2010, A GRAPE ODYSSEY
Other Good names for this book!
ORGANIC WINES OF EAST TENNESSEE
HOW A TENNESSEE REDNECK SHOULD MAKE WINE, AND WHY!
TENNESSE WINE AND POLITICS
WINE & POLITICS, IS ONE GOOD FOR THE OTHER?
WHAT YOUR MOTHER NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT WINE
SMELL THE WINE, DRINK THE ROSES!
Norbert J ST Pierre
Dec 28, 2010
PREFACE
This book is divided into three parts. You don’t need to “suffer” as I did to learn how to
make wine that is not only better than what you find in most stores, but is able to be as sweet or
dry as you want it to be.
In the first part, the methods are the results of many efforts simply to make the best
“organic” quality wine possible and why some of what you find on the open market is not what it
should be, even if it is called “organic”.
The second part explains how the methods in the first part were developed. It is also a
story behind the move here to Tennessee. Some of the politics will shock you and warn you
about the problems you could face if you consider going further than just making wine for your
own use. I supposed that if one were to know what “trials by fire” I went through to get where I
am at, what I write would mean more and what I went through would count for something.
The third part includes advice on the best grapes to consider planting in a home vineyard,
how to plant and prune them. It also has copies of newspaper reports and previous pamphlets and
list of terms I posted on the Internet or distributed at my Winery to visitors.
Technically, I am an amateur with no formal training in vineology, other than in grape
growing from Cornell University. Still, at my first wine tasting, a renowned wine taster made
what some would have seen as a terribly uncomfortable accusation against me that I cherish to
this day! In front of dozens of couples, I was accused of being a fraud as no amateur could
possibly have made as good a wine as was in the seven bottles I presented. You might think I
would have cringed, not at all! I smiled as big a smile as I ever had, to think that my first try was
“too good” for professionals to think I could make it! What a complement! In fact, a number of
those attending have since opened wineries using the model of “Micro Winery” I developed in
NY.
In another incident, I received a call from a Professor at Paul Smiths, a prestigious
Cooking college in NY, telling me that a class of students I presented 19 wines to, had given me
the highest possible accreditation to date. A high cost lecturer from France had started a lecture
in front of these students and was booed out of the room when he declared that there was no such
thing as a good organic wine! They declared he was a fraud because they knew better after
tasting my wines! On the other hand, don’t believe everything you hear. After I showed 32, 32
and 40 wines at three consecutive county wine tastings in upstate NY, winning best of show each
year, I got an email of a news report last year that stated an ex-governor of NY had just become
the first person ever to show any wine at that fair!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
“ORGANIC BY DEFINITION”
“THE YEAST”
“THE EQUIPMENT”
“HOW TO PROCESS DRY GRAPE WINES”
“PASTUERIZATION”
“FRUIT WINES”
“POKEBERRY WINE”
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
“CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM NY”
“HOME”
“GETTING STARTED IN APPLE WINE”
“VILLAN OR FREEDOM FIGHTER?”
“PERMIT PROCESSES”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“HAVING FUN”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“REALITY AGAIN”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“A NEW HOME AND WHY”
PART THREE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“TENNESSEE GRAPES”
“PRUNING AND ARBORS”
APENDIX A
A NEWS ARTICLE PRINTED IN A NY NEWSPAPER
APPENDIX B
A COLLEGE ESSAY
APPENDIX C
PAMPHLETS SUBMITTED TO THE INTERNET
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
“ORGANIC BY DEFINITION”
Try to picture an advertisement in a machinery catalog for large vineyard operations. The
largest print is used to convince you that one brand is better than another because of its ability to
guarantee the least amount of lost juice due to its high speed, mechanized and “vacuum”
harvesting ability. Now keep in mind that California has laws on the books for the maximum
amount of allowable “foreign materials” during harvesting for the production of wine. These
materials include “Birds, Bird Nests, Frogs, Rats, Rat Nests, Snakes, Feces, Flies, Bees, June
bugs… Did I mention “Feces”?
Now, to be fair, the solids from these items are strained out in some varieties that only
use the juice during fermentations. If you wonder how wine can be made with such
contaminates, you are on track to understand why there is only one requirement, by law, as to
what must be printed upon any wine bottle label. It has to indicate the use of “Sulfur”. Sulfur is
used to kill all the biologicals that would interfere with the proper choice of added yeast to
perform the fermentation. It will also prevent discoloration from oxygen contact and the potential
that bacteria will change the alcohol to vinegar. If the wine is bottled sweet, additional added
sulfur will guarantee that the wine does not start fermenting again in the bottle and become
“Champaign” and possibly exploding the bottle or popping the corks. I will show you how to
bottle wine at a set amount of residual or added sugar.
Very few wineries produce true “organic wine”. To be legally classified as “organic”,
certain chemicals are not allowed to have been used within certain distances and a number of
years from the location and date of harvest. These wines can even still have had all the
contaminants listed above left in the fermentation.
If you are confused about the obvious problem of allowing “sulfur” in organic wines
while requiring it to be listed on the label, the reason is “purely” financial, pardon the pun! For
some, Sulfur is deadly even in small amounts. It is required on the label for that reason and is
allowed on “Organic Labels” because it would otherwise by unfeasible to market the wine. Shelf
life for a “juice only” wine is very short without the tannins from skins and stems or the addition
of Sulfur. A very few grapes, such as Niagara, have a high enough natural sulfur content to cause
problems for some who are highly allergic. Everyone is allergic to sulfur at some level of
concentration. At less than 70 parts per million, most have trouble even noticing it and many of
those simply because they never tasted wine without Sulfur. For some, the “Headache” after
drinking wine is solely from the Sulfur.
Myself, if a strong form of Sulfur called “Sorbate” is used, I instantly get noxious by just
smelling the cork! I can detect Sulfur at less than 30 parts per million.
This brings us to my definition of “Organic Wine” as I suggest that one should make it.
Any Fruit, Herb, Flower, Vegetable, Muscadine or Grape has potential for making wine. As long
as you don’t use Sulfur or any cleaner other than an oxidizer that can be flushed away with
water, and follow my methods, you will make wine that most approximates the concept of
“organic” quality. (99.33% of the time). I have made thousands of batches and only failed three
times. Once I made a science experiment and twice I made vinegar! Each time because I forgot
to keep to my method or because of the reason Sulfur was first used, sometimes you just can’t
get the juice clean enough! If you are making 100,000 gallons at a time, you can’t afford even
1% mistakes.
CHAPTER TWO
“THE YEAST”
If you recall using yeast to make bread, the idea is to allow the yeast to make small
bubbles of gas to cause the bread to rise. As the yeasts eat sugars, they give off carbon dioxide
gas and alcohol. The “yeasty” smell or rising dough has a beginning of the smell of alcohol
production. In a juice concentration with sugars at about 30 % by volume, it is possible to get
over 10% alcohol levels. At full bore fermentation, a five gallon carboy (water jug) can fill a
balloon in a few minutes. This will not happen with most bread yeast. They are suitable for apple
wines that don’t go beyond 7% without adding sugar. 9 % is the highest I have seen. What is
needed is a strain of yeast designed by wine makers over a number of years. Each strain gives its
own unique flavor to the wine it produces. Montrachet is best for red wines and fruits. Pasteur
strain (not the manufacturer by that name) yeast is best for white wines. Montrachet is listed as
not going over 12% but I have gotten as high as 19%. One strain, a “Pasteur” variety, is used to
make Champaign because it can start under high alcohol levels and add just enough gas from a
small addition of sugar to create the “fizz” of a Champaign.
The nature of yeast is the key to making organic wine through a strict use or protocol.
Under 50 degrees, most yeast are dormant or very slow to reproduce. In nature, all fruits have
dormant yeast on their skins from the previous season’s abundant natural fermentation among
the hundreds of sources of sugars in the wild. The wind spreads these dormant yeasts all through
a vineyard or fruit tree. As soon as a warm fruits’ skin is broken, the yeast wake up and start the
fermentation process. Naturally, if a grape or fruit can be harvested cold, made even colder
through a water bath, the yeast will stay dormant. Even if the fruit is contaminated with mildew
and chemicals, the water bath will remove the majority of it. Can you see where we are going
compared to the machine that guarantees to collect “everything”?
At this point, I must admit that we are headed into a condition that you must consider
when challenged by a wine “purest”. This will add water to most fruits and require added sugar
to attain a certain alcohol level. A “purist” would claim “adulteration” and thus a lower quality.
Chemically, there is absolutely no difference between natural grape sugars and good old
domino’s granular sugar in the bag. Stop right here and ask yourself if leaving Birds, Frogs,
Bugs and their Feces in and adding Sulfur sounds pure to you!
Going forward, another aspect of yeast is its reproductive and defensive abilities. At full
fermentation rates, one strain of yeast can fend off other strains. If two or more are present in
small numbers, it is guess as to which will overtake the other. Montrachet and Pasteur have these
traits. The trick with Sulfur is that you can kill all possible challengers and then, after about 24
hours with an initial addition of 70 parts per million (one Camden tablet per gallon), you can add
even a weak number of yeast to successfully complete fermentation.
In my process, the issue is advantage. If the juice is clean and cold, (dormant yeast), and
then heated quickly with hot sugared water (to compensate for the added water during triage and
to hit a calculated target of final alcohol) “AND” you add very active yeast, such as from a batch
at least 24 hours old and fermenting fast, this is where you have better than 99% success! You
don’t need no stinking Sulfur!
Additionally, Bacteria need Oxygen. To deal with this and no Sulfur to preserve color, all
fermentation should be done without further contact with air. You will read many books that tell
you that you need oxygen. Don’t fall for that. On the other hand, the common truism that
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is very true here. If you don’t keep everything clean, the devil
will get your wine! Any residue left in a container can harbor bacteria that can cause vinegar. If
you use airtight enclosures, you also lower this potential. An example is to use a new plastic bag
inside a clean garbage can. If enough head space is allowed for fermentations where the skins
and stems are used, you can tie it off rather tight and the carbon monoxide gas will force its way
out as it is keeping oxygen and biologicals out. If you use carboys, again, very clean to start, you
can use commercial bubblers or even rubber bands and plastic wrap. Even balloons will work.
CHAPTER THREE
“THE EQUIPMENT”
It does not take a deep wallet to acquire the equipment that is needed. If you have lived in
Tennessee for any length of time and understand self sufficiency, you already know how to get
what you need. Going backward from the finished product of bottled wine, start collecting! Used
wine bottles can be sterilized with hot water and oxidizers like “B-bright”, a commercial cleaner
that doesn’t even need to be rinsed after use or you can use simple laundry brightener listed as an
“Oxidizer” as long as you rinse after use. Peroxide will also do. Anything with Chlorine needs a
little more attention to being rinsed. Soaking the bottles overnight, even in cold water, will
release most labels and allow a simple bottle brush to remove dried solids from inside the bottles.
It is possible, but tricky, to use a baggie to remove corks from within bottles. You curl the plastic
into a flower shape in the bottle and bounce the cork until it settles inside the opening. As long as
the inside of the bottle is wet, the cork should slip out with the baggie as you slide it out. It takes
an average of three tries.
At this point, “DO NOT RE-USE CORKS”! If you don’t believe anything else I tell
you, this is one to ignore at your peril! Used corks are dangerous! I experimented by even boiling
them to try and sterilize them for reuse. Out of two cases of wine I put up on a wall to test there
effectiveness, every single bottle of pasteurized sweet wine eventually self contaminated and
blew their corks in six months time! Just don’t do it! Corks come in many lengths and sizes.
Number Sevens are for short term use. Eights are for 2 to 5 year use and Nines are for extra long
expectations, such as with heavy wines made with skins and stems. These can take 30 years or
more to age to their best flavor. Many stores offer these three sizes for the standard 750 milliliter
bottles or the 1.5 liter bottles called “Magnums”. A few bottles have slightly larger openings than
most but they are rare. If you are imaging an old fashion whisky jug, you would be using a
different style of cork all together. If you are considering the plastic stoppers used in Champaign
bottles, don’t! They will do for keeping wine from oxidizing for a few days at best.
If you can get bottles with screw caps that can fit tightly, that is good enough. A screw
cap bottle can be corked but I would only use number Sevens or short number Eights as the glass
rim was not meant to take the strain of machine corking. I never broke one but it stands to
reason. There is no problem with using gallon containers for long time storage as long as you
leave very little head space to prevent oxidation. It is “OK” for storage in a fridge for parties or
events where the gallon will be used up quickly. Soaking the caps in hot oxidizer solutions works
fine.
The distinction between bottle shapes is significant. A “Claret” bottle has straight sides
and allows for sediment to be trapped as you pour it out in what is also called a “decanting”
process. You simply throw away the sediment. These bottles stack better and fit in smaller boxes
than the next best style, the “Bordeaux” style. The Bordeaux style is a smooth curve and fits
better in individual serving containers. Other than that, I would recommend the claret style. Both
styles are used in .750 or 1.50 liter bottles. The 1.50 Bordeaux stacks even worse than its smaller
size.
