2019 Vintage: Making Great Wine will go over the basic steps I used to harvest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, processing them and then fermenting. Readers will learn basic home wine making methods and product sourcing. Note: this was my first time working with true wine grape varietals.

Sourcing the Fruit

Sourcing good fruit for your homemade wine can get really expensive. Even wine kits are upwards of 150$ depending on the year and variety. Some good opportunities to source local and cheaper fruit can be found on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, farmers markets, and by growing your own! Or check More Wine Making for frozen buckets and kits.

I was lucky enough to find the deal of a lifetime on Facebook marketplace. I was looking for Pinot Noir grape clones to plant my own small vineyard when I ran across a man advertising grapes. He had no winemaking experience but had recently purchased a country house with 150 fifteen-year-old vines: half Pinot Noir, half Chardonnay.

He had learned from the previous owner how to care for the finicky Pinot Noir vines (they tend to get powdery mildew in the Willamette Valley) and even in late August was still searching for a wine maker. The deal was: pick and make the grapes into wine -> return a few cases of each.

Sometimes all you have to do is look! And, this opportunity became a two for one when I offered to help prune in exchange for cuttings.

The Summer of 2019 was fairly mild and resulted in later than usual picking times, forced mostly by the rains. Grape growers monitor the sugars in their crops using a variety of methods. As a novice to wine grapes I purchased a refractometer to make sampling sugars easier. I did opt to spend a little money purchasing four food grade 50 gallon plastic drums at 25$ each. These were rinsed out well by the previous company but I did some cleaning of my own as well.

Waiting for Sugars to Peak

Late September rains kept sugar levels down to around 21 Brix for Chardonnay and 22 Brix for Pinot Noir. Oregon Pinot Noir is known for higher ABVs and balanced acidity from longer hang time on vines and Brix upwards of 25. This coerced many growers in the Valley to hang on (pun intended) in hopes for a sunny week that would peak sugars. Unfortunately that didn’t really come and Vineyards had to choose from holding out for sugar peaks or risk botrytis, powdery mildew, birds and other crop damaging pests.

Unfortunately, my day job schedule is set. We were only afforded the opportunity to pick on October 4th/5th. To my disappointment the birds and botrytis and birds had cleaned up more than 75% of the Pinot Noir grapes and about 25% of the Chardonnay. Good thing we like both! Next year we will invest in pest deterrents for the Pinot Noir plants.

Picking and Transporting

On average it takes roughly 100lbs of grapes to make 5 gallons of wine. I expected about 60 gallons of wine to be produced from 150 vines. Driving over to the vineyard in our old ’87 F150 I was praying the never replaced leaf springs in this thing would be able to handle a half ton of grapes. I did not yet know the extent of loss the crop had sustained.

On day one I managed to pick all the remaining Pinot Noir Grapes, a measly 150 lbs. It was a sad day, and completely avoidable. Heres to doing better next year!

On day two my fiancé and son joined me to pick the Chardonnay. October 4th was our 5 year anniversary and our one year engagement anniversary. We decided picking grapes to be served as wine at our Wedding was be romantic. It was luckily one of the few sunny days that week. Paired with a bottle of Pinot Noir, it was a great day.

The Chardonnay haul was good, filling up two and a half 50gallon barrels and totaling about 700lbs, more than we expected for the loss we saw on the Pinot.

Crushing and Pressing

Now for the wine making in this 2019 Vintage: Making Great Wine post. Everything was “cold” soaked overnight in the food grade drums. Doing this can greatly improve the color of reds and improve flavor for most varietals. The next day I headed into town to rent the necessary equipment for processing.

The Home Fermenter in Eugene, Oregon is my favorite place for all things fermentation. The owner is amazingly friendly and never passes up an opportunity to go over a recipe, add a trustworthy insight, or answer a question. I rented my heavier duty equipment here.

Equipment/rates:

Manual Crusher/de-stemmer 24hrs- 50$ for Sat/Sun

Stainless 1 gallon? Fruit Press 24hrs- 22$ for Sat/Sun

Check out their rentals page here.

I drove the 40 mins into town on 10/5/2019 to pick everything up at the store opening and was back home working by 12. It took all day to process both varietals and I was rinsing everything clean just as the sun set around 7pm.

The processing equipment is pretty self explanatory. Dump the grapes in the crusher/ de-stemmer, press it out, repeat, repeat, repeat. For the Pinot Noir I crushed directly into an 8 gallon fermenting bucket to sit on the skins and ferment for about a week, more on that later. For the Chardonnay, I pressed everything immediately. This was a long process given the small press that I had rented. It all went into a 30 gallon fermenting bucket . It would be worth your while to rent or buy the largest press you can afford.

I added potassium metabisulfate at a rate of 1/4 tsp for roughly every 4 gallons of juice to both the Pinot and the Chard. This ensures that no unplanned organisms take over your fermentation and leave you in the passenger seat.

