Raspberry Wine #1

There are 30 glorious feet of raspberries in the Timber Garden, and they are my favorite berry plants.  I could eat raspberries off the vine all day, and sometimes I really do just go graze the plants for breakfast.  During the peak of summer they produce several lbs of raspberries per day.  And what is that song?  If you like it then you shoulda made some wine from it?

Raspberry Wine #1

5 lbs raspberries (fresh ripe, not frozen, mashed)
1 tsp pectolase
pinch k-meta
4 cups water

Place ingredients into a 2 gallon plastic fermentation bin and stir.

Day 3: Add the following ingredients

1 tsp pectolase
1/2 cup strong tea
2 cups water (to reach 1 gallon)
1 packet dry yeast, Premier Rouge (warmed water to 105, pitched yeast, let sit covered, add to bucket

Measure brix at 6 (22.5-6)*.125 * 1 gallon = 2.0625 lbs sugar
Heated 2.0625 lbs sugar in 2 cups water and liquid from brix test
Adjustment of brix to 22.5 successful.

Acid test: between 0.8%-0.9% acid content.  Slightly high.  Added 1/2 tsp potassium bicarbonate to must to lower acidity .1%

Day 4: Fermentation is going strong!  Stirring down the must twice a day, and there is a ton of carbonation coming out!

Day 7: Strained must and racked into a 1 gallon glass carboy.  It turns out raspberry wine is SOOO cloudy!  It’s a whirlwind of delicious raspberry sediment.  I racked this wine more than I normally do, but it ended up clearing beautifully without needing any help.

Day 16: Racked, added one cup of Raspberry #2 wine reserve juice to top off.

Day 37: Racked, added 1 cup grape concentrate mixture.*

Day 52: Added 1/4 cup French oak chips soaked in sanitizing solution for 30 seconds.

Day 59: Good wood flavors.

Day 63: Pronounced vanilla aroma, making the wine seem almost sweet.  Light tannins.  Very acidic.  The intense pink color has never faded on this wine, and I hope it will hold up in the bottle!

Day 82: Bottled 3 750 ml and 2 375 ml, with another small bottle that was divided into ‘drinking’ and topping up the Raspberry #2 wine.  Amazing softening with the French oak chips, left in until bottling (30 days).  Definitely not too long on the oak chips.  Need to try a dark toast for more smoky flavor.  The raspberry aroma is the best it has ever been on this wine.  This will need to sit for 3 months before we can try it!

Day 233: We opened the first bottle of raspberry wine…and it was phenomenal!  It had an amazing raspberry aroma that made us all sit around sniffing our wine glasses, and the acidity had mellowed perfectly.  This makes me want to make giant batches of raspberry wine in the future.  And was the color still a vibrant raspberry pink?  Yep!  So happy with how this turned out!

*grape concentrate mixture: 2 cups water + 3/4 concentrate, which yields 0.6% acidity and brix 16