Before final bottling, most grape wines can benefit from “Stabilizing”. This happens
when wine is stored at between 27 and 35 degrees for a few days or weeks. The colder it is, the
shorter the time required and vice versa. At 40 degrees, it could take months! They must not be
moved even a little during this time or acid crystals can stay suspended. The process is called
“Precipitation” of Tartaric acids. The acid crystallizes on the walls of the containers. The best
containers are glass. Carboys of glass will work but take longer than gallons. The nice thing
about gallon jugs is that they “decant” very well. In the process of stabilizing, most of the final
sediments will settle to the bottom. If you let them sit long enough, about four weeks, you can
decant without losing much wine at all.
I mention that this works best for grape wine because grapes have more acid than most
fruits. If the weather in your area does not allow for full ripening of some varieties, you could
end up with too much acid. If you have very ripe grapes, you have no need of stabilizing except
for removing sediments if you prefer not to decant after long term storage. The sediment doesn’t
hurt anything. One reminder, if you remove a stabilized bottle from storage, as in a dedicated
refrigerator, don’t allow it to come to room temperature before decanting. The crystals will
dissolve back into the wine! After you pour off the wine, the crystals will easily come out with a
little sloshing of hot water. It will look like sand particles. So far, you are saving bottles, caps
and gallon jugs.
Now we need to consider the “Second Stage Fermentors” You can use the carboy as both
first and second stage fermentors if you start with only juice for fermentation. Some will prefer
to rack the nearly finished fermentation off of the heavy “Lees” (sediment containing dead yeast
and solids) to another carboy for finishing the last few days of slow fermentation. A plastic
carboy will work best here. You can use glass carboys if you have them, but they cost about
40$to 80$ each and are dangerous to handle. If you plan to wait some time to stabilize the wine
in gallons, it is best to use glass carboys. Plastic ones will retain enough flavors of past wines to
impart their taste to the next batch. It doesn’t much matter for primary fermentation as long as it
is cleaned, oxidized and brushed. Long curved plastic brushes are a must for carboys use. I
highly recommend buying one. Anything else will do as secondary or primary fermentors as long
as you can keep the oxygen out while the carbon dioxide pushes its way out. I often used ten
gallon tall stainless steel trash cans with food grade 30 gallon bags, tied off with bread ties.
This would be a good point to mention that in fact, if you took fresh grapes, dropped
them into a large wooden barrel, crushed them and topped them off with a floating wood cover
and a cloth mesh to keep bugs out, you could allow natural yeast to ferment everything, form a
solid “cap” of moldy solids, sediments would drop to a level of about three inches on the bottom.
You could tap it at about six inches from the bottom and drain away perfectly fine sweet wine as
it is fermenting or dry wine once it is done. As soon as solids started to come out, it would be
time to clean it out and start over! That was how it used to be done! What I am teaching is how
to go from that, with a fifty fifty chance of failure, to over 99% success.
Now, again going backwards, you need to have some method of crushing your grapes.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you must decide on the two options faced by even the
largest of wineries. Skins add color and Tannin to wine. If you leave the stems in, for even more
Tannin, or just because it takes time to separate them, you have a serious problem to deal with.
Skins and stems knit together as the carbon dioxide rises during fermentation. It can raise the
level of the “must” as much as one third the height of the original material. If a bubbler is used in
a container that has a lid that can be removed to transfer the finished wine, it may get clogged
very easily and cause serious spills. If you ferment with all the skins and stems for just enough
time to impart all the color you want and then you place it into a secondary fermenter, the “head”
of foam can also rise about one sixth of the heath of the original level. Crushing is NOT the same
as pressing, not at all! You must first crush a fruit before you press it (in most cases). A very
small number of wines are made by just pressing and taking the small amount of light juice
obtained that way. “Beaujolais” wines are made that way and don’t last very long on the shelf
due to very little volatiles obtained by light pressing. It is sometimes called “Fracturing”. Apple
wines are an example of where crushing has to be completed to the point of a mush. It can be
done by allowing the yeast to eat away at chunks slowly, but I don’t recommend it as a rule due
to time. Some small combination crusher presses can be bought for as little as a couple hundred
dollars. In a pinch, use a hamburger grinder with as coarse a blade as possible except for fruits
with large pits.
Batches as small as ten lbs can always best be done by hand and will only make enough
juice for one gallon. One hundred lbs is the best size for most batches. It takes about 80 lbs to fill
a five gallon carboy with juice only. Crushing this much is a chore but can be done by hand
quickly enough. Most varieties of grapes are best fermented without the stems. After floating the
grapes in a large enough container to hold the entire batch, you can break them away from their
stems and crush them as you place them in a five gallon bucket to transfer to the fermenter. It is
possible to do small batches in “juicers” that are hand operated. You wouldn’t want to use an
electric “separator” because you would get the material from within the seeds and that could
even be dangerous as in the case with Cherries. They have Arsenic in them. I have used a
separator for apple wines with good luck but not for large batches.
The best tool for all occasions would be what is known as a crusher de-stemmer. It
separates the grapes from the stems as it crushed them. It usually fits over a five gallon bucket or
other large fermenter. They can be rented for very little or purchased from 80$ to 200$. The time
saved with even a one hundred lb batch is worth the time cleaning them up. If you are going to
use a press for juice, consider a press that uses a cloth of some sort as a liner. I use burlap in a
screw press that allows me to press out enough liquids that it almost feels dry. The second half of
a pressing through a cloth will produce the least amounts of solids at the bottom of a fermenter.
Finally, we get to the beginning. Any kind of container that can be sanitized is ok for
harvesting and transporting the fruit. Five gallon buckets are great. I don’t recommend totes as
they cause a lot of fracturing before the crush and dormant yeast have a chance to get a head
start, not to mention even more added water gets into a split grape during the wash. I recommend
a tub five feet long, three feet wide and one foot deep as the ultimate best size for triage. I found
a cheese making tank that worked very well. You can float off the bugs and leaves, de-stem in
place and use a net to pull the grapes out, leaving the dirt on the bottom. A hundred lbs placed at
one end can be de-stemmed and moved over. Thirty and forty gallon totes work well here also.
You can float away a lot of trash. When I pick under arbors that have lots of leaves and trash on
them, I get a lot of it into the harvesting containers. It takes a lot of time to hand clean them.
Using the water bath does the job the best. This process also allows for using late harvest grapes
normally discarded or shunned by wineries. Green or bug eaten berries float away.
The one tool that is an absolute is cheap enough. It is called a “Hygrometer”. It measures
the solid content in a juice or solution. You measure the sugar content and read the estimated
amount of alcohol it will result in after fermentation. Without one, you are guessing. Even then,
a few rules to follow will still get you where you are going. If the grapes make your hand feel
sticky as you pick them, they probably have enough sugar to make over 10 % alcohol. If it floats
a fresh egg, it can hit 14%. If your fermentation has stopped and the hygrometer reads less than
zero, you have used up all the sugar and have no problem bottling it dry. Also, a meat
thermometer that reads to 180 is needed to pasteurize sweet wine. Pots deep enough to cover all
but the neck of the bottles and a stove to heat the water to 180 will do. A corker is the last item
you need. Either table top model around 100$ or hand held with levers around 20$. Never use a
10$ barrel corker you have to push all by hand. If you do more than a few dozen bottles that way,
you WILL end up at the doctors! Last, the corks run between 11 cents and 30 cents. As long as
you wet them before you cork, they should slide in easy and last as long as you need.
CHAPTER FOUR
“HOW TO PROCESS DRY GRAPE WINES”
Any grape that has turned colors will make a good “enough” wine as long as you add
sugar to hit a minimum of 12%. If not fully ripe, the extra acid will help with flavor and shelf
life. Too ripe and you have way too much heavy flavor and lose shelf life without added sugar to
hit the minimum 12%. Anything under 12% will not last long. It may taste great for a short time
and you can act accordingly. At 12 or 14%, one glass, or half a bottle, is all you need to enjoy a
meal or put yourself to sleep. As it is usually two glasses per bottle, I feel that is the best target.
Over 14 % is a bit brutal, even if sweet.
This would be a good point to comment on one bit of odd Tennessee logic. I have met
many old timers who have the perception that some sort of “variety” of grapes are required to
make “sweet” wine, By their definition, it is understood that one must add sugar at the “start” of
fermentation to make “Sweet” wine. I understand the logic to be that if you put too much sugar
into a batch to start, it will stop fermenting before the sugar is used up and it will have very high
alcohol level simply because that is what yeast will do with all that sugar, up to the point that it
kills them! Technically, the high class masters will shut down fermentation with residual sugar
using filters or sulfur or they will add just enough of the original juice they had frozen and set
aside to do this with. This will result in a “sweet” taste. One industry standard is to call anything
under 1% dry, 2 to 3 % semi dry and over 3% “sweet”. Over 5 to 7% is called “dessert” sweet
wine.
Ice wine is another variation of this concept. If you press frozen grapes, you will extract a
higher level of sugar and you will have a fermentation that can’t finish using that much sugar.
Only certain varieties of grapes can keep from rotting after a frost as the vineyard waits for the
eventual 10 degree weather it takes.
Once decided on when to pick, make a batch of active yeast. Packets cost about 50 cents
in bulk and can store in your fridge for about a year. Open a packet into a cup of 104 degree
water. Allow to stand for one hour and then add to a half gallon solution of warm water sugared
to about 20 % sugar. Cover and keep warm for use the following day. Start picking the grapes as
early in the morning as possible. Picking until noon usually makes a big enough batch for even
the most enthusiastic home wine maker. Float the grapes in as cold a water bath as you can
Makes ice cubes if possible and add to the tank. Having dormant yeast is crucial. If you have
chlorinated water, even better. It isn’t enough to affect the taste as long as it is before
fermentation and it will decrease the bacteria pressure also. If you have a crusher, crush all at one
time once they are cleaned of bugs and leaves. If you want to de-stem in the cold water, that will
work also. Once crushed and in the fermenter, measure for sugar content. Do the math. If the
indication is that you will only end up with 10%, calculate how many ounces needed per gallon
and multiply by the number of gallons you have. Boil five lbs of sugar with one half gallon of
water, for ten minutes. Five ounces of this solution will increase the sugar content of a gallon by
one percent. The heat from the solution will bring most solutions to room temp. then add one cup
of the active yeast you prepared the night before. Mix well, close up and keep around 80 degrees,
out of the sun.
Batches with skins will add as much as 1% actually sugar to your finished product. Slip
skin grapes like concord may not add much. Heavy flesh grapes like Baco or Foch will add the
most. If you have enough grapes to split batches, consider making double or triple skin batches.
Let’s say you have thirty gallons of Niagara. Press 20 gallons out for juice only and add the skins
to one ten gallon batch. The increased flavors will astound you. In some cases, you will like one
way more than the other, but each person is different.
At this time, you should also consider “second wines”. You can take the skins from a
pressing and completely reconstitute the solution back to a 14% target. This will make a low acid
wine that I call “thanksgiving wine”. You need to drink it by thanksgiving or it will go flat! At
about 2$ per gallon, why not! Once you have fermented some of the skins batches, you can press
them out and do the same thing. In this case, you need to add lemon juice, about one cup per
gallon. As long as you add before the next fermentation is done, you will not taste the lemon.
This solution will ferment much faster than the first batch and may even completely finish
fermentation and be completely still before the first batch. The skins are broken down by this
down into better nutrient for the very active yeast you find in the pressed skins. I never had
problems with the seeds at this time but I always try to leave them out as they collect at the
bottom of most fermentors. The color of this second wine is also a bit cloudier than the first
fermentation. On the other hand, it makes wine that many have stated is better than anything they
ever tasted! With very little acid, it doesn’t take much for it to taste sweet enough for most first
time wine drinkers.
This would be a good time to apologize for those of you who believe that only a dry wine
is a good wine. I agree that a good dry wine is healthier and may not lead one to get drunk as a
sweet wine may, but that is all in the eye of the beholder. I have had over a hundred wine tastings
and some facts can’t be disputed. At Paul Smiths College, I had two classes of about thirty
students each and I was displaying 19 dry wines. They all came from hoity toity wealthy
families, NO INSULT INTENDED! I would trade places if I could! As I tried to show them the
ability of added sugar to open the dry wines to their fruity potential, I was shocked to see that by
the third round, they all were placing their hands over their glasses and begging me not to ruin
my “fantastic” dry organic wine! Every last one of them loved every bottle I made. One handed
me a twenty for the last cup in the rose petal bottle to use it in cooking class! On the other hand,
when I dared them to try the rhubarb dry, almost everyone agreed that a little sugar went a long
way there! My family disowns me if I don’t bring at least two gallons to family reunions!
The issue is a matter of exposure. Dry wines require little sulfur. Sulfur causes headaches
and even death for some. I have seen people go into spasms after trying commercial wine. Only
4% of the population is at risk at 70 parts per million. 1% at 30 parts. Dry wines cost more to
make as good as they should be. They are the closest things to organic wines. No respectable
wine enthusiast will grant a sweet wine a chance. In fact, they declare that sweet wines must not
be served at tastings until after all the dry ones are gone so as not to destroy ones pallet! I have
presented dry and then sweet wines to groups who never drank wine before. Nine out of ten state
they preferred the sweet wines. If twenty people go to a tasting and half say they prefer dry and
the other half sweet, they will all say the same thing after tasting both dry and sweet wines at my
tasting.
