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In my opinion smoke taint is not easily removed. Every one of the winemakers I've talked to has said that would not make wine from smoke tainted grapes and neither would I. The big commercial producers like Gallo or Franzia might make wine from smoke tainted fruit because they already do so much chemical manipulation of their bulk wines.
Grape growers have no incentive to harvest smoke tainted fruit because their crop insurance will cover the loss. If a wine maker accepts smoke tainted fruit and makes wine from it and the wine is not salable, they are stuck with the loss.
Chris Vais
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Quote:If they don’t use the grapes is there a secondary market to offload them?
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Smoke tainted wine, as is the case with other wine that is off spec usually goes to vinegar production. Smoke tainted fruit is dropped on the ground and then tilled into the soil. The nitrogen it contains will help kick start the vines the following spring,
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The usual impact from frost is a smaller crop. the wine have to rely on secondary buds for cane production and subsequently fruit production. Secondary buds are never as fruitful as the primary buds.
The wine grape crop here in California is going to be smaller than it has been recently, primarily due to the warm winter season we had last year. What fruit there is looks really nice. This will be the first year, in 23 years that I will not be actively making wine. Saddens me to even think about it. Perhaps next year, we'll see.
Chris Vais
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(This post was last modified: 09-04-2021, 10:45 PM by
Chris Vais.)
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I've tried orange wine. I think that the ones produced in Slovenia are probably the best, for no other reason, it is
their traditional method. Orange wines are created by fermenting white wine grapes on the stems in the same way that one ferments a whole cluster red wine. Whole cluster means that the grapes are not destemmed.
The normal way in which you make a white wine is to either destem the grapes or leave the clusters intact. In either case the fruit is immediately pressed with the juice going into stainless steel tanks and then chilled to 40 degrees F. This causes the solids to settle out. The clear juice is racked off the solids and placed in tanks or barrels for fermentation.
The Slovenians did not have access to refrigerated tanks. Their traditional method for fermenting red wine is to ferment it in large clay vessels that are placed in the ground, a reasonably effect means for controlling the temperature during fermentation. Having no other alternatives the white was fermented in the same manner. The seeds and skins give the wine its orange color and also release some tannin during fermentation. So in addition to the orange color, these wines have more tannin than a traditional white wine. Some people find the higher tannin level in a white wine to be undesirable. I think orange wines pair well with some foods. Wouldn't pair it with Dover sole, but I have drunk it with grilled salmon and smokes pork ribs.
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Table grapes from which raisins are made have about 1/2 the amount of sugar that wine grapes have. That said the process of raising does concentrate the sugar. To make wine from raisins you would have to rehydrate them and then determine how much sugar to add in order to get a successful fermentation.
When making wine from wine grapes that have lots of raisins in amongst the grapes you will have to account for the fact that the raisins will rehydrate in the must after the fruit is destemmed and crushed. This will cause your sugar level to elevate so you would need to do a final Brix measurement before fermentation. If the Brix level is too high you would add water to bring the Brix down. If you don't and the Brix level is too high you risk producing a high alcohol slightly off dry wine that tastes awful.
A friend of mine did this with over ripe Sangiovese grapes with clusters full of raisins. The result was a sweet jammy tasting wine that was 21% alcohol and undrinkable. I used the bottle he gave me as marinade for some brisket that I BBQ'd. The result brisket you could cut with a fork.
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which prompts another ..... can a half decent wine be made out of any variety of grape, or do some grapes just not work when it comes to fermentation?