When starting a winemaking project, it is nice to know what you have. With Brehm Vineyard's frozen juices, you know prior to receiving your pails exactly what you will be working with. During the harvest, freshly harvested white grapes are whole-berry pressed to juice. This juice is then cold-settled. The settled juice can then be sampled directly from the tank prior to dispensing the juice into pails for freezing. Each pail will contain juice with the same brix, TA and pH. Frozen white grape juice allows you to plan out your entire winemaking project before you even pitch your yeast.
Brehm Vineyard's now offers to winemakers a brief recipe for one of our old favorites, a dry and spicy white wine - Gewurztraminer. Our version of Gewurztraminer is designed to be dry. It is a spicy white that requires minimum investment and provides a great yield. It requires no barrel aging and can be in your glass in a matter of months.
The Gewurztraminer Brehm Vineyards has sold over the last 22 years has received many awards, including the Best of Show at WineMaker Magazine's show a couple of years past. It has been a grape of terrific value. This 22-year tradition requires recognition that this varietal, grown under the proper conditions in particular soil, makes a wonderful companion with a wide range of food. Gewurztraminer likes life in the coolest parts of the Columbia Gorge. The varietal loses the intensity of its character when grown in warmer climates. It is an early ripening grape with a thick, rosé colored skin. Bunches are quite small with good resistance to rot. Early in the maturation process, Gewurztraminer loses its malic acid. Low total acidity juice is more usual than not.
Brehm Vineyards has produced a 2006 version of Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminer. It is bottled under the Brehm Vineyards' label. In a couple of months White Salmon Vineyard, our northwest winery, will have this wine available for commercial sale as well.
Below are the highlights from Brehm Vineyard's experience with producing Gewurztraminer in commercial quantities. We have also included a brief recipe for the fermentation of our Columbia Gorge Pinot Grigio. Made in the same manner as the Gewurtz, the Pinot Grigio's offers winemakers another option for the production of an extremely pleasant, dry white wine.
After thawing the frozen juice, the contents of the pails should be emptied in their entirety into your primary fermentor. The sticky and crystalline substances on the bottom of the pail are sugars and cream of tarter that precipitated during freezing - both are important to reconstitute the juice to its total form. If you are fermenting the juice in the pail it came in, make sure that you stir the juice well and scrape the bottom while doing so.
Juice Notes:
2006 Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminer - 06CGGW - #328
Brix: 23.6° / pH 3.86 / Total Acidity 0.36 g/100ml
The 2006 Gewurztraminer was harvested on October 10th, 2006 without rain and with rich, mature flavors and classic aroma. No potassium metabisulfite was added before freezing. While the juice shows a low total acidity, this is easily remedied. This vintage's juice is one of our better Gewurztraminers and will and has produced wine in a classic, fragrant, dry, spicy style.
2007 Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminer - 07CGGW - #510
Oct 6, 2007 harvested: Brix: 22.5° / pH 3.61 / Total Acidity 0.52 g/100ml
Oct 23, 2007 harvested: Brix: 21.3° / pH 3.50 / Total Acidity 0.63 g/100ml
The 2007 Gewurztraminer was harvested in two lots. The first was picked on October 6th from a vineyard on Underwood Mountain, and the second lot, picked two weeks later at a vineyard in White Salmon on October 23rd. Check your pails to see which picking you have and follow the appropriate recommendations below. In both cases, the 2007 Gewurztraminer was harvested in clean condition with ripe flavors and classic aroma. The earlier harvest was slightly higher in sugar and higher in pH with a lower total acidity.
2007 Columbia Gorge Pinot Grigio - 07CGPG - #518
Brix: 21.0° / pH 3.22 / Total Acidity 0.86 g/100ml
The 2007 Pinot Grigio is the perfect juice to produce a wine suited for seafood antipasti enjoyed on your veranda perched above the Adriatic, San Francisco Bay or Long Island Sound. The wine has sufficient acid to provide a clean, tangy, light, dry wine without performing malolactic fermentation. For the venturesome or experienced winemaker, you may wish to have the wine undergo malolactic fermentation, age with a touch of oak, and perform a few stirrings of the lees to produce a more complicated wine.
Recommended Additives Per Pail (5.25 gallons / 20 liters of juice)
Yeast: 5 grams of dried yeast should be sufficient. DV10 from Lallemand is a good, all- purpose white wine yeast to use with all of the above juices. More expressive yeast from Lallemand would be #58W3 or # VL1. The most important task with yeast is to maintain as high a population as possible. Keep them nourished and do not shock them with radical changes in temperature.
