This round was Nova’s time to shine as the mascot of these two wines, a Zinfandel Blush and a Citrus Wood Sorrel.
We made the Zinfandel from a Fontana wine kit. As our second kit, I do have to say I liked WineXpert kits a little better as far as instructions go as well as the overall finish and quality of the wine. Both this kit and the Diablo Rojo were on the lower end of the cost spectrum, but both made a full 6 gallons. That said, we did better siphoning this time, getting a total 29.5 bottles out of it (versus 27.5 from the Rojo).
Jumping from a wine kit to a completely experimental wine, our 3rd batch is a citrus wood sorrel. This was the first of our true micro-brews both to be started and bottled, only making 1 gallon. I couldn’t find anything on the great wide Interwebs about wood sorrel wines, so we decided to riff off of a Parsley wine recipe we found, with some hefty modifications. We have a second wood sorrel with a grape base, modified from a dandelion wine recipe, but still has yet to clear, so it will need a couple more months before it might be ready to bottle. The citrus one, however, cleared very quickly on its own and turned out hyper-sweet, at least to my taste (T thinks it’s great!), but works well as a sip-able dessert wine. With this edible clover already tasting a bit lemony, we gathered all the wood sorrel from our own backyard, cooked it down with a couple oranges and lemons into a simple syrup. After cooling it, we treated it similar to our other wine musts and went for a more fruit forward yeast.
With the labels now on both of them, it is time to let them age at least a good 6 months or longer and see how their profiles develop.
Adventure on!
– D
The Dragon's Den 