2011 Uh-Oh No. 1

Lori and Steve were speaking to Ben Hagen and brought the topic around to ramato style wines.  And of course, Slope Cellars has lots of wines made by fermenting white grapes on their skins.  A pact was made: next year 11th Street makes some copper wine, next year Ben builds a cold-box to grow winter vegetables, and a trade gets made.

Then we came back to the house, and there were the plastic garbage bags filled with the pressed Muscat berries.  As soon as Lori wasn't looking S hauled a 50 gallon fermentation barrel from the cellar to the back yard, hauled all the pressed grapes to it and into it, added a gallon of water, took brix readings (very low!  Guess all that sugar went with the juice), added enough sugar to raise the whole stew by maybe 5 Brix, mixed and pitched 20 g of yeast.  The whole rig is in the back yard, under the crabapple.  We're talking very off-the cuff here.  The skins were already offered for compost and were one day from being trash - what the heck.  Maybe it'll be drain cleaner when it's finished, or maybe it'll be the base for some fortifying.  It'll definitely be odd.

 (It's in about as shady  spot as I can get it and still be able to go in and out of the barrel without dropping leafs and branches into it.  The mosquito and fly activity in the back is gruesome right now, what with all of the rain, and with all of the rotting concord grapes in the arbor.  I probably got 20 bites in the time it took to snap this pic and a few others.  That's a 5 gal bucket of meta, with my punch-down masher, sitting on top of the barrel, holding the lid in place in case any critters get curious.)