The three most recent batches of wine have been bottled! Actually, they’ve been bottled for a few weeks now, but… you know… the whole not posting due to stress thing.
Anyway.
I’ve got some label art for ’em too, so all I have to do is actually print up the labels and slap them on and there’ll be wine aplenty for drinking and gifts…
There’s no particular reason that we called this one “Late Harvest.” It’s not like we were slogging around in December’s slush, trying to find a gourd under a snowdrift or anything. The wine needs a bit of time to mellow before drinking, but even fresh from the carboy it has overtones of the same sweet/astringent pumpkin taste that attracted me to the whole winemaking experiment in the first place. I think it’ll be quite good around Thanksgiving.
Ah, the spiced pumpkin wine… It’s basically three gallons of the Late Harvest Pumpkin with a blend of spices added as a sort of tea. We racked the pumpkin wine from the five gallon carboy it had been in to a three gallon carboy, bottled the rest (see “Late Harvest” above), added the spices and gave it a month or so to settle before bottling. The spice is quite mild right now, but a friend of mine who made a clove beer once, long ago, has warned me that the spiced flavor is almost certain to grow over time. I’m looking forward to trying it.
Yes, before you ask, I know how to spell blueberry. For a wine that got off to a rather shaky start it’s turned out far better than I had hoped. It’s a very sweet dessert wine, excellent with ice cream and cake. It’s quite drinkable right now, only a very little bit harsh, and I’m really interested in seeing how it mellows over time. After the ones that are designated for gifts, I’ll have about fifteen or twenty bottles left. I used the blue glass Schmitt-Sohne Riesling bottles, which really brings out the dark purple of the wine.