Now , once you have allowed your batches to ferment as long as think is enough to
impart all the color you want, or, until no more bubbles pop on the surface of the juice only wine
through the glass or plastic, you must press the solids out through a strainer or a press and set this
aside for settling. If at this time you have a cloudy wine, you have one of two things going on.
You may have a lot of pectin, in which case you can add pectic enzymes per recipes on the
packages it comes in. This will cause a fast fermentation for a few days as the enzymes break the
pectin down into the sugars the yeast can use. If by chance you have overshot the intended
alcohol level, the yeast may simply not be able to finish the job. You are in trouble! Sort of.
Also, it could be that you simply have a lot of solids that will need more time to settle. The
hygrometer can tell which it is. Any solids indicated by the hygrometer is sugar and you have a
stuck fermentation. You can water it down a bit and the yeast may start again. Just leaving it
alone can still work but it could take many months to slowly finish off.
At any case, normally, you now start to plan the need for cold stabilization. If it was a
high acid juice, you may want to let the wine sit at 27 to 35 degrees, very still, for a few weeks to
precipitate out the acids. A simple acid test kit can determine this. Most wines are “balanced”
when they have about 5 grams of acid per liter when bottled, dry. 9 to 11 grams per litter if
bottled sweet. It varies a lot. During the cold stabilization, any solids that also cloud the wine are
dragged down and combined with the acid crystals so completely that about 3 out 5 times you
can drain it all out with no visible sediment left in the wine. It is possible to use plastic tubes to
drain it out by siphoning it and not lose much in the process. I have gotten to where I never use
the tube unless I am draining from a large carboy and the sediment is fluffy and deep.
The idea behind this step is to prepare the wine for final bottling. Unless you own an
expensive filter and can waste three gallons or more just seasoning the filter, this is the best way
to bottle clear wine. It isn’t really a problem if you just want some good wine to drink from a
gallon jug stored in your fridge. At least you now know what those crystals are! Once stabilized.
These wines can be stored for a very long time. Gallon jugs with tight fitting caps are fine. Fill
the jugs as close as you can to the top to keep oxygen out. As always, keep everything clean. If
you can set up a 30 gallon tub with hot water and oxidizer solutions, go ahead and immerse
everything completely before you use them inside and out of all bottles and completely sanitize
tables and funnels or tubes. You have another hedge in alcohol levels of 14%. Most bacteria are
killed at that level, but, not all!
I would allow the finished gallon jugs or glass carboys to sit for another week or to at less
than room temps and then I would siphon out for large bottle runs. A four litter bottle will fill
five .750 milliliter bottles and leave you with a glass full to sample.
Probably the most important difference in how I make my wines other than the
organically “made” issue is in how the commercial wines are predominately grape “juice” wines
and many are blended with no information offered as to what varieties are used. I have blended a
few and even coined one as “Adirondack Bordeaux”. I don’t push the issue of “organic growing”
as much as the actual process of fermenting and bottling without sulfur. Here in the South, some
Muscadines are used as varietals and as bulk blenders. Outside of this area, there is virtually no
market for them. In my experience, the Nobel and Wild blue Muscadines make the best wines.
CHAPTER FIVE
“PASTUERIZATION”
How many of you recall the taste of Concord wines often known as “Mad Dog”? These
wines were “pasteurized”. The manufacturers were inclined to process their wines that way to
make them “kosher” of religious reasons. For the longest time as I practiced making wine from
the most abundant vines in the North Country, Concords, I was often told by some tasters that
they never knew how Concord wine could taste so good. I took it as a compliment for some time.
While battling with NY and The ATF over license issues, I had to address how to provide sweet
wines for what was my largest potential market. I had proposed to offer each custom customer
with a small bottle of the sugar solution needed to sweeten their dry wines after opening them.
After some research, the concept of a hot water bath to “sterilize” a sweetened sweet wine “in the
bottle” became my next target.
In short order, I was getting statements that I had “finally” learned how to make my
concord wine “commercially”? With a little more research, I learned that because Concord was
hundreds of times more available and cheaper than any other grape, it was simply understood
that the caramelized flavor from being made “Kosher” was its “normal” taste. It isn’t!
This brings us to the bigger question of what is normal with all other grapes. If millions
of people learned that Concord was “good” once caramelized, then, any other grape has the same
potential, I figured any ways. Being as I was then soon to have access to over thirty other
varieties of grapes from a Cornell University study I was in, I tested them all. At one point, I had
over 180 batches of wine going at once. I am happy to say that the only wine that didn’t have an
acceptable reaction was “Frontenac”. It didn’t improve at all. That was in New York. Here in
Tennessee, it is another story as it gets more sun than it did in NY. Here, it is just fine. In NY, it
was so harsh you couldn’t drink it.
The most important issue with pasteurization is that it has to be done fast or the
caramelization is too much and the flavor is affected too much. Also, you can’t fill the bottle as
full or the cork will pop. Claret can only be filled to the shoulder and Bordeaux most have two
inches of air space. In a clear bottle, you can see the alcohol bubbling at about 160%
If you remember nothing else including “NOT” to reuse corks, DO NOT FORGET THE
FOLLOWING! After pulling a corked bottle out of a 180 degrees hot water bath, do not go
immediately to cold water or a metal surface! It will blow! Trust me! It will shatter at whatever
angle you dip it into cold water or, on contact with cold metal. Place them on warm wood or
cloth for at least one minute. Then, slowly lower them into the water. Once they touch the
bottom of the cold water container for even a few seconds, they are safe to completely submerse.
The need to quickly cool the wine back down is due to the caramelization that goes on above 120
degrees. If you sweeten your wine to taste before you bottle it, you must sterilize it by attaining
at least 140 degrees. If you bring a bath to 180 degrees, the wine will be at 160% inside the bottle
just as you hit the 180 mark on high heat. I have made a dozen or more batches at 150 degrees
bath temp and none have ever restarted, but I would not feel safe at any less. If I make a second
batch with the same water, I let the bottles set for an additional 5 minutes at 180 with the heat
off. Usually, I will need to replace the cold water one cycle to bring the bottles down to cool
temps. I have shattered a lot of bottles learning this. They don’t explode, in fact, they implode,
but it is scary and glass will fly a few feet! I have never successfully pasteurized a gallon
container. They all imploded or had their bottoms just drop off. I don’t’ recommend trying.
One alternate “safe” way to do this is to bring wine to 160 in a stainless steel pot and
pouring into clean bottles with boiled corks. The oxygen and lost alcohol issue are why I don’t
do that way. Still, you will occasionally find the cracked bottle here and there that fails while
corking or just being moved. If you notice a glass fracture on a bottle, full or not, just throw it
away!
One final touch is to seal the bottle after corking. Most plastic shields can be purchased at
about 15 cents. A good heat gun works well or dipping in boiling water. This keep dust out of the
cork and less moisture leaks out under long term storage. One classy way to seal them is to make
aromatic wax baths and dip them a few times. Keep in mind that If you leave the labels on the
bottles from the previous bottler, you face 10,000$ fines. It is perfectly legal to make 100 gallons
per family member per year. Mark the date you bottle it and contents, nuff said!
CHAPTER SIX
“FRUIT WINES”
Here is a list of the fruit, flower or herb wines I have made: Macintosh Apple, so so, ,
Crab Apple, very good, Empire Apple, Very very good, Dandy lion, 19% “Paint thinner”!, Pear,
no good if too ripe, Tomatoes, Brutal! Even worse with Raisins, Rhubarb, family’s most
requested!, Persimmon, yuck!, Orange, not bad, Pineapple, Best of show one year!, Cherry,
good, Choke Cherry, real good!, Rose hip and petals, unfit one year, best of show next!, Carrot,
not bad, Turnip, good for stew!, Onion, same thing, Marigold, yuck!, mead, yuck, Maple sugar
wine, almost yuck, Corn, nope!, Honeysuckle berry, so so, Blue berry, so so, Gooseberry (red
currant style), great!, Poke berry, don’t give it to your niece, she will hate you!, other swear by it,
I swear because I am blue for weeks!, Southern Crab apple, strips the enamel off your teeth,
Mint, very good for anything!, Chocolate mint, ok, Pineapple sage, not bad, sage, so so, Fake
strawberry, blah, Ozark strawberry, wife’s favorite, Chandler strawberry, so so, Potatoes, hum,
Grapefruit, not bad!, black berry, great, Dew berry, even better, Red raspberry, best of show one
year.!
The trick with fruit wines is to have enough acid and sugar. Dew berries and Blackberries
have enough acid to dilute a little bit. All others except some apples or Rhubarb need added acid.
The acid levels of Riparia Wild grapes makes my point. They have over 30 grams per liter of
Titrateable acid. It takes 13% sugar to make it “START” to taste sweet and can stay in a bottle
for 300 years or long enough that I won’t have to drink it!. Ripe Pears taste very sweet
immediately, have no acids and then go dead flat in two months as wine! As noted before, lemon
juice is the best additive and must be added “before” fermentation. Almost all fruits are
improved by freezing before being brought up to room temp by a calculated hot sugar bath.
Rhubarb needs to be blanched either way and cooled to room temp before pitching yeast.
I found that my best wines from fruit happened when I used the entire fruit and diluted
anything with a lot of acid. Most fruits press out easily after fermentation and usually were done
by hand. One example is with red Raspberry. At full price, a gallon of wine from them could cost
you 80$ to make. The one time I did that brought me a “best of show” but at what cost?
Given that most fruits rarely have more than 17% sugar and thus make less than 9%
alcohol, added sugar is a simple logical necessity. Apple juice that ferments on its own results in
“hard cider”, not wine. Removing the cores from apples before juicing them makes a great deal
of difference in flavor. In fact, nine out of ten apple wines taste more like burlap that apple! I
presumed for the longest time that adding extracts to apple wine was the only way to market it
because I couldn’t get the burlap flavor out of them. As I will explain in the second part, that had
a lot to do with my getting involved in wine making, along with a fond memory of my Mom!
I was invited to visit a world renowned maker of apple wine in Lake Placid NY, the home
of NY’s Olympic arenas. He was a wealthy man who had perfected the “process” and was touted
by Cornell as the example of excellence in Apple wine in the North Country. Naturally, I
accepted an invitation. I must admit that I was a complete boob on location. I had been making
apple wine for three years and made at least three hundred batches. Only my accidental
“champagnes” tasted any good other than Empires, (developed in my home town of Crown Point
NY and unmatched anywhere in flavor because of the Crown Point Clay ground) or Crab apples.
I learned that the most expensive champagnes in the world were made from apples. That is not to
confuse carbonated apple wines with the grape wine made in the “Champagne” area of France.
The issue is that the bubbles make a world of difference in grapes also. As I tasted his wine I
must have made a terrible face because I upset the fellow. His was in fact carbonated but still had
the burlap flavor. He had perfected the ability to add just enough sugar and ferment in a “Bottle
capped” bottle! Quite a feat, but not so much an improvement on the taste!
CHAPTER SEVEN
“POKEBERRY WINE”
As my last chapter in part one, I will tell the story of poke berry wine. I give thanks to
my good friend Arvil green of Madisonville Tennessee. Arvil had been referred to me by my
redheaded step child who worked with his son at a local auto repair shop. Seems Arvil was
interested in the arthritis cures alleged to be attributed to Pokeberry Wine. As I researched the
plant, I found that it’s over 80,000 reported compounds were used for everything from aids to
breast cancer. Somewhere in-between it was offered as a cure for arthritis, sure nuff!
With me in tow, Arvil showed me all the good spots to find poke weed in the “knobs”.
With sleeves rolled up, we went at it. Once we had two five gallon buckets of the berries and
very red hands, I started the process of pressing it out. It is an amazing berry. Each berry has a
set number of dark black seeds and they are very fertile when planted immediately after being
cleaned away from the fruit. You could easily grow patches of “poke salad” in the same fall as
you pick the berry!
The first image that came to mind as I pressed the berries was of my childhood days
when I was introduced to the practice of collecting blood from butchered hogs to make blood
pudding. I had to experience what it looks like when the hogs gets it foot away from a restrain
and kicks the bucket all over you. That what it looks like if you splash poke berry juice on you!
Bloody hell!
It took many months of trial and three years to finally understand what concentrations to
use to make the wine. It feels smooth as velvet on the tong as a wine and will not stain your tong
or lips, but only at just the right solution. Otherwise, you are red for some time!
Arvil was the guinea pig because there was no way I was going to take the first swig.
