It’s been a while since I gave an update but not a lot has happened to report on. The wines have mostly been doing their thing in the carboys without any intervention from me. In the interim I’ve been working on two wines that I’m making from Kamil Juices but that’s a different story and I’ll write about it another time. So here’s the latest on my Ten kits.
The Cru Select Piazza is ready to bottle and I’m planning to do so this weekend. The Cru Select Toro has been filtered and is also ready to bottle. I filtered it once with the Buon Vino Mini Jet using #2 filter pads but I wasn’t pleased with the clarity so I decided to run it through a set of #3 filter pads. This wine is quite dry and the body is a little lighter than I expected but I did filter it twice and it will take a week or so to recover. It needs ageing and I expect it to be a good one. It’s much too young to make any comment on the flavour or aroma yet.
The Selection Shiraz/Viognier has also been filtered and it’s ready for bottling. This wine was brilliantly clear before filtering so one pass through the filter was all it needed. Winexpert uses a different fining process than RJ Spagnols and so far it seems to produce better results. We’ll see if this carries through for the next four Winexpert kits. The Shiraz/Viognier is also very dry with a medium body. This wine is still pretty rough and it’s not easy to determine how it will finish but it shows lots of promise.
The Selection Pacifica is now in the clearing process. This wine took a long time to ferment. I did replace the yeast with a slower fermenting Lalvin D-47 but I had done the same with the Piazza and it fermented at a normal rate. It finished at 0.992 making it super dry. Like the Piazza this kit also had a suss reserve pack but that’s where the similarity ends. The Pizza suss reserve was a small packet of thick, sweet syrup. The Selection packet was much larger. Its contents was less concentrated and tasted more tart than sweet. This wine has been really interesting. Right from the beginning when I poured the contents of the bag into my bucket I was intrigued by it’s intense aroma. That hasn’t changed. Pacifica keeps on surprising me. I’ll give you a complete assessment when I’m ready to bottle.
Finally we have the Cru Select Trek. It has gone through it’s clearing process and I filtered it yesterday. I think I’ll also give this a second filtration with #3 pads. Trek is a heavy bodied wine and I’m not certain one filtration did the job. I intend to let these wines age for a couple of years or more so I want to make sure that all traces of yeast are removed. This is the first wine in the series which uses the Genuwine dried grape skins and you can tell the difference. The tannins in this wine are aggressive and I expect you’ll need more than a year of bottle ageing to tame them.
That’s it so far. I intend to do some bottling this weekend and also start two more wines. It will be the Cru Select Hang Ten and the Selection Primitivo. I should have something to report on these by Monday.