Go-Ferm: (Optional) 6 grams to be added to 200 ml of warm (110°F) water - avoid clumping when mixing. This is a solution that will help the dehydrated yeast to revive with the maximum population. Once this liquid cools to 104° you can add the dry yeast to it. Do not disturb for 15 - 20 minutes. While we use the Go-Ferm for our yeast additions, you can rehydrate yeast without it directly in warm water. Yeast Nutrient: We always recommend the use of a good yeast nutrient. We are not selling any of these ingredient additions, but we are surely using them. Buy a good nutrient such as Super Food or Fermaid K and follow the addition directions included with the product.
Tartaric Acid: The Gewurztraminers are harvested by taste. The unique, spicy character of the grape is its distinguishing characteristic. When harvesting for taste and maturity, the total acidity can be diminished. Tartaric Acid additions are very common with this grape and recommended here. Add the tartartic acid to juice once it is in your primary fermentor.
The Tartaric Acid additions, measure per pail (5.25 gallons / 20 liters) are meant to raise the Total Acidity to 0.70 g / 100 ml.
Tartaric Acid Additions
2006 Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminer - 06CGGW - #328
Juice should have an addition of 66 grams or 2.3 ounces of tartaric acid added.
2007 Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminer - 07CGGW - #510
Juice harvested on Oct 6th should have an addition of 36 grams or 1.3 oz tartaric acid.
Juice harvested on Oct 23rd should have an addition of 15 grams or 0.5 oz tartaric acid..
2007 Columbia Gorge Pinot Grigio - 07CGPG - #518
The 2007 Pinot Grigio does not require acid addition, but will benefit from acid reduction. The easiest way to accomplish this with a frozen pail of juice is to rack the juice off of the cream of tarter that forms during freezing. As the juice thaws and once the ice has melted, stir well. Your goal is to distribute the sugar at the bottom of the pail completely throughout the juice while not dissolving the cream of tarter on the bottom.
Keeping the juice cold during this stirring will accomplish the sugar distribution and should allow the tartrates to remain. Rack the juice into your primary fermentor leaving the tartrate crystals behind. Give a taste to the precipitate on the bottom of the pail to make sure it is acidic and not very sweet.
If you are an amateur chemist or just inclined to the alchemic traditions, you could take 2 liters of the juice and completely de-acidify it. Add 4 to 5 grams of potassium bicarbonate to the 2 liters of juice, stir and let it foam. Once the acid has bubbled away and the extracted juice has settled, rack it back into the main batch. The complete removal of acid from the 2-liter batch is sufficient to lower the overall Total Acidity of the full 20 liters.
Lysozyme: This ingredient is extracted from egg whites. Lysozyme simply kills malolacitc bacteria and its use will protect the wine from undergoing malolactic fermentation as long as it is in solution. Since lysozyme is also a protein, it will be removed from the wine when the wine is fined with bentonite.
All of our Gewurztraminers should be shielded from malolactic fermentation by the use of lysozyme. 6 grams of Lysozyme carefully dissolved into warm water should be added to the juice upon defrosting. Lysozyme is not mandatory, but it is a good idea for many reasons. Do not have its use stop you from making the wine, but if you can use it, do so.
For the Pinot Grigio, if racked off the cream of tarter effectively, de-acidified chemically or is a candidate for a residual sugar wine, use Lysozyme. If you are planning on doing malolactic fermentation, do not add lysozyme.
Winemaking Procedures
1) Make yeast starter.
2) Rack the thawed juice into your primary fermentor(s) allowing a good amount of headspace in your fermentor for foaming.
3) Add tartaric acid and Lysozyme as indicated above.
4) Add the Go-Ferm / Yeast starter mixture to the juice. Warning: When the temperature differential between the juice and the starter is greater than 20°F, there is the probability of killing a good portion of the yeast population. You should warm the juice to 40°F - 50°F and cool the starter to the same for the addition.
5) Yeast Nutrient is the cheapest insurance for a good wine. The first addition of 1/2 the nutrient is made once the juice has begun fermenting. The second addition should be made at 12° brix - it must be made before 10° brix. Add to all juices and musts.