Pre-Fermentation Adjustments and Testing

All of the grape must should have potassium metabisulfate added prior to anything else. Let the must sit for 24 hours before adding the yeast. In the meantime you can test for pH, titratable acids, and brix.

Titratable Acids (TA): Click on this link to pick up a test kit. The directions are pretty straightforward. If your acids are lower or higher than the optimum ~0.6% for reds and a bit higher for whites then you will need to adjust them. Use Acid Blend to raise TA and sodium bicarbonate to lower it. Read this article from wineperspective.com to learn a little more about acidity in wines. Always test your finished wine before bottling to determine if further adjustment is needed. If this seems intimidating and you only do this for fun once in a while, you can get away with testing just the pH and adjusting as necessary.

pH Tester: Pick up an easy pH tester by clicking on the link to the left. First adjust your TA following the instructions that came with your TA test kit. TA and pH are linked, although conversely. As pH goes down Titratable Acids go up, which actually makes sense if you at all understand chemistry. It is important to understand where your pH is incase you are wildly outside the recommended levels for yeasts and bacteria to do their thing. Read up here for more on that.

Brix: The fermentable sugars in wine is measured by either using a refractometer or a hydrometer. Either will give you an idea of how much ABV% your wine will turn out, where you are at in your fermentation and help you decide whether or not you want to add additional sugars (chaptalization).

Yeast Addition

Choose your yeasts carefully. Choose yeasts bred specifically for the style and variety of grape that you are fermenting. Within these ‘subcategories’ there are still dozens of different yeasts to choose from. Consider the fermentation environment, the effects of aging, whether you prefer fruity notes or something more herbal. Pick something that interests you. Check out Morewine’s yeast and pairing guide page to help you decide.

To add your yeast siphon off a cup of must and rehydrate your yeast in it for 30min to an hour at room temp. This will give it the jumpstart it will need to really get going. Don’t forget to add yeast nutrient to the starter too. Yeast nutrient will be necessary at some point as naturally occurring nutrients become depleted, without it you could see a stuck fermentation.

I separated out the Chardonnay into 5 different fermenters each with different yeasts. This will allow me to later blend and create a “super wine” that meets my definition of amazing. This is your primary fermentation. During this phase, it is preferable to drape a clean rag, cloth or sheet over your fermenters to give the yeast access to oxygen. Only do this if you properly treated with Sodium metabisulfate or similar.

Red wine yeast was pitched directly into the Pinot Noir must including skins. This sat for six days on the skins. Twice a day a stirring paddle was used to push down the skins known as “punching the cap.” The fermenting sugars are producing CO2 gas and forcing the skins upward. To avoid unwanted oxidation it is important to keep the skins below the liquid as much as possible.

After six days or when you’re must reaches a deep red you should press out the skins and transfer to carboys or more permanent fermentation vessels. This should have been a long enough period of time to extract the color and tannins needed to create a fine Pinot Noir.

Ongoing Care

White wines and red wines are fermented at different temperatures. Pinot noir is fermented between 60- 70 degrees where Chardonnay is fermented below 60 degrees, all depending on the yeast strain. By keeping your wine in these optimal temp zones you are helping your yeast contribute desirable flavors and characteristics that will not be seen if fermented outside the recommended temps.

Test the Brix every other day or so during primary fermentation. When you’re yeast have consumed about half the sugars add another dose of yeast nutrient. Again, this will help prevent a stuck fermentation.

After primary fermentation you should attach the bung and airlock. This will ensure no foreign bacteria can infect your wine. Taste every month or so to get an idea of the changes that the wine is going through. Be on the lookout for off flavors and smells. Especially rotten eggs or sulfurous gas. SO2 gas can be excessively put off by struggling yeast, but is easily be detected by tasting and smelling.

Secondary Fermentation & MLF

After primary fermentation is complete I like to add malolactic bacteria and oak staves. For these wines I chose a combination of french and american oak staves to give me more variety to work with blending later.

During Malolactic Fermentation (MLF) the malolactic bacteria will consume harsh malic acids and convert them to softer lactic acids. This will provide both flavor enhancements and mouthfeel enhancements. Often you will hear folks talking about the butteriness or creaminess of a wine. This is MLF. Although, if you are not someone who enjoys those qualities you can skip this step. Note that your wine may go through it anyway from exposure to oak, air or contaminated equipment.

Secondary fermentation and MLF can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months. You can monitor the drop in sugars using your hydrometer or refractometer to know exactly when fermentation is complete. I open the vessels up as infrequently as possible letting the airlock movement tell me when things are done. I also let my wines naturally de-gass over time. This means that my wine will bulk age under an airlock for about a year.

Whats next?

Plan your bottling day, stocking up on clean wine bottles. (remember Craigslist and FB for sourcing).

Design a label!

Consider making some sparkling wine, check here for details.

Organize. Clean up your space, build shelves, etc.. Check out my easy build fermentation shelving seen below here.

Thanks for reading, leave a post or join my mailing list for future projects! Cheers!