After he drank a whole gallon over a month, I looked him over for ill effects and tried it myself,
not bad at all! Still, it is very much a medicinal wine and not to be taken carelessly. The reports
are that the natives here called it the “Evil spirit remover”. I warned everyone who tried it and
had no bad effects myself after many tries. Then I hit a nerve! My Niece, who looks like she has
Indian in her blood, tried one shot glass. Her boyfriend drank an entire bottle! No problem for
him, but oh my God! Poor Tara! “Evil Spirits” came out for two days and ruined her vacation!
She still gives me an evil eye if I offer any other wine!
Arvil swears by it and I would make more for him but don’t ask me for any because I
can’t risk the repercussions!
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT
“CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM NY”
Up State NY, specifically the “Adirondack Park”, has no wineries while the rest of
Upstate and Western NY have over three hundred wineries. Along the Lake Champlain shores
are a couple dozen Apple Orchards that produce Apples that rival Washington State. In Quality,
the area is so depredated by the so called “environmental impact” regulations of the infamous
“Adirondack Park Agency” that the largest county counts welfare payments to its residents from
the State, as its greatest source of income, bar none!
To counter this, the County Ag (Agriculture) department asked the Orchards to consider
accepting help to start Winery operations to bring added value to the area’s largest “exportable”
product, Apples, and to sell their wine at their retail locations to add to the tourist trade. A
number of them tried and failed miserably.
The “Park” has seven Counties that have are included in part but only one, my old
County of Essex, is totally within the “Blue Line”. All except a small part that includes the
Cornell University Trials farm and land owned by the Architect of the “Park”. By design, this
has made the Adirondacks the “Play Ground of the Rich” in name and in fact. Cuomo went to far
as to publicly state that the residents of the “Park” deserve welfare benefits to compensate them
for environmental regulations that have caused 87% unemployment!
New York as a whole, according to the census, has seen over one million people leave the
state in the last ten years, and I was one of them. In NY, if you admit to correcting a child based
on Biblical tenants, you are legally “mentally insane”. Recent Godless behavior by its governors
compares well with the term “Empire State”.
The Justice system in NY is based solely on the economics of its bar System. As
long as an Attorney passes it’s “Bar”, and takes what is called an “Ethics” class, such an
Attorney carries the power of “Adjudication” in Court proceedings. That means, if you as a
citizen make a statement in Court, it doesn’t mean anything until you prove it. The “Bar” passed
and “Ethically” trained Attorney however, can make a statement and it is considered “Law” until
you disprove it. The only exception is that a mother of a child related to any court proceedings
can legally make false statements as long as she later claims she felt it was required to protect her
children. A man has no such rights. If the attorney is proven to have lied, no recourse is allowed
because of the understanding that the “system” would fall apart if they are punished.
Given the above, I make no apologies for being the proverbial “Damn Yankee”. I
will NOT go back and I would be the first to volunteer to sign any petition to keep Tennessee the
way it is, except to help people grow more grapes!
CHAPTER NINE
“HOME”
I grew up with 15 siblings on the largest Dairy farm in that County and the last one in
operation before it was leased out to Vermonters to allow them to stay in operation by having the
acreage to spread manure on. Sounds crazy, but Vermont was going to shut down one of its
biggest farms simply because they had too many cows for the land they had to support “safe”
manure handling! I would laugh at this if it weren’t so serious. Our farm was less than a mile
from the Vermont by bridge over Lake Champlain. NY State had forced the banks not to make
annual fuel loans to our “over 500 acre” farm because it was “too small” to be economically
feasible”!
One day, as I was visiting the family at the old farm house, we were considering what
options we had to keep the farm in the family for the long run. Suddenly a smell triggered
memories of something I had experienced some forty years earlier when I was only four. Seems
my sister had decided to make Concord wine, just for the fun of it, and the “fermentation” smell
reminded me of the same smell down in our cellar, way back when it turns out our mom had
made a barrel of wine in the cellar. I hadn’t experienced it again since then. After learning of
how our family had been known for making wine, it was decided we would look into using a
number of acres of the farm not suitable for the manure and hay operation as a perfect location
for growing grapes.
Our collective family turned our farm from only 80 acres of tillable clay, trees and rocky
land to over 500 acres by constant land leveling, clearing fence and tree lines, picking rocks and
acquiring adjoining lots as they became available. One of the problems with clay was that water
would not percolate fast enough during the winter to keep Alfalfa from suffering under certain
winter conditions. By contouring all the land into ten acre lots with slow shallow ditching, we
were able to grow crops no one thought we could, including grapes. Our own manure handling
system was set up as a completely automated pipe and pond system. A million gallon pond at the
farm with a million gallon pond fed by pipe in the center of the farm. From there stations for a
self propelled spray gun would cover 90% of the land using the pressure from the pumps at the
ponds. Irrigation was as simple as pumping from one of three points the farm had on the Lake to
the ponds. We also learned to manage forty acres of woods to supply all the farms’ heat and
construction needs. Growing in heavy clay became an “art”. The farm itself is the flattest land in
the entire county. Formed in a triangle with one mile long sides, it is split by a state road that
connects NY with Vermont with no other way across except by ferry for fifty miles each way.
Lake Champlain on the east and the Adirondack Mountains on the west.
Using the land leveler with constant surveying assistance from Cornell, my father had
become so proficient that he was hired by local orchards to prepare their lands for replanting.
One time, he was asked to try and expand one site by two or three acres. Three weeks later, they
had to stop him at 16 additional acres, out of land they couldn’t believe would ever be able to be
worked. All he had asked for was the fuel to keep going. In gratitude, the orchard owner gave
our family a life lease on all the apples we could eat from that orchard!
One of the saddest realities about the Adirondacks Park Agency is that it catered to the
rich and paid lip service to farms. It was a common event to see acrid comments about how we
were relegated to weaving baskets and growing ornamental corn to sell to tourist! For our farm,
when the refusal for the annual fuel loan became an issue, we were told we would get easy
passage for permits to turn the farm into a golf course!
CHAPTER TEN
“GETTING STARTED IN APPLE WINE”
Upon inquiring about assistance from the County Ag Agent, I was asked if instead, would
I consider turning the old milking parlor operation at the farm into a central winery for all the
orchards. The farm was centrally located for this potential. With contact information and a
declaration from the County that in fact they had voted to legislate whatever permits would be
required to present to the State regulators to show full support from the County, I started the
process.
Nearly every orchard made the same offer, I could take all the equipment they had started
to practice with and all the apples I would need to learn how to make the wine. In person, they all
declared that the County Ag agent was nuts to think that an orchard operator could also become a
proficient wine maker and deal with the paperwork with the BATF, at the time, now the ATB.
One particular issue was that they all found that their batches of wine all smelled like burlap and
clearly, I would have to deal with that.
As I started practicing I found that removing the core, making the operation “anaerobic”
and flavoring it like “Boonsfarm” wines began to look like the answer. Seeing that I needed to
keep oxygen out of the process was the precursor to learning how to do it organically. Over the
course of the next three years I made over three hundred batches from every conceivable Apple
source available. As kids, we had often scoured the countryside for apples to take to a crusher for
our winter supply of about 200 gallons of apple cider. We would freeze the juice and take one
gallon out each day and pour off the sweeter juice that resulted when it was half thawed. Waiting
too long would result in the treat of hard cider. Remembering where all these trees were, I sought
out all the varieties I had already seen to try as wine. Being as pure apple wine is actually a legal
impossibility, it has to be between 7 and 14% and most apples would not be sweet enough to do
that, I proceeded with adding sugar as a logical necessity.
I also started to scour the local Transfer Stations for stainless steel kitchen equipment,
jugs, carboys, kegs and tables, whatever I could find to practice with. It turned out that just one
orchard alone could supply enough apples to keep dozens of employees busy all year. They were
sending boat loads to Ireland to supply fruit for breweries there. Apple juice demand was so low
that millions of gallons of potential juice apples were left to rot each year on the trees rather than
pay to have them picked. An early frost would destroy the Macintosh apples almost every third
year.
After the third year of practice and dozens of successful tastings at their orchards and at
the County Ag office, plans were set to open a winery. All the business plans were set, financing
promised, bids made on property, approval even from the APA, in part as an apology for
harassing me in the past and five thousand gallons as the first orders from only a few of the
orchards. The rest would see how the production quality progressed. Everything was set and
contact made with the BATF to actually apply for the permits.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“VILLAN OR FREEDOM FIGHTER?”
I should point out at this time that I could write a number of volumes about my problems
with the “Park Agency” before all this happened. Think of it as comparable to the TVA Tellico
Lake Basin and Dam issues. Only in this case, we, the people, won. It was a Phyrrhic Victory,
but we won. We, about 300 active resistance fighters, gave no quarter and it was because we
took the stand that we were dealing with criminals and it turned out we were correct. Bullets
flew, homes burned, body’s disappeared. Look up the Adirondack Revolt of the early 1990s and
the downfall of Mario Cuomo. When a secret spy in his office heard him throw a statue at his
wall and curse someone, it was me! Mario had my land condemned by having a Park Agency
official claim I was starting a junk yard without a permit! A forty foot tree was growing through
an engine compartment of a forty year old rusted vehicle ‘dumped” on the property thirty years
before I bought it! The land had natural springs and a gravel pit that used to supply the entire
town, the only other legal roadside spring in the County and was adjacent to a huge tract of State
land and it straddled a creek and wetlands.
When I learned my land was not only cited for violations already totaling over fifty
thousand dollars and now was on an secret acquisition list, I went to a protest being held at the
old offices where Mario used to work at as a crooked lawyer when the “Park” was created for his
rich bosses. Another local whose farm was suddenly on the same acquisition list showed up with
a load of manure and a sign that stated “we took enough of your bull S---. Have some of ours”. A
Trooper ordered him to move it and he refused. The trooper then turned to me and ordered me to
do it because he knew I was a farmer and could drive the truck. The owner told me not to get in
trouble and go ahead and move the truck, but not before he dumped water on top of the pile. As I
drove away, fast, guess where the manure landed! That was the beginning of my public image as
a “terrorist” as “someone” kept painting over Mario’s name on State signs, with manure!.
Over the next two years, I was involved in a battle the government did everything it could
to suppress news about. 60 Minutes managed to showcase an early attack by “earth firsters” on
locals at a place called “Crane Pond”. Hundreds of angry locals whose livelihoods or lands were
being regulated out of existence began a program of organized resistance very much like the
French resistance to the Nazis. Of course, that wasn’t to include an exclusive fifty acre tax free
development including a 15 acre artificial pond and fifty, one million dollar homes, for
politicians friendly to the Kennedy’s , Paine’s and Cuomo’s! Secret building blueprints were
anonymously delivered to us with Mario’s and Peter Paine’s signatures. The roads and bridges
were done, the pond created and surveyors stakes and mobile construction trailers on site. They
disappeared the day after we released out proof! Peter was the Dirty Commissioner of the APA
who hired Mario as a lawyer to draw up the “Master Plan” years before. Their exclusive site was
to be inside a 2,000 state land tract formed by first buying all the surrounding land and “gifting”
it to the state in turn for no taxes in perpetuity on the exclusive mansions being built in secret
with absolutely no permits!
Armed men removed barriers to roads closed by a “master plan” to restore the
Adirondacks to wilderness. Militias were formed and rallies held to organize retaliation efforts.
One was to close the interstate rout from the capital into our region. Hundreds of State Police
were sent to arrest as many of us as possible. In the mêlée, so many women and children were
involved that secret deals had to be made to guarantee the police brutality videos would not be
aired. Mario was going to run for president! It wouldn’t look good! Despite the arrest at one exit,
over 300 more cars and logging trucks shut the road down all the way to a large rally in the heart
of the Adirondacks. On an almost daily basis hundreds of minute men would show up to stop
numerous other efforts by the state to destroy the resistance.
In one event, locals nearly killed a rookie State Trooper who was paid off by Peter Pain
to harass protestors. In that event, he attempted to arrest me and a few others as locals were
coming at him with pitch forks and hammers. He quickly left the scene with one man he arrested
but let go just down the road, begging him to forgive him for his mistake. In a dog and pony
show affair, a gauntlet of Troopers was set up to prevent the same locals from reaching a Judge
with proof of the Troopers misbehavior, as it was all videotaped! I found myself spitting into
each of their faces, calling them dirty pigs for protecting another “dirty pig”! That became
known as the “seat belt gang affair”.
In the first road rally, National Guard troops had been ordered to an exit that we had
informed the Troopers was to be our turn around point. We didn’t tell them the true point was
two exits further. The rally was to expose Mario for the evil mobster he is. As a member of the
Guard myself, I later asked one of my buddies what the heck they were doing there with a “Tow
Missal”? He answered that a terrorist was expected to blow up the exit and it was their job to
blow away any “grey van” that tried to park under the exit. An environmentalist who worked
with Mario claimed he had information that someone had stolen dynamite from the Indian
reservation and was going to be driving a grey van to that exit to blow it up! Guess who was
driving a grey van! No good deed should go unpunished, but just to show how far it could go,
just a few weeks later, a Mohawk Indian whose brother was butchered by Troopers on Mario’s
orders brought me a large Military carrying case. He didn’t even have to open it for me to know
what it was. He was asking me to use a red eye missal to shoot Mario’s chopper out of the sky on
a trip he was expected to take over our region in a few days towards Lake Placid. Of course I
refused but his chopper was hit by at least a dozen bullets. I was waiting for him at the Lake
Placid event. He came directly towards me, grinning, with cameras rolling and his body guards
searching me for weapons. Instead of allowing him a free pass, I followed him away towards the
Howard Johnson lobby. I was shouting out loud all the evidence we had on him. The cameras
were all confiscated. To his surprise, my son was waiting for him inside on the stage. In a show
of “politicking”, he had previously gotten the local papers to headline an earlier picture of him
and my son on the front pages. In the photo op, he was declaring to my son that I” could keep my
home as long as I paid my taxes.” Now, at this opportunity, he handed him a note signed as an
excuse for him to have been out of school that day. As he walked away from him, and in full
view of the crowd, he threw a large handful of nails under the Governors limo!
