So we are making a small batch of evangeline wine this year (see
previous blog about evangeline grape). We mixed the petite milo grapes in with them to make the batch. I usually dont make wine like this unless the grapes are very similar - like the kuhlman family (foch, leon millot, lucy kuhlman, and marechal joffre). I prefer to make varietal batches then blend afterwards but were just shy of enough grapes for a small batch so we have added the petite milo. The ratio is 80% evangeline and 20% petite milo.
Here is a picture of us pressing the grapes after crushing them.
One thing we do during the pressing is we always have the same side down for white grapes and the other side down for reds. You can see the top of the basket press is red so the bottom is the white side - where the juice will be pouring out from this time. We do this because the red colouring leaches into the wood and if you press the white grapes where the red colour has leached into the wood it can extract some of this colour and tint the colour of the wine.
The grapes in the field were about 20-21 brix but as usual after the crush and press they are higher at 22 brix. So we are looking for a finished wine in the 12 to 12.5 A/vol range.
We add sulphite and let the juice sit for 24hours so that any obvious pulp and heavy sediment settled out. Then we siphoned the juice off into a new carboy added some bentonite, EC1118 yeast, and after a few days its been fermenting well and has a very nice tropical fruit aroma coming through.
