Last night was blending & bottling night. We are taking this opportunity pre- large harvest of grapes to experiment with blending some Minnesota grown grapes with other varietals, both hybrids and vinifera. Last year we picked some Edelweiss grapes from a local grower, which have been fermented and racked and are now ready for bottling.
I came home to six glasses of wine sitting on the counter...a tasting Aaron had set up for us. Who doesn't love to come home to that?
We sampled a few combinations, and eventually decided on the following blend of the three whites we are working with:
40% Edelweiss
40% Vignoles
20% Savignon Blanc
No, we didn't blend a red and a white! Reds are next up for bottling...they just happened to be sitting next to each other in carboys for the picture. Aren't they cute?
We bottled in our humble wine making room, aka, the utilities room.
And only had one bottle casualty...broke all over the floor. Oops! So we ended up with 18 bottles of our newly created blend.
By next year, we hope to move this all out to the outbuilding for a larger production. Not that I don't love having wine spilled all over our basement floor. Report on our chicken coop transformation coming soon!
Next up in our winemaking excursion this week: Grappa!