6) Fermentation temperature is very important. Ferment as cool as possible (35°F - 45° F / 1.7°C - 7.2°C). We encourage a long, slow fermentation to retain the aromatic esters in the juice. Rapid fermentations with their rapid CO2 releases will strip the wonderful smells contained in the juices. As the fermentation slows and the sugar level drops, you may start warming the fermenting juice. You want to maintain a steady fermentation; do not speed it up. The finishing temperature of the juice should not exceed 70°F / 21.1°C. Shortly after the start of fermentation the foaming should start to subside. It is critical that the wine, once through its initial foaming be topped up so that the minimum amount of surface area is exposed to the air. All of this fermentation should be done under an air lock.
7) Check the end of fermentation with a dextrose check tablet. Hydrometer readings should be below zero. Hydrometers cannot tell you that the wine is dry. You need to establish that the wine has no more than 0.2% residual sugar. Higher than 0.2% residual sugar and the wine is not considered dry. It would be possible for the fermentation to begin again if the conditions were right.
8) Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), added in the form of potassium metabisulphite, is added to the wine in a ratio dependant on the pH of the wine and its acidity. Yeast requires nutrients and sugar to maintain their work, which is growth and alcohol production. Once the juice's sugar has been consumed, the yeast will die. During the fermentation the busy yeast consume fructose and sucrose releasing CO2 and alcohol. Yeast also consume and need oxygen. You can reliably turn brown, oxygen-rich juice to a beautiful yellow-green with the help of the working yeast. Once these yeast die, your next defense against oxidation is sulfur dioxide. It also consumes oxygen by binding to it to an almost indispensable degree. The amount of potassium metabisulphite to be used at this time in the wine's life is very important.
Those employing malolactic fermentation should add the malolactic bacteria before any SO2 addition. Upon completion of malolactic fermentation, the following SO2 addition should be made.
SO2 addition may be made with powdered potassium metabisulfite or a solution of potassium metabisulfite and water. The following addition recommendation is for powdered potassium metabisulfite.
Potassium Metabisulfite Additions
2006 and 2007 Columbia Gorge Gewurztraminers
Each of the Gewürztraminers will need 1.3 grams of potassium metabisulfite added to each 20 liters at the end of yeast fermentation.
2007 Columbia Gorge Pinot Grigio - 07CGPG - #518
The 07 CGPG, #518 will have an unpredictable pH depending on the amount of cream of tarter left behind or whether the wine had a complete malolactic fermentation. If you are able to determine the pH, i.e. 3.34pH, add 34 ppm SO2. I would GUESS the addition of 1.2 grams of potassium metabisulfite should be adequate.
9) A couple of days after SO2 addition, once the wine has mostly settled, rack the wine into a clean carboy off of the gross lees. You may carry over a small amount of the light lees with the wine, if you have had no instance of off smells. If there has been the slightest hint of rotten eggs or off aromas, rack clean. Be sure to top off the carboy leaving the minimum amount of surface area exposed. As a fussy winemaker, we do squirt CO2 or nitrogen into the carboy to be filled, the siphon hose and the fermentor as the wine leaves. SO2 and careful avoidance of oxygen are the marching orders from here out.
10) Store wine at a cool, constant temperature. Once clear (at least pretty clear) and tasting good we can consider bottling.
11) Over time, most of the particulate matter will fall to the bottom. In most cases, there will still be some floating material in the wine and you will want to bentonite fine the wine. Approximately six weeks prior to when you wish to bottle the wine, fine the wine with bentonite. This fining will remove protein and its possible expression in the bottle as a haze. Prepare the bentonite as directed one or two days before addition. The addition of bentonite will also remove the added Lysozyme and make the wine vulnerable to malolactic fermentation. However, at this stage of the wine, it is highly unlikely that any malolactic bacteria are still alive in the wine due to the presence of SO2 and the length of time the wine did have lysozyme in solution. It is important as always to protect the wine from contact with the air where it could be contaminated with microorganisms. Sterile filtration is the only way to be sure that the wine is free of microorganisms.
Add 6 grams of bentonite (in slurry form) into the wine. Mix in well. Allow the wine to settle clear. After a couple of weeks the wine should fall clear. Rack the wine clean into another carboy and add an additional 1 gram of potassium metabisulfite to the wine. Let settle for a week and then bottle.
12) While waiting for the bentonite to settle, chill the wine as much as possible to encourage the precipitation of cream of tarter. This is a cosmetic procedure not affecting the wine's quality. Do the best you can. This is called Cold Stabilization.
13) Bottling should be carried out with the minimum amount of splashing or oxygen exposure. While not necessary, blanketing the carboy(s) and sparging the wine bottles with CO2 or Nitrogen is a practice we follow.
We hope this aids you in your wine making venture.
Written by Peter Brehm and Paul Rago
