Ohio Wines

Notes

This particular wine began as an experiment but finished into something that I felt needed to be shared. The concept was simple; take a red hybrid variety, barrel-ferment and age exclusively in barrels until the higher acidity of the red Frontenac grape was smoothed out. Typically, red wines are not fermented in barrels since the wine needs to be fermented on the skins and extracting the skins back out of the small bung of the barrel would be challenging. Harvested September 12th, 2018, the grapes were placed into two separate medium plus toasted French oak barrels. I fermented the must with RC212 yeast for seven days. The challenging part came when the skins needed to be extracted from the barrels for pressing. I learned, after a few hours of work, that I need to rethink how to perform oak contact for fermentation on future batches. After pressing the skins, the wine was returned to the barrels, and I began the secondary malolactic fermentation with Viniflora CH16 bacteria. The purpose of the secondary fermentation is to convert the harsher malic acids into lactic acids. As lactic acids are smoother on the tongue, it creates a smoother finished product. Upon completion of the malolactic fermentation, the two barrels were combined into a single neutral oak barrel for extended aging. This extended aging lasted 29 months before being bottled on August 19th, 2021