Multiply this by ten times just for me and that is just a beginning of what went on the rest
of the state was not allowed to see. We made a half dozen more road rallies and shut down
numerous other dog and pony shows before the state gave up on stealing our lands. One last trick
they used was to try to get locals to “offer” lands that should be taken by eminent domain,
making it “more legal”! With our spy system in place, (you would be amazed at what secrets and
receipts officials dump into the trash), we learned enough to secretly insert only resistance
fighters from each town into the “Secret” traitor effort. As we all walked in to what was
supposed to be a secret meeting in State DEC offices, we showed our “secret” credentials to the
Commissioner and laid out the list of lands to be taken! Every one belonged to him and other
State officials or what we called Nazis sympathizers! Checkmate!
CHAPTER TWELVE
“PERMIT PROCESSES”
Now, back to what you probable can see coming about the permit process! Sure enough,
gee, now it seems the State was saying that the County didn’t know what they were doing when
the passed legislation providing for swift passage of my permit. I would have to hire each
Orchard Owner as my own employee, cover them with workers comp and they would still have
to apply for the same license just to sell their own wine made by me! After meetings with state
legislators sympathetic to our area, I was promised that the State would get through the “BS” and
I would have a license within a few months. Sure enough, I got the license, but gee, was it
possible there was a mistake, the limit for gallons was only 1,500! My first orders were already
for 4,000.
At this point, the County gave up. The BATF Agents admitted that it was clear that I was
being personally screwed by the state and if I wanted to, I could qualify for an entirely different
effort. They would allow me to practice up to that bogus level of fifteen hundred gallons of grape
wines each year to do market studies for “organic Wine’ under a “Micro Winery” concept, never
done before in NY. By simple math, Organic Wine would sell high enough that I could do well
even with only fifteen hundred gallons as a limit. I could then go for a farm winery license to
expand. Another special agreement was that I could use my practice wine as my stock when I
was ready. Normally, practice wines had to be discarded and stock purchased from other
wineries to open with. As no one else had organic Wine, I obviously had to create it! The trick to
the 15000 gallon legal “practice” level was that I had fifteen brothers and sisters and qualified
under the rule that anyone can make a hundred gallons for “each” family member. It is legally up
to the Field agent to allow that “discretion” and he could plainly see I deserved the break, if I
wanted it!
The “market Study” concept was also set up based on another timely situation. I had a
“community” position as a Deputy Grand Knight in the local Knights Of Columbus and could
logically disperse a lot of wine, as long as it was free, as a “market study” of my progress as a
winemaker. I recognize that to some of you readers, this would sound implausible, but a whole
lot more than this was going on that would seem even more implausible and it is, unfortunately,
all true.
Now is where Cornell Vineology workshops and local Cold weather grape growing
efforts came my way. The County voted to spend over 80,000$ to pay for a Cooperative study of
Cold Weather Grape varieties for our area. Ironically, I would be the only member from my
County of what was to be the “Champlain Valley Grape Growers Association” set up to
volunteer as participants and labor for the study. It was to be done in part at the Cornell Study
Farm in Willsborrow NY and the “organic” version on my family’s farm in Crown Point. Lake
Champlain has two large peninsulas jutting out into the lake, twenty miles apart. One was the
Willsborrow Site, the other, our family Farm. The Site Chosen at Willsborrow was geologically
exactly the same as ours. Same distance from the lake and the Adirondack Mountains, perfect for
the test. One other farm had been begging to be involved and it belonged to the Governor at that
time, who beat Mario, with my help, of Course. His farm, unfortunately, was not suitable for
many reasons, not to mention Politics!
So off I went on a study to learn even more about Organic Wine making with the thirty
varieties we planted in Willsborrow. In fact, I chose the exact site on the farm. In public postings
of how the choice was made, the Cornell Agent took the credit for what everyone declared was
the obvious best place to have done it. Now, the truth was that I had to tell the Agent to stop his
vehicle so I could jump out and grab a handful of the soil to show him he was wrong about
declaring that the sight was “unsuitable” because of poor soil. I grew up growing everything
under the sun on these lands and I knew better!
The test site was not a success for the most amazing reason. It was meant to show which
grapes were better than others. In fact, they all grew so well, they performed better than any
other location in the entire state and no data could be extracted for statistical charts! No data
could be gained to show which one was better than another! Incredible!
Here is where irony can be hard to take. The “Adirondack Park” was created with alleged
proof that rampant development was destroying the area. Mario Cuomo was the lawyer at the
time working for Peter Paine and being asked to present the proof the Legislature. He stood in
front of them and stated that he was sorry but he didn’t have the statistics they asked for. In fact,
there was so little development going on compared to any other location in the Country that no
actual statistic could be mathematically proven. He was telling a half truth and got away with it!
The land the grapes were being grown on were donated to Cornell by, you guessed it, Peter
Paine! In fact, his personal home is about 400 feet from the vineyard on land that miraculously
ended up not being in the “master plan”. All the way up the Shore, every single acre is in it until
you reach his. It goes around it and the Cornell farm and continues up the lake! How convenient!
By giving the land to Cornell, he was justified in leaving his own unrestricted! Every day at the
trial site I got to show him my appreciation!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“HAVING FUN”
Being the only County resident in the research and actively learning to make wine from
these grapes, I got all of them in the first large crop the third year. I would be the first one there
for any labs or work efforts and I would be the last to leave. I had my hands on every aspect of
the project. I posted all the results of each sugar test and eventual wine quality. I made batches
with and without skins, with or without stems, blended some, pasteurized some and gave it all
away.
On every holiday, I would drive around town with dozens of cases of wine, handing it out
to anyone of age who wanted it. It was like Christmas every time. The Golf Courses would have
gallons available for refreshment. Every Monday night at Bingo, at least two dozen cases went
out. I never lacked for bottles as they would be delivered at my home at all odd hours of the day
or night! The only thing I asked for was “feed back” under the “marketing study” concept. The
transfer station operator would leave his truck doors unlocked and I would give him his two
bottles a week and I would drive off with whatever stainless steel or carboys that came in. My
“winery” was completely furnished by the end of my seventh year after starting the apple wines.
One study I made to train myself was to review as many labels as possible. I had the local
transfer station set aside all their recyclable bottles. I would soak them overnight in thirty gallon
garbage cans and lift them off onto pages of a scrap book. After two years, the large scrap book
was three inches thick and loaded with every style imaginable. This allowed me to compare what
others used on their labels. The samples went from simple to bizarre. From Intercourse
Pennsylvania to Blue Nun, from Rothschild’s to “Cheap Wine” and from one single label on a
bottle to seven.
During this time, I was entering my wines at the local County fair. The first year was 30,
then another 30 and finally, 40 entries. Each year I would get best of show. I was also building a
network of about 27 small vineyards. One at about 100 vines, one at forty and many at just one
or two old vines that I would resurrect for the old land owners. My own yard became a jungle of
vines that truly resembled a jungle in the summer. Almost every old vine was a “concord”. In
addition to passing out wine, I began propagating vines in my greenhouse. I gave out somewhere
around two thousand rooted vines and many thousands of cuttings.
Much of what I was learning at this time was made possible by the reality that I truly did
have to give away a lot of wine. To do this, I had to advertise a constant opportunity for wine
tastings, sometimes three or four a week. Often, I would have to drive some friends home after
about the thirteenth glass. It was very hard for most people to spit out their wine. I never actually
allowed bad tasting wine to make it to the bar. I can honestly say I know how to make good wine
because I know all the ways how “not” to and I just stay away from that now.
One idea I had posed to the BATF, was to see if I could get licensed to make small
batches of wine of “everyone” who asked. The problem was that by law, every batch you make
has to be made available for sale to the public. It was meant to prevent the wholesale
disappearance of taxable wine by crooked wineries, not to prevent people from paying taxes on
small batches, something I thought was a good and honest ideal. I had actually started this
concept, to help with the market study, by offering to everyone that they could bring me
whatever fruit they wanted to and I would give them back half as wine and keep the rest for
further market study. Surprisingly, this concept may yet get approved here in Tennessee. It was
to be the idea in the Local development where each land owner would place his order and simply
be there at the very time it all became available.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“REALITY AGAIN”
Not only was I well known for my “Anti APA” battles in the area, I was also the only
appliance and television repair shop operator within fifty miles. I had been in almost every home
in the area at one time or another. For certain, I was well known. I had written over two hundred
letters to the editor about the land grab issues and was on the news at least a dozen times. Having
fifteen brothers and sisters, I am eventually related to almost everyone in one way or another as I
also had two uncles with 14 and 7 children married into the local fiber.
At times, I think the only reason I didn’t get killed was because I was too much in the
public’s eye not to be missed and the obvious culprit would have been the ex governor who
could blame me for his failing to run for president. One thing I didn’t mention was that before I
got into the wine effort, I was running an electronics recycling business with another five
employees. This time, from the center of town where the APA had no authority. I had transfer
stations in every corner of the County where people could accumulate their discarded materials.
Because all landfills in the County were ordered closed by Mario, grants were made available to
anyone who could remove certain levels of the waist stream. In less than one year, I had
surpassed the required amounts five times over and qualified for one and a half million dollars in
grant money deposited in a bank 100 feet from my business.
After a public hearing where I was praised for the accomplishment in front of a dozen
officials, I was told to present myself at the bank for the first check for 28,000$ to place all my
workers under workmen’s comp and to arrange for a structured disbursement of the rest over six
months. The next day, the bank told me the agent who could sign the check was on vacation,
could I come back later that week. Later that week, all the money was gone and so was the
agent! The town Supervisor was livid and when he came back from a trip to the capital to find
out what happened, all he could say was that my life was in danger!
During that month, I had driven a load of precious metal to a processing plant in Syracuse
NY. It had an assayed value of over 35,000$, easily as much as 50g or more. Palladium had gone
to $900 an ounce and I had sixty lbs of pure palladium plated boards. Another recycler who
didn’t bother to clean as much I did, got over 60g$ for the same load (without the palladium)! It
could have come out at over 100,000$. As luck would have it, supposedly, the power failed at
the plant as we waited to see the first two out of eight barrels processed. They offered a hotel
room if we’d like to wait. Instead, we trusted them. Two weeks later, we got a check for 500$. It
would have been the least we would have made after the minimum charge of 2,000 and the two
small 20 gallon barrels of silver plated aircraft fittings. The gold platted fitting and palladium
boards were in six more fifty gallon barrels. When I inquired, I was told that was all we earned
for the two barrels. I said, fine, what about the other six barrels. Nope, we didn’t bring them any
other barrels. The next cal got us the message that, oh yeah, the five hundred included all eight
barrels! Then we got a call telling us one more call to the Attorney General would get my knees
shot out! Did I mention New York’s present Governor was working in that office then, became
the Attorney General and is the son of good old Mario? Oh yeah, did I also mention that it turned
out Mario’s wife was the owner of record for the processing plant? LOL!
Now we can get back to the situation where I was well on the way to open my winery.
Seemed that one problem after another was going to be the norm but I was persistent. One
problem in particular became all too clear in short order one day at a Pro-Life prayer meeting in
front of a Planned Parenthood aborttuary. Incredibly, every single other member of the lake
Champlain Grape Growers Association was on the front lawn of PP’s building, protesting our
prayers! It included the current Governors’ wife, the Republican Party Chairman’s wife and
every other member turned out to be board members of that PP local organization!
I drove towards home in shock and decided to stop at the local County AG office to ask
the AG agent why she hadn’t told me this. I was ushered to her office and told to wait for her to
get off the phone. As I listened, it turned out she was on the phone with the director of Planned
Parenthood and was discussing how to make sure I didn’t get my license! It turns out all the
documentation and paperwork, phone calls and mailings for the grape growers association had
been being handled at the PP offices. They were going to open a winery, using tax payer support
to support abortions in the Adirondacks! I left the office in total shock and stopped at the town
Supervisor to inform him of the details and he asked me to keep it quiet until he could decide
what to do about it. It was clearly an abuse of the money he had voted on the support my opening
a winery in his town and County..
