Tasting Notes

Today was a day of wine tasting like no other. Fermentation has finished for all of our experiments, so we 'racked' them into clean, sterilised demijohns and dropped in a crushed campden tablet into each to kill any lingering yeast. We sealed each with a clean airlock, to ensure no lingering fermentation. I'll replace these with a bung in a couple of days.

Tasting notes:

Rosie: Strawberry

Started 2 July 2020

Beautiful, rich, crystal clear colour, like boiled sweets. Definitely strawberry in bouquet and flavour. Needs to mature and lose some of the yeasty headiness. A little too acid.  

We sweetened it with 200g sugar. I'm hoping a few months left alone will mellow it.

Summary: boozy strawberry sours from an unpleasant little boy's grimy coat pocket.

Betty: Blackcurrant.

Started 4 August 2020

Deep, clear, maroon in colour. Strong the blackcurrant in this one is. Very dry and tannic. 

Decided not to sweeten this until I've tried neutralising some of the acidity. 

Summary: Distillation of woodland berries passed through a brown bear with a urinary tract infection.

Bumpkin: Rhubarb

Started 2 June 2020

OMG ACID. Crystal clear and bright yellow. There is little of the rhubarb here but the malic acid. There is a lingering afterburn to the acidity. The mouth feel is pleasant, coming I expect from the grape concentrate. This needs popping away in a cupboard for a year at least. We should experiment with acidity reducing something-or-other.

Summary: Doctor Frankenstein's other hobby.  

Bertie: Rhubarb

Started 2 June 2020

Even more acid!! Very unpleasant. No amount of sugar can kill the sharpness. The back of my nose feels like the overstretched neck of a tied-off weather balloon. Bertie was started from the same must as Bumpkin, and the only difference was a sneak tasting some months back. So Bumpkin may have had chance to oxidise a little, given some air.

Summary: Something unexplained from the back of Dr Jekyll's fume cupboard.

I'm dreading the next tasting.