Harvest 2025

Adventures in Winemaking

This harvest, I’m making two wines: a Chardonnay and a Muscat. Both are made from grapes I purchased from Lodi, California. The plan is to turn the Chardonnay into a blanc de blanc and the Muscat into a dry, still amber wine. I left both fermentations on the skins and open to air (no lids) for a week to build complexity, adding depth in color, flavor, and a touch of tannic structure.

Each batch started with one Campden tablet per bucket to knock out wild yeast and bacteria, then I inoculated with Lalvin EC-1118 about four days ago. Pressing day was an adventure. It was raining, and I realized mid-press that I had set up the equipment wrong and didn’t have enough wood blocks to fully press the berries. I did what I could and still managed about 2 gallons of juice per batch, which is exactly what I was told to expect from the grapes.

Both musts are about halfway through fermentation now. I’ll give them another week in the buckets under airlock. The plan is to age both on the lees for several months, but I’m still deciding exactly how to handle the Chardonnay. I might bottle it right after primary fermentation and let it age on the lees in bottle, in more of an ancestral method style similar to how I make my ciders. We’ll see how adventurous I’m feeling.

The amber Muscat will stay in a carboy on the lees for several months before bottling, since it’s meant to be still and I’ll need time to let the CO₂ settle out.

Next up: bottling my Niagara grape cider and Delaware grape cider experiments, and starting 5 gallons of ginger cyser, and a pumpkin cider experiment for Thanksgiving.