A few days later, I got a call from the head of the ATB’s Field office and the State’s Ag
department. They were granting me the license right there on the spot. Keeping my cool I told
them I had everything ready to open the next morning. At that, they said they were sorry but I
would first have to dump all the wine I made, even though I had been given authority to plan on
it. They both stated that it had created a problem with other wineries who had to dump their own
practice wine and buy from others to start. I would have no trouble getting a permit for transfer
of bond that day if need be and I could start making new wine immediately under license. I asked
why in hell I would want to sell sulfated wines from rich areas of the state and try to sell it in the
poorest county in NY? All my assets were in the stock they promised I could sell because no
one else had any in NY!, who was going to loan me the money! I hung up on them and started
looking for another state to do business in.
I wrote one last letter to the editor and ended it with the statement that given how Planned
Parenthood turned out to be behind the effort to open the first winery in the area, “it was going to
take the squeezing of a few babies to make wine in the Adirondacks”. The editor begged me not
to be so harsh but relented. Later that month, the entire Cornell program was shut down, a total
waste!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“A NEW HOME, and WHY”
It would be wishful thinking to blame myself for this kind of politics. Here in Tennessee,
I have already run into rather weird turns of events also. I put on a wine tasting of fifty of my
best wines at a local development center. A developer was there and liked my wine enough to
ask me to consider being a winemaker at a planned large local development. After drafts of the
building were made and a completed business plan the market fell apart for housing and that fell
through! Then, I found a distributer who would be willing to move everything I could make, but
soon, a new law came out that made it illegal for that business person to do it legally. Another
law came out and made it also impossible for two other distributers to do it.
Being persistent, I have been here three years and now have a dozen people here with
vines in the ground. The State is talking about plans to possibly allow the very same plan I was
offered by the County agent in NY! I will be watching that closely.
Here in Tennessee, the weather has created some ideal conditions. Most of the cold
climate grapes from the NY trials had only one problem of not getting enough sun to make as
much sugar as would be required to make premium wines with no added sugars. That is not the
case here in Tennessee. My biggest loss from the weather change is in how the natural cold of
the winter is missing to cold stabilize wine without refrigeration or water in the summer is not
cold enough to make the yeast go dormant during triage.
In NY, I had the bonded room and showroom finished in a renaissance look that matched
what I am told resembled many cellars in France. I had the kitchen set up to be easily washed
with tile floors and kitchen quality plastic walls. The press was cemented and everything was
arranged for a one man operation. From there, I had a large cellar for the cold storage where I
could easily store a few years’ supplies. I had the entire space doubled under the other half of my
home and filled with enough glass bottles and gallon jugs to supply me for two years also. I paid
for all the digging with wine!
To move here to Tennessee, I had to auction off all my equipment to pay for the move. I
had planned to return to pick up all the glass but discovered that a realtor had presumed that
mold that formed from wetness, without heat, had destroyed the glass because the boxes thus
looked bad! She had them all sent to the dump! Over 25,000$ worth! I could just cry.
I have often been asked why I chose Tennessee and I could always just point to
circumstances, but, I have often felt that there were deeper meanings to the questions than most
would let on. To that end, I can sum it up by stating that Tennessee is so completely the opposite
of NY that it just comes naturally to me to say that Tennessee drew me as much as NY propelled
me. The concern I felt in the many questions were telltale worries that I was possibly looking to
change how things are done here. I would be the first to sign a petition to keep things the way
they are here. As Tennessee is known as the “Volunteer State”, it fits me well as I volunteered
for military service. As Tennessee used to be the Nation’s leading grape producer, I think I can
be doing my part to help the State return to that leading position.
PART THREE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“TENNESSEE GRAPES”
This book wouldn’t be complete without imparting as sound an advice as I can about
Grapes you should consider for here in Tennessee. Let’s not forget that Tennessee used to be the
US’s Number one producer of Wine and could still be!
If you are only looking for grapes to make juice to drink, they will all do fine if sweet
enough when picked. Crush them, press them out and “can” them for long storage. I actually
have to cut some of my jars with water because they are just too sweet compared to commercial
juices! If you have ideas about using kits to make wine, they aren’t a bad idea. I tried a few and
found them to be restrictive as to what you can change about them. Otherwise, they are not a bad
way to make some fairly cheap wine, but not without sulfur, Yuck!
One can always keep learning. The last great idea I learned here was in how to retrieve
the alcohol form poor quality wines to fortify or condition other variations. If you have a sweet
wine that is almost done fermenting, say at 5% remaining sugar, you can stop the fermentation
by adding pure alcohol to about 30%. It will stop the fermentation and leave you with a heck of a
fortified wine.
I would have lost a bet that this wouldn’t work when I first heard about it. It is called,
(prison break hooch). Once you make it, you can no longer say with a straight face that you’re
not a redneck!
Take two metal plates from electrical junction boxes. About 4 inch squares each. They
should be rust free. Take two rubber stoppers about ½ inches thick and place them between the
plates and tie a string around them to hold them together. Now, take an electric cord from a small
appliance and bare the ends 2 inches. Place each end through one each of the holes in the plates
and wrap them securely so they don’t have a chance to touch each other. Take a five gallon
bucket and place a 30 gallon plastic bag in the bucket. Pour 5 gallons of high alcohol but any
tasting wine in the bag. Drop the “heater” you just made into the wine. Get a rubber hose about 6
inches long and hold it, along with the cord wrapped in the top of the bag so that any “vapors”
from the wine will pass through the hose. Take another 50 gallon see-through plastic bag and
hang it from the ceiling while the open end is wrapped around the rubber hose in your hand.
Tape the junction so you don’t have to hold it. Place the upper bag so that one corner of it is
below the rubber hose level and cut a very small hole in the lower corner, suspended just about
your favorite hooch jar! Plug in the power cord; don’t ever try to poke a hole in the lower bag!
As the wine heats to 170 degrees, it will steam out pure alcohol. It will condense on the upper
bag and drip in little rivers into the jar. Be careful because it will be very hot and don’t smoke
around it. It will catch fire!
Five gallons of 14 % wine will give you about one gallon of about 150 proof alcohol and it will
be crystal clear, no matter how bad the wine was. It is tasteless and brutal but mixed oh so well!
I will list each grape I have worked with and give you my opinion on what they are good
for and how they should be considered for you location.
 Concord, Blue, large slip skin berries, seeded, great for juice, jams and then wine. It does
very well as a long term provider for eating because it doesn’t ripen all at once. Shade
affects it a lot more than others here in the south. June bugs don’t harm it much and
Japanese beetles can’t harm it as bad as others. Black rot will cause considerable damage
so plan to spray fungicide early on wet springs. Pasturing does improve the taste if picked
early for wine. self determinant and a good choice for overhead canopies, late harvest,
Strongly recommend up to 1/4 of your varieties, to plant
 Sunbelt, clone of Concord, called that because it ripens more even, a little bit larger
berries, longer nodes on the canes., not so good as canopy, same bug and disease issues
as Concord, Maybe 1/8 of your varieties to plant
 Trammanett, compares to Riesling, white, spicy, seeded, good for juice, and wine, very
good in hot weather. Canes can run thirty feet or more! Fair for bugs and diseases, Not
good for canopy, plant equal amounts of these with Chambourcin. On a wet year,
Chambourcin will give better yields, on a hot year, Trammanett will, Chambourcin wont.
Good trade off. Recommend up to ¼ of your varieties to plant.
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Chambourcin, dark blue, seeded, juice, wine, jam, good in wet weather. fair on bugs and
disease, match with Trammanett for balanced crops in differing weather years., poor as
canopy, recommend up to ¼ of your varieties to plant
Reliant, very fruity flavor red, seedless, eating, juice, very poor with June bugs ( would
pay to net), fair other bugs and disease, poor as canopy, recommend up to ½ as varieties
to plant if all as table grapes or 1/8 overall
Niagara, white, small, seeded, very flavorful, juice, wine, good canopy but best heavily
pruned, poor with disease and bugs, spray for black rot, late ripening, 1/8 as variety to
plant.
Steuben, surprising fruit flavor, reddish, large, seeded, juice, wine, eating (even with
seeds) good as canopy, fair black rot, late ripening, recommend up to 1/3 as varieties to
plant
Cayuga White, white, late ripening, vigorous grower, ok for canopy, juice, wine, eating,
recommend up to ¼ as variety for planting
Foch, early ripening, small black flesh, seeds, very sweet, needs netting as birds will eat
fast, poor on black rot, june bugs, ok on others., juice and great wine, recommend up to
1/3 for varieties to plant, fair as canopy
Leon Milo, small, very sweet, like Foch, needs netting, seeded, juice, European wine
style, very short nodes, prolific, recommend up to 1/8 as variety for planting
Sweety Pie, small dark blue seedless, juice, eating,( great frozen) wine, poor for canopy,
rattles( falls off too easily for commercial harvest),. OK on disease, not vigorous grower.
Strongly recommend for table grape(with care) up to 1/8 as variety to plant.
Frontennac, small blue grape, seeded, on very large bunches, very open clusters, juice,
very dark and sweet wine grape, very prolific, disease and bug resistant, Strongly
recommend up to 1/3 as varieties to plant, ok as canopy
Magnolia, Muscadine, good eating , disease resistant, recommend up to ½ of Muscadine
varieties to plant. Early ripening
Noble, blue Muscadine, good eating and wine, late ripening, disease resistant,
recommend up to ½ of Muscadine varieties to plant.
Riesling, Norton(Cynthiana), Baco, Vingnoles, Sangiovees , Muscat and most others Go
with others advice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“PRUNING AND ARBORS”
Pruning grapes is a heart breaking effort for some. It goes against the Nature of someone
with a green thumb because it just doesn’t “feel right” to cut a healthy vine to increase
production. I was no different until I got the hands on experience. I would not expect anyone
reading this to be any different. You can read it in a book all day long and it will not feel right
until you see it work. Consider this, it does work or the vineyards would be out of business!
To break down the growing process for a vineyard, consider it in three steps. First, you
must establish a root system in as good a location as possible. Any location can be improved to
something near an acceptable growing location. Next, you must establish the growing “frame”
for the vine to rest on as it does its work or striving to ripen a seed. That is its nature. Next, you
must decide how much you want to share the decision making process inherent in the natural
mechanics that bring about the side effects of the plants design to ripen a seed, “JUICE”!
In the first step, you want to assure vigorous growth for the first year only, and
sustainable growth thereafter. The sustainability of growth issues for this area are relative to too
much or too little water. Don’t plant in a wetland unless you can raise the ground two feet high
above water and four feet wide with mulching. Make sure your rooted vine or cutting stays
moist all year long the first year. From then on, provide water during dry spells. A vine may not
die from dry weather but it will not produce much. Choose a site that has the most possible
amount of direct sunlight. It isn’t a bad idea to plant up close on an overhead canopy on the side
of a house that only has afternoon or morning sunlight. The total amount that bounces off the
wall back onto the vine can more than compensate. If it will only get two hours of direct light,
you will not be happy with the results, including the added pressure that wetness will make black
rot more of a problem.
If you choose an overhead canopy, you will have very little pruning to do after you first
establish the trunk system. Once overhead, some vines will self regulate. The grape bunches will
present themselves to fairly easy picking while providing shade cover if desired. They will tend
to be smaller though. The advice I give in the list of grapes indicates how each variety tends to
behave on such an arbor. On the other hand, an arbor with just one wire held at chest height will
take more work but will produce larger, sweeter and cleaner grapes. Over head arbors catch
leaves and bird nests more often! One great benefit to an overhead arbor is that the sun hits every
cane the same. Concords do well this way and ripen more uniformly.
Once you have a vine started in the ground and you have an arbor in place, I recommend
you pinch off all laterals twice a week to train the center cane to grow as fast and straight as
possible towards the highest point. Do not pinch off leaves! Once a cane reaches the top wire or
frame, laterals can be allowed to continue to grow to cover the wire. If by chance your arbor is
covered by the vine in the first year, don’t pinch off the end of the cane. Let it grow and allow all
the rest of the laterals to grow. This will support the root system and prevent next year’s crop
from trying to emerge too soon!. You can cut it off when dormant and pruning time comes.
A bare cutting has the potential to cover a low canopy the first year, but it will take very
fertile and sunny conditions to do so. If you start with a bare root or potted root plant, it should
be no problem at all. Some prefer to allow “Two” trunks to form the first year. In my
experience, you risk not covering the arbor the first year. One idea that is a safer way to go if
growth is vigorous is to allow two or three laterals to get up to five inches long before cutting
them off to be sure a bug or animal doesn’t break off the central shoot.
If you are targeting a large and wide overhead canopy, build a temporary arbor of five or
six wires over the growing cane shoot. Train the cane back and forth along this wire wall through
the first summer. I have had them go 30 feet with no trouble. After is goes dormant, take it off
the wires and snake it up and over the center of the canopy. That cane will provide fruit the next
year and each cane will be able to cover canopies as wide as twenty feet with no trouble.
