Shatner Hasselhoff ‘08

They'd do just as good of a job as anyone else.

for growing!

Even though we're in Wisconsin doesn't mean we can't grow good wine grapes. There are quite a number of hybrid grapes that are very cold hardy and also produce a good wine. In addition to cold hardiness, many of these hybrids are resistant to various diseases that plague traditional Eurpoean vinifera vines.

The University of Minnesota has developed a few hybrids that I'm currently investigating, particularly Marquette grapes. They're very cold hardy (down to -35°F) and also very disease resistant. They create a good red wine that some have compared to shiraz, and others merlot, thought Pinot Noir is Marquette's grandfather. The acidity is a bit high but that can be corrected for in the winery either through blending, cold stabilization, or other methods. It also yields a fairly high sugar content, around 25 brix.

Another grape I'm investigating is the Sabrevois. This variety was bred by Elmer Swenson in Northern Wisconsin (he also did a lot of work along with the University of Minnesota). Sabrevois is also hardy down to -35°F very disease resistant and makes a complex red wine. Similar to Marquette it gives slightly high acids and its recommended to combine with a grape with higher sugars (Marquette perhaps?). It is also recommended to to a semi-carbonic maceration to ferment these grapes or at least pressing early to avoid an off flavor that often results from a full maceration.

Those two I have done the most investigation of, they're appealing to me because of their extreme cold hardiness, strong resistance to disease and the good wine they produce. Some other varieties I'm interested in but haven't investigated as much are: Marechal Foch, Noiret™, St. Croix, and Cabernet Severny. Cabernet Severny is an interesting one to me since it's not a hybrid with american grapes but was actually developed for growing in Russia. It's been hybred with a hardy Mongolian grape vine as well as some french varieties and of course Severny. Not sure how that all works out as there's not a lot of information about it online; not even sure if I'll be able to find anyone selling it.

Well, technically Cathy is pregnant. Either way, congrats you guys! How exciting!

I think it's official now, Anne and I have exited the wedding phase of our life and are now in full blown baby phase. Many of our friends are pregnant or have had a baby, and I have a feeling more will be following suit in the near future. Maybe even we will be, who knows? But we're still not ready for that yet.

Each year IAMRA, the rescue organization where we got Dora, has a homecoming and fundraiser even called Malawalk. Basically all the adopted out malamutes (and their owners) are invited to a big malamute picnic. We went down this year with Mitch, another IAMRA adopter who lives in Milwaukee, and two of his Dogs, Lance and Molly.

We had a lot of fun. Dora had a great time and behaved very well considering the amount of dogs there. She participated in the bobbing for hotdogs event (she got her hot dog) and also competed (and sucked it up) in both the kissing and singing contests.

More photos here

Encouraged by the improving flavors of the Milk Jug wine and the improvised cherry wine, this weekend I finally got around to putting together the large batch of Zinfandel that I had bought a number of weeks ago. I pretty much followed the directions on the cans of concentrate and then added 4 extra cups of sugar when the sugar % measurements came out a little lower than I wanted (ha ha, as if I actually know what I want).

Here are the ingredients I dumped into the fermenter:

• 2 cans of Zinfandel Grape Concentrate (Alexander's brand)
• ~11.5 cans of cold water
• 12 cups of sugar (recipe called for 8)
• 3 tsp yeast nutrient powder
• 2 tsp acid blend powder
• 1 pkg Premium Cuvée yeast

I decided to forgo adding any tannin or doing anything else too far out for this first big batch. I want to get something good and drinkable to start and then I'll start experimenting and producing stuff that sucks.

Initial measurements 8/16/08:

• Must: ~5 gallons
• Brix: 23.0
• % Sugar: 12

I think I have decided to go with my wonderful mother-in-law's idea and call the winery Mute Dog Winery. I suppose I need to get going on designing a logo and some labels for it now.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Anne and I getting our house. Since then we've been very very busy and we're nowhere close to done. But all in all it's been a good experience and I'm happy with our choice.

Here's the current to-do list:

• put up cement board and tile kitchen backsplash
• replace kitchen light fixture
• finish installing foot board on kitchen cabinets
• replace switches and add light switch in kitchen
• get or make LED under-cabinet lighting
• paint kitchen
• paint woodwork in our bedroom
• replace light in entryway
• install ceiling fan in living room (pray there is electrical in the ceiling cap)
• get or build new vanity for bathroom
• install new sink in bathroom
• install new in-wall faucet in bathroom
• replace light fixture in bathroom
• finish making light fixture for dining room and install it
• paint back and bedroom hallways
• replace lights in back and bedroom hallways

Whew! That's a lot of crap! Though that should pretty much take care of the first floor renovations and we can take a nap afterwards and start saving up lots and lots for creating the second floor space.

Last weekend I picked up a used wine making kit from an ad on craigslist. I've been interested in home brewing for some time, last Christmas I got a book on making wine as a gift and a few weeks ago we went to a part at a friends and he served up his home brewed beer that was quite tasty. So being utterly provoked and having let the opportunity of a used wine kit slip through my fingers a few months ago (these are fairly rare on craigslist), I jumped on this one and brought it home. I also stopped at The Purple Foot home brewing supply store and got some additional supplies and ingredients.

The Purple Foot, however, does not sell wine grapes, and, in fact, wine grapes aren't especially easy to come by in Milwaukee, who knew? There is a winery in Pewaukee, but their website doesn't mention anything about their vineyards, so I have a feeling they buy their grapes from elsewhere. Similarly, Cedar Creek Winery in Cedarburg also do not grow their own grapes (as far as I know). They are partnered with Wollersheim Winery in Prairie du Sac, who do have a vineyard but even so they also buy grapes for some of their wines. In addition to their scarcity, or more likely because of it, wine grapes aren't cheap either. What's a home winemaker to do?

Well, if you're crazy, and I am, you could try growing your own. It just so happens that there is a grape vine growing in my back yard. I didn't plant it, I have no idea what kind of grapes it will produce, nor do I know if they will any good for making wine. If you think this seems like a stupid thing to rely on to make wine from, you'd be right.

Luckily for idiots like me you don't even need grapes to make wine anymore. And I don't mean that in the 'you can make wine from strawberries' sense of the word (even though you can). What I'm talking about is wine grape concentrates. Some crazy genius figured a way to remove most of the sugar and the water from wine grape juice. Then he packaged it up and shipped it all over the place to be sold to dorks like me. All I have to do is reconstitute the concentrate with water, add sugar to my desired level of sweetness and away I go. From two 46oz cans of concentrate you can make yourself 5 gallons of wine. Additionally, you don't have to go through the effort (and cost) of getting a crusher/de-stemmer for your grapes and pressing your must (if you're making red).

So I got a couple of cans of Zinfandel. It seems wrong to even write something like that, but that's what I did.

Now, because I'm a freak, or because I'm scared to attempt this with pretty much no experience and I don't want to run the risk of making garbage wine. Instead of diving in and putting all this stuff together right away, I have delayed the making of my Zinfandel for the moment. I am sort of following these instructions and making a small batch of wine in a repurposed milk jug out of raspberry-apple juice concentrate, some water, and a bunch of sugar. I figure if I can create something semi-decent out of this, then I will start my Zinfandel.

This is all stupid, of course, what will I do if my milk jug wine turns out crappy? Give up? No, I'll go ahead anyway, but maybe I'll have learned something? hopefully? please?

Anyway, hoping that I will be able to make decent table wines, I have created a section on the site called Home Brew, where I'll be posting my recipes and notes as I move forward with this hobby. Maybe we can all learn something, hopefully it won't simply be that I suck at making wine.