit dinner with your “better half” that you’ve been thinking about doing for a while …

Have fun!

- Scott

Well I certainly thought so until I received an interesting email from one of my readers the other day, which asked if you had to add ingredients (such as yeast, bentonite and a clearing agent) to a pail of juice like you do with a typical wine kit.

The reason why he was asking was that he has made several batches of wine using pails of juice, which turned out really well (was nice and clear plus had great “legs) and he didn’t have to add anything to it. He did note though that he left the lid slightly ajar during the primary stage so that leads me to believe that the fermentation was caused by natural yeast in the air (which, incidentally was how monks invented wine in the first place).

I asked him to make another batch using a juice pail and add the extra ingredients to see what kind of difference that will make. I’m curious what the results will be!

Have you had any experience with making wine the “natural” way? If so, I’d love to hear from you on how it turned out!

- Scott