Once we have the desired trunk in place, over head canopies only require a little
attention to the top and a pruning of any canes that try to grow down the sides. With single wire
arbors, a single trunk running down each wire can produce abundant grapes each year as long as
you cut back each dormant new vine to only one or two nodes, each year. It will get gnarly after
a few years and may need to have suckers (that will always present themselves lower on the
trunk) to be allowed to replace difficult or damaged trunks on the wire. Keep in mind that ever
node actually has eight live buds available inside after the first year of growth. The way they
trigger is based on chemical reaction to growth further up the trunk. If an accident cuts off a
trunk, no chemicals come down the vine to keep those buds dormant and they will pop out as
needed.
This brings us to each year’s canes. As a new bud opens in the spring, it is designed to
push forward and produce one, two, even up to five bunches of grapes. A second bud will
sometimes start at the same time or just after the first bud. They can both be fruitful but the
grapes will be smaller. Most vineyards break off the second and third occasional bud. In some
cases, even the third bud comes out up to two or more weeks later. It will not be fruitful, but if
frost or animals kill the first two shoots, this one will at least grow into next year’s source of
fruitful buds.
The cane that grew last year and is now the trunk, it will push out fruiting canes at each
and every node where a leaf grew last year. If you have an overhead canopy, break off all the
lower shoots as they will compete with the overhead canes. If you using a wire arbor, it will
provide a full crop of rather small grapes in this, the second year. Break off all buds under the
wire. Some growers cut off all the bunches the first year, to push for even better crops the next
year. I never saw the need myself. This should result in grapes every four inches or so. It is going
to be different the next year because each node then will have a shoot with however many nodes
you left on them from the pruning I will describe later. The goal is to end up with the largest
possible berry size you can get with the largest number of bunches (stems). Some varieties can
work well at 6 bunches per foot, (Concord) some at 12 per foot, such as Leon Milo. One
important consideration includes disease pressure that occurs with cramped quarters that do not
air out well.
Once you have a dormant cane, at least three days after a hard freeze, you will find the
last five to seven nodes are dead. If you don’t care to crop for new cuttings, these canes can be
cut and thrown away. If you are using a canopy, the vines will self regulate and larger numbers
of nodes will die away on their own. You may need to remove dead canes through the years.
Preferably not directly on the ground as they will add to disease pressure. Burn them! On the first
year after the first crop, each year-old cane needs to be cut back to one, two or even three nodes.
As each node takes a different direction, leaving three nodes allows for selective bud breaking as
soon as you trust the frost issues have passed. One trick used by major vineyards is to wait until
just before the last expected frost, to prune. This shocks the buds into delayed opening and a
safer entry.
Your vines will look like porcupines and then like naked sheep through each
season. If you want to propagate more vines, simple allow a cane to hit the ground through the
summer and just keep growing. Placing a bucket of dirt or even just laying a board on a growing
vine will make it root. This is called “Layering”. A scratch on the skin will help in some cases.
This works for Muscadines very well. In fact, it is very hard to start Muscadines any other way.
Very hard! I got one out of two thousand cuttings to root! Cuttings from regular vines can hit the
high nineties in green houses and often in the high eighties simple struck into the ground.
Without watering, you’d be lucky to get 10%.
Keep in mind that starting from seeds is often a waste of time because they will
not come true except for most non hybrid Muscadines. Cutting a two year old vine to start a
rooting is also not such a good idea. It does work, but not as well at all. It will work for layering
though. To make cuttings, cut the pruned cane squarely across the first node from the trunk.
Count four or five nodes and cut at an angle an inch above the last node. Place these two nodes
deep into the ground in a greenhouse or directly in the ground in spring. Then wait! Don’t give
up if the first buds die. This happens a lot and then the second or third node takes off once the
roots get going better.
One last concept for the reader to consider is what to do with spent must. In reality, if you
only use one variety of yeast, the spreading of the spent must all around your vineyards and
kitchen areas would be the best thing you can do. It makes sure that any errant yeast are the ones
you want! Good luck!
APENDIX A
Here is a copy of a newspaper report on my Winery just months before I closed up. Another
article was posted in Vermont Times. The Author of that Article handed me a check for two
hundred dollars to pay for my first permit. In his opinion, I was presenting better wines than 90%
of any he had seen in France and had a more accurate “renaissance” depiction in my cellar
because as a re-enactor, I had actually created all my armor!
2006, A Grape Odyssey
“A wine of the times
November 26, 2006
WITHERBEE — The fruit of Mystical Winery vines ferments in dark bottles topped with brightcolored balloons in a temperature-controlled room in what is truly a wine cellar.
Much of the newly picked and pressed crop grew on a half-acre of tiered gardens outside.
The small farmstead owned by Norbert J. St. Pierre and his wife, Deborah, is producing the
largest collection of organic wine in the Adirondack region.
They use no sulfur additives, preferring micro-batch processing using yeast and added sugar to
reach target alcohol levels.
And while many Mystical wines are derived from classic varieties of grapes, others come from
fruit like apple, cherry, strawberry and raspberry.
More exotic wines come from rose petals, rose hips and rhubarb.
Experimenting takes time and imagination, St. Pierre says, walking through the trellised garden
he called the "belly of the beast."
The canopy — arranged to analyze vine growth differences between vines arranged north-tosouth versus east-to-west — produced more than 220 pounds of grapes last season.
Each vine is marked with a small green tag, like a necklace, naming the variety and cutting date.
St. Pierre grows Concord, St. Croix, Foch, Sabrevoire, Frontenac, Niagara, Steuben and wild
grapes to name a bare few. In all, there are 20 varieties of grapes in the Mystical Wines garden,
from more than 120 cuttings.
But in the "belly of the beast," St. Pierre found the top section of arbor, aligned east to west, and
produced two times as many pounds of grapes with three grams per liter more acid.
"They also had two ounces per gallon less sugar," St. Pierre said.
In making wine, more sugar-less acid is preferred.
On the north to south side of the arbor, where morning and afternoon sun prevails, the grapes
grew perfectly, even in what will be remembered as a wet year.
"Under the worst conditions, I had fantastic grapes," St. Pierre said. "They were almost as good
in sugar and acid as on a good year."
Another tier of trellised vines careened over a rhubarb patch.
And along the roadside, a smattering of wild grapes tumbled over a wooden fence.
The vineyard's sense of order is derived from a kind of contained chaos.
St. Pierre monitors each grape variety on every tagged vine, carefully tracking alcohol and
residual sugar content and ultimately blending them in unique proportions to create such
Mystical Wines as Adirondack Bordeaux and Strawberry/Rhubarb.
After five years of growing, the vines surround the half-acre of trellised land.
After harvest, before the fermenting begins, grapes go through a process of repeated washing in
old stainless steel sugaring trays set up outside in the cool autumn air.
"Pick the grapes in the early morning," St. Pierre said. "Quickly cool them down by rinsing all
trash out by floating the grapes in cold water tanks."
The grapes and fruits are cleaned in steel tanks in what St. Pierre calls "a triage" method.
Pressing is usually done at the height of harvest in late September.
In organic winemaking, the juice is started with precise amounts of sugar and "very active" yeast.
One pint of warm, active yeast starts about five gallons.
And working in micro-batches allows for tracking progress in every batch.
"As a given," St. Pierre said, "organic wines need to be fermented 'very dry' to be safe from
exploding."
Micro batching also means that the entire morning's harvest is set fermenting at the same time,
typically making one to six gallons batches at a time.
Inside the Mystical Winery, the walls are draped with chain mail; the kind Renaissance knights
would wear.
St. Pierre, a Renaissance re-enactor, makes it by hand. The unicorn on the Mystical label is
Deborah's favorite mythical creature, St. Pierre said.
But behind specially locked heavy doors in the bond room are rows of aging wine.
The varieties are named and dated, some with remarkable origins: turnip and orange and
chokecherry.
St. Pierre offers wine tasting for the sheer delight of sharing his winemaking stories, the fruits of
his labor.
The flavors are remarkable, some nearly indescribable, like rose hip, with a hint of the scent of
tea in copper-colored wine.
The retail end of the Mystical story has a hold-up.
St. Pierre, as a niche winemaker, is either too small for the Department of Agriculture and
Markets to understand or too big for farm winery status.
Outside of about three years, St. Pierre has undergone what he calls a "Grape Odyssey" trying to
find the right fit for his niche retail wine sales.
Just when he thought a plan had come together this year, the "other shoe" fell.
"The Ag & Markets commissioner had worked out a deal. I could have all the label approvals, as
many as I needed, for free as opposed to their last quote of over $200 each," he said.
With more than 120 varieties of wine, the label cost alone was prohibitive.
"Then the other shoe fell. They asked what I was going to sell. I told them I had over $30,000
worth of well-aged stock from the agreement made with the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms). But, to be 'fair' to the other wineries, if I took this offer, I would have to give all
my wine away or dump it, then buy wine from other New York state wineries for two years until
the new wines I would make are ready."
St. Pierre told Ag & Markets dumping wine would put him out of business.
Unlike wine country, the Adirondacks aren't fully stocked with vineyards and there are no other
wineries.
"They told me other wineries do it all the time, it is called 'transfer in bond.' All I would have to
do is buy the wine from other local wineries and resell it until my own wines are of age. My
reply was that they had just put me out of business. I have no 'local' wineries that would 'give'
anything.
"I (told them) I don't have the capital for that. It was all on my shelves."
St. Pierre has begun to offer formal wine tasting in his Renaissance wine cellar for free.
His wines have taken top prizes in the county fairs, and he was met with acclaim at a recent
Organic Wine Making course he taught at Paul Smith's College.
"Anyone who is interested in tasting these wines is welcome to come by. With about two hours
notice, we can do an entire tour."
To find out more about Mystical Wines, contact St. Pierre at 423-368-3046.” Plattsburgh Press.
(2006).
APENDIX B
The following essay was a class requirement I created as a student at AIU. I include it as
a means of presenting the same material from another perspective.
MAKING ORGANIC WINE
Norbert J. ST.Pierre
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
12-07-2010
Introduction
To understand how to make organic wine, you must no “why” you would want to make it
to appreciate the extra effort it takes. The term “organic” has been misused a lot lately. In fact,
“organic” wine was the first and simplest wine made. As it is, today’s wines that contain the
worst possible ingredients, sulfites, do so for purely “profit” driven reasons, “marketability”!
Whatever can extend shelf life to make bottled wine stable is preferred over the most naturally
made wines for that reason only, profit.
Sulfur tastes horrendous and is deadly for some. Some “organic” labels make my point
exactly, they contain sulfites but extol the “claimed” absence of certain other chemicals to
acquire the legal definition of “organic” wines. The Wine industry lobbied for sulfur to be
allowed for the sake of profit. The Government went along because it meant more “taxes” could
be collected from the industry. To make the point, Sulfur content is the only ingredient required
by law on the label. The only other requirements are that it states that you are drinking “Table
Wine”, period!
The reason for using sulfur is to guarantee the proper yeast is successful to start a batch
of juice into fermentation, for color stability and to allow bottling of wine at other than dry levels
of sugar. “Old World” classical grape wine was stable because it contained more tannins and
alcohol because the grapes where fermented whole and the wine bottled dry. Fermenting only the
juice made for lighter wines, but less shelf life. The wrong yeast or bacteria and en entire batch
was often lost. Sulfur also stopped fermentation at levels where sugar made the wine taste better
if high in acid due to poor weather. Sulfur also kept wines from “oxidizing” and changing colors
due to poor corks or containers. Once small enough amounts were used, the average drinker put
up with the minimal harsh effect of the sulfur as a trade off to price. For our purposes, we will
call “organic” wines anything that is not made with sulfur. The intent is still to grow grapes with
minimal chemicals and as you will see; my process even minimizes the danger when such
chemicals are used as is often required to get any crop at all. Downey Mildew and Black Rot will
absolutely destroy entire crops and even vines if not controlled by chemicals. You should want
“organic” wine because it is the best there is!
The Process, Part One, The Virtues of Cleanliness
In the process, there are only two duties that matter; the yeast must do its thing and you
must make it clean enough for him to do so. Everything else is only partially relevant. If you do
not understand that sterile conditions must be met, the yeast will fail at their duty! Sulfur is what
the mechanized grape growers use to kill off the biological they harvest along with the grape
juice. This includes all sorts of bugs, animal body parts and feces! If this doesn’t give you an
incentive to wash, noting will!
Wash early, wash often and wash again! The best agent to use, an oxidizer, is not
considered a chemical of concern. You can immerse items completely in oxidizer solutions.. It
will not burn your skin in normal solutions. One brand, B-Bright, can be used without even being
rinsed. The entire area where you will be handling the grapes and bottling materials needs to be
able to be completely hosed down or sterilized with chlorine if need be. Just don’t let the grapes
actually contact the chlorine. Allowing used bottles and fermenting vats to stand with warm
oxidizer solutions for hours or overnight is the best practice. Hard deposits of dried out materials
are hard to be certainly removed unless this is done. Having the wire brushes to match the
container is very helpful also. Many wineries don’t even wash their new bottles, but I would!
Once a container is used, wash it in the same manner as you started with. Then, wash it
again before the second use. I reiterate this because you may as well not bother trying to make
organic wine if sterilization isn’t the first priority. It will not make the difference between good
or poor wine; it will make the difference between some form of wine and vinegar or a science
project gone mad! This includes all containers used to pick and transport the grapes.
The Process, Part Deux, The Grapes
It is not completely true that a good wine must be made in the Vineyard. What some
people will throw away, others see as “to die for”. A late harvest grape has low acid and looks
horrible, but makes a dark wine, needs little added sugar and has more flavors. It just may not
last long in the bottle unless you ferment it with the stems and skins. For the most part, any grape
that has turned color from green to amber, pink, red, blue or black, can make a suitable wine. If
possible, pick them at the point where the sugar content is as high as it is going to get before the
acid level goes below 5 grams per litter. In laymen’s terms, that means your hands get sticky as
you pick them and they still have a good taste.
Fruits are different in that they rarely have enough sugar to make good wine when fully
ripe so pick them as early as possible or add lemon juice before you ferment, but not after, or the
lemon flavor will come through. A cup of concentrated lemon juice per 4 gallons of “must,” will
do. Very ripe pears make great wine, for maybe two months, and then they go flat!
The Process, Part Deux and a Half
Pick the grapes or fruit as early as possible in the morning. Dump them immediately into
running cold water. This removes the “yuck, the yeast that are present go or stay dormant, and it
sets the color. If you have municipal water, all the better here, as the chlorine content is just
enough to help with the biological issues. Don’t worry that you are increasing the water content
in the grapes. Crush the grapes into stainless steel, glass or even clean food grade plastic
“fermentors”, anything that can be air locked. If need be, use food grade plastic bags placed in
garbage cans. They tie off easy.
Boil a solution of sugar made from 5 lbs of sugar to one half gallon of pure water for ten
minutes. Dump into your “MUST” until a hygrometer reads a target of 14% alcohol or it floats a
fresh egg. That’s how the French used to do it! This should bring most batches back to room
temp. At this time, “PITCH” the yeast. I don’t know why they call it pitching, but they do. Just
drop it in! A small packet cost about 1$ and can be prepared in a Coffey cup a few hours before
hand. Follow instructions per each variety of yeast. I use “Montrachet” because it works for a
larger variety of fruits. It isn’t as good for white wines. Use Pasteur varieties for those. The best
yeast situation is if you already have a batch of wine going, pitch a cup from it into the new
batch. Bread yeast will only make up to about 9 % alcohol and leave you with very sweet wine
that can restart at any time!
The Process “Secret”
Here is where my process works and why. The cold temps from the water “triage “have
the cleaned fruit ready for being ramped up to room temp for the “very” active yeast to take over.
It is the nature of yeast to dominate other varieties of yeast if they have fully reproducing
numbers present. Pitching dry yeast is a mistake because then all the yeasts are dormant and have
an equal chance. Yeast that have been active for 24 hours number in the millions of “ready to
reproduce cells”. You are “beating the odds” with this process instead of trusting on the sulfur. In
fact, to use sulfur, you have to wait 24 hours before pitching yeast and some yeast or bacteria can
still invade. Also, the tying off, or “airlock” process, is “anaerobic”. It keeps oxygen and
biologicals out and thus, minimal color or quality loss. Don’t believe what you read about the
need to punch down the top layers to allow wine to “breathe” as it ferments. You can punch
down in a plastic bag to help even fermenting or breaking up a crust that may look to over flow,
but you don’t need oxygen, period! It does make a different flavor, but not necessarily a better
one, trust me! If you crushed with stems and have a narrow tank, the “crust” can rise and
overflow, so be aware and “punch down the first few days. After the ferment has slowed, the
rising will stop. Once you press out this wine into storage containers, keep them air locked or
capped to prevent bacteria and oxygen from entering. Dipping a corked bottle top in wax is very
helpful. Never “reuse” corks!
De Conclusion Process, Part Tree (Spoken in French)
At this point, everything depends on what you want as a finished product. You can wait
until fermentation is done, add a little sugar to sample and enjoy, or, you can work the wine to a
point of clarity and stability for long term bottling. It was the French who stabilized wine with
sulfur and I fear it was because they, my ancestors, were lazy! Something they learned when they
left wine outdoors in the cold too long, was that after a few weeks at freezing temps, a wine that
has a lot of acid will develop tartaric acid crystals that form a solid crust on the container walls.
This is a precipitation process that removes that acid from the wine, making it smoother and
needs less sugar to taste good. Another French idea, “Pasteurization”, is one where you can heat
sweetened wine over 140 degrees, then cool quickly, to kill all yeast and to allow the wine to be
bottled sweet. One last thing about the French being lazy, they did a poor job of throwing out the
spent must. As luck would have it, this became another great innovation called “inoculation”. By
throwing the spent yeast laden dredges all over the vineyards, walls and roads, they discovered
that the yeast they wanted to be dominant did just that! Fewer batches failed!
APENDIX C
STANDARD VS.
ORGANIC WINE MAKING
Modern “STANDARD” methods of Wine making are based on mechanization and thus
require the use of chemicals to prevent major losses. Usually, chemicals are used to grow the
Grapes or fruit to start with and thus no claim of “Organic Wine” labeling is possible. In
processing an “organically grown” wine, it is rendered “Inorganic” by the use of Chemicals,
primarily sulfites, to prevent the wrong yeast or any bacteria to overpower the intended yeast. In
bottling a Wine, another disqualification for “organic labeling,” occurs when the Sulfites are
inserted or maintained at a high level to insure color and most important, to prevent explosions
from inadvertent restarting the fermentation in sweetened wines or those left with residual sugar
on purpose or by faulty processing.
True “Organic” Wine has “no” sulfur added or naturally has less than the amount that
requires notification on a warning label. If you have tasted many Standard Wines, you may have
already encountered high suffer levels as a “bad taste.” Some people are very allergic to it. Many
arguments have been printed about how headaches are not due to the Sulfur. So far, I tend to
believe that the majority of “headaches” from wine are indeed from the sulfur.
Sterilization of equipment, Fast Cold Water Triage, Hot Chapitalization , Alcohol
levels over 12%, (facility and vineyard inoculation) and “Very “active Yeast are some answers to
the question of how to do without sulfur. Making “Micro Batches” also inherently lends the
process lower risk due to less product affected in each batch.
Pick grapes in the early morning. Quickly cool them down by rinsing all trash out by
floating the grapes in cold water tanks, thus keeping the yeast dormant. Crush grapes, measure
sugar content and boil the sugar solution needed to correct for a 13% or higher Alc. targets.
Reportedly and true under my own testing, at 13%, yeast are not able to restart easily. Blend in
the sugar solution and quickly apply “Very active Yeast.” (if an active batch is not available,
start a dry yeast the day before using sugar water and lemon juice for nutrients. One cup of warm
active yeast will jumpstart about five gallons).
“Inoculation,” something I learned from Mother Earth News, may well be the reason my
own process has allowed only one failure in five years or more than 250 batches. (Even that
failure, about midway, was due to gross error on my part) The practice of inoculation has been
reported in a number of older publications as having merit. Once production has commenced in a
given facility and, if possible, only one yeast is used in a given area, spread the spent pumice in
every conceivable location where it can be tolerated. IE: flower pots, dirt walkways, the lawn,
cement floors that see a lot of moisture, compost piles and dirt roads and walk ways. Spread it all
over the vineyard where the grapes or fruit is grown. Do this at every opportunity.
Another benefit of this process is that quality wines are possible on a regular basis even
though fluctuating climates from year to year may cause grapes to reach greatly varying sugar or
acid contents. Planning to add sugar as a given part of the process allows for a greater variety of
grapes. Too much acid simply calls for more water! Of Course, federal limits on Amelioration
and chapitalization is thus a greater concern. It is my hope that the value of Organic Wines will
justify a loosening of those regulations. As a given, all Organic wines need to be fermented
“Very dry” or pasteurized to be safe. For a few, adding sugar just before consumption is part of
the trade off. In my opinion, the many trials I have made with tasters has shown that the trade off
is well worth it. Pasteurization has also shown to enhance the balancing of some wines.
TERMS
STANDARD: Generally accepted commercial process that I further define as having a greater
following because the minimal sugar required for most wines to see repeated sales attracts more
buyers than the sulfur repels.
ORGANIC WINES: wines made under strict state and federal label guidelines to prevent
harmful chemicals from contaminating the final product. Certification is required.
INORGANIC WINES: Wines not protected from contamination by potentially harmful
chemicals. Many wines are grown organically but not fermented or bottled without chemicals.
SULFITES; One example, metabysulfite tablets. One gram to one gallon of juice will disinfect
most biologicals. This product will dissipate in 24 hours and allow inserted yeasts to thrive.
Added after fermentation it will preserve color and taste (despite its own bitter taste).
TRIAGE: my own term for quickly cooling the entire harvest at one time and culling “dead” or
diseased fruit. This also keeps “bad” yeast dormant longer.
CHAPTILAZATION: Highly regulated process of adding sugar to attain a target alcohol level.
MICRO BATCHES: any harvest of fruit that allows for the entire harvest to be placed into
primary fermentation by one person with equipment he or she can handle in such a manner as to
complete all required steps by themselves if needed. Typically in one to six gallon batches.
Larger batches that result in fifty or more gallons are the exception for me.
VERY ACTIVE YEAST: once a yeast culture has been established in a “biomass”( completely
contained fruit with nutrients available for yeast to consume), it is my understanding that any
different strain of yeast will have great difficulty to survive. Also, given that fermentation is a
process that can quickly consume all available nutrients in such a “biomass’, any mass of yeast
that is inserted in full reproductive stride will have a mathematical advantage to impart its
specific characteristic to the final product. Taking a cup of yeast from a fermentation that is
going full bore is , in my understanding, probably putting millions of times more active yeast
into a batch than one would by following “standard” wine making processes.
INOCULATION: just as in a biomass, having yeast “infect” an area of operation gives those
yeast a mathematical advantage over other possible yeast inadvertently added to a batch. Wine
going to vinegar is due to introducing “bacteria” inadvertently. Unless intentional, the entire
batch should be dumped down a drain and everything it touched in the Winery sterilized
AMELIORATION: any addition of water to a food product. Federal limits are to prevent fraud.
By necessity I come close to some of those limits. One example where 99 percent water is a
given is with wines made from Herbs or such sources as Dandelion or Rose Petals.
VERY DRY: absolutely no sugar left. At 15% alc. this would be about .994 specific gravity.
PASTEURIZATION: heating bottled wine to 170 degrees and then quickly cooling it back
down.
The MYSTICAL WINES method of Organic Wine making
Use no Chemical sprays or fertilizer, and practice organic gardening methods
Pick grapes using clean equipment
Triage immediately to remove trash and cool down fruit
Possible process choices for grapes
1: de-stem, crush, chapitalize, ameliorate, add yeast and ferment in primary fermenter ( vessels
vented so as to allow punch down and air circulation but keeping out bugs), press out at about
5% residual sugar, finish in vented secondary fermenter, rack after all fermentation stopped and
store in air tight containers in cold storage (25 degrees) for three months, rack and bottle.
2: crush with stems, same as above but press out at desired Tannin concentration level
3. Crush with stems and press out immediately, same as process one except Must is added to
secondary fermenter immediately.( Do not use open vessels, no punch down required) ( for most
white wines or apple)(apple wines obtain a burlap odor if allowed to contact air too much)
For Rhubarb: cut into two inch pieces, rinse, add enough water in the container being
used to just cover, bring to simmer, cool to room temp, chapitalize to 10% target alc., add lemon
juice until 6 grams per litter titrated acid target, add yeast, ferment in primary fermenter until
five% sugar left and press, measure actual alc. level and add sugar for final target of 14% ( slow
release of sugar in the rhubarb adds to initial readings of specific gravity test and is widely
different from batch to batch.), ferment if secondary fermenter until dry. (will shut down
prematurely if allowed to cool before done and it “will” restart at low temps..
Leaving stems in is optional but likely to require additional aging to be drinkable. Stems
used in Primary fermenter will cause the requirement of additional head space as the fast
fermentation will cause the must to rise about one third of its original height in a container.
Stems also require a lot more pressure for pressing out. On the other hand, the stems will allow a
higher pressure to be used before pumice will escape through netting used on most presses.
Montrachet Yeast is our one and only yeast. Conflicting sources indicate Montrachet is
supposedly not able to reach higher than 12%. We regularly hit 15 or 16 and have had 19%.
Keeping the temp at 80 and adding nutrients in the case of “Port “may be the reason it works
well.
Compared to chemically grown grapes, the condition of many organically grown grape
clusters is very poor. Disease and insect infestations can render entire grapes clusters useless.
De-stemming the berries into cold water quickly removes a great deal of unwanted residue. On
the plus side, the resulting “low” Tannin wine is ready to drink sooner than otherwise and the
need for sulfur to maintain color over time is thus also reduced. One should consider how the
large Winery operators behave with the use of sulfites. With the dependency on high levels of
sulfur needed to deactivate biologicals added by mechanization, just imagine what they (standard
wineries) may be allowing you to drink because they trust sulfur so much to make a profit!