Weekend Wine Word – Brix

Brix (symbol °Bx) is a measurement scale of the mass ratio of dissolved sucrose to water in a liquid. Because Brix is related to the concentration of dissolved solids in a solution (primarily sucrose), as a result it is related to the specific gravity of the liquid. Because the specific gravity of sucrose solutions is well known, it can also be measured by refractometers (most are calibrated for Sucrose).

Modern Brix meters are digital refractometers that discover that “magical” Brix value, based on refractive index. These meters are usually portable and extremely simple to use. More and more often, Brix is measured to determine ideal harvesting times of fruit and vegetables. This ensures that the product arrives to the consumers in a perfect state, or are ideal for subsequent processing steps, such as wine making.

Each degree Brix is equivalent to 1 gram of sugar per 100 grams of grape juice. In regards to wine production, a reading of 20 to 25 deg. Brix is the most favorable degree of grape ripeness at harvest, as it pertains to the majority of table wines. For example, a 25 °Bx solution is 25% (w/w), with 25 grams of sucrose sugar per 100 grams of liquid. Or, to put it another way, there are 25 grams of sucrose sugar and 75 grams of water in the 100 grams of solution. As a good rule of thumb, about 55 to 60% of the sugar is converted into alcohol. See below for some conversion formulas to help you determine your wine’s alcohol content and specific gravity.

The estimated alcohol that a wine will produce is called Potential Alcohol and is calculated using the following formula:

°Bx Reading x 0.55 = PA of Finished Wine
Or use the form below to perform this calculation right here.

For individuals requiring Specific Gravity units of measurement, use the following formula:

°Bx Reading x 0.00425 + 0.9988 = SG of Sucrose @ 20°C (68°F
)
Or use the form below to perform this calculation right here.

Specific Gravity Ranges:

• 1.085 – 1.100 – Dry Wine
• 1.120 – 1.140 – Medium Sweet Wine
• 1.140 – 1.160 – Sweet Wine

Have a great weekend. Be safe, and please, always have a designated driver when you are drinking. More to come next week!

The Legal Aspect of Wine Making

I thought that those of you new to home winemaking might be interested in the laws surrounding your new interest. I don’t believe they are regulated by the state governments, but fall under Federal jurisdiction. This is based on what I have been able to
find online.

"In 1979 the Federal government waived the requirement for obtaining a permit for home winemaking. However, certain regulations are still in effect and should noted. There is still a legal limit of 200 gallons of wine per year for the head of a household, or 100 gal/yr for a single individual over the legal drinking age. This wine is for personal consumption only. It cannot be sold without adhering to a number of complex U.S. and State regulations well in advance of the production operation."

200 gallons per year breaks down like this:

• 200 Gallons = 757,082.36 ml
• 757,082.36 ml / 750 (1 bottle of wine) = 1,009.4 (bottles of wine)
• 1,009.4 bottles of wine / 365 = 2.8 bottles per day.

Now, I know we all share our wine (don’t be greedy!), and we probably have more than one glass in a sitting.

• 757,082.36 ml / 125ml (1 glass of wine) = 6,056.66 glasses of wine.

If you were taking a conservative stance and had two glasses of wine a day, your wine would last you 8.3 years! Assuming your bottles are 750ml, of course. I think we have no shortage of wine for personal enjoyment here.

The law from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau:

[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 27, Volume 1]
[Revised as of April 1, 2006]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 27CFR24.75]
[Page 579]
TITLE 27–ALCOHOL, TOBACCO PRODUCTS AND FIREARMS
CHAPTER I–ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO TAX AND TRADE BUREAU, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
PART 24_WINE–Table of Contents
Subpart C_Administrative and Miscellaneous Provisions
Sec. 24.75 Wine for personal or family use.
(a) General. Any adult may, without payment of tax, produce wine for personal or family use and not for sale.
(b) Quantity. The aggregate amount of wine that may be produced exempt from tax with respect to any household may not exceed:
(1) 200 gallons per calendar year for a household in which two or more adults reside, or
(2) 100 gallons per calendar year if there is only one adult residing in the household.
(c) Definition of an adult. For the purposes of this section, an adult is any individual who is 18 years of age or older. However, if the locality in which the household is located has established by law a greater minimum age at which wine may be sold to individuals, the term “adult” will mean an individual who has attained that age.
(d) Proprietors of bonded wine premises. Any adult, defined in Sec. 24.75(c), who operates a bonded wine premises as an individual owner or in partnership with others, may produce wine and remove it from the bonded wine premises free of tax for personal or family use, subject to the limitations in Sec. 24.75(b).
(e) Limitation. This exemption should not in any manner be construed as authorizing the production of wine in violation of applicable State or local law. Except as provided in Sec. 24.75(d), this exemption does not otherwise apply to partnerships, corporations, or associations.
(f) Removal. Wine produced under this section may be removed from the premises where made for personal or family use including use at organized affairs, exhibitions or competitions, such as home winemaker’s contests, tastings or judgings, but may not under any circumstances be sold or offered for sale. The proprietor of a bonded wine premises shall pay the tax on any wine removed for personal or family use in excess of the limitations provided in this section and shall also enter all quantities removed for personal or family use on TTB F 5120.17, Report of Bonded Wine Premises Operations. (Sec. 201, Pub. L. 85-859, 72 Stat. 1331, as amended (26 U.S.C. 5042))
(Approved by the Office of Management and Budget under control number 1512-0216)
[T.D. ATF-299, 55 FR 24989, June 19, 1991, as amended by T.D. ATF-338, 58 FR 19064, Apr. 12, 1993; T.D. ATF-344, 58 FR 40354, July 28, 1993]

See Also Volstead Act on Wikipedia

Another interesting article concerning the laws of wine is “In Vino Veritas: Students Learn the Tangled Laws of Wine” Read it here

I hope this helps out with the legal viewpoints of wine making. I never really looked at the statistics before, the way I broke them down above. It’s pretty amazing when you think about doing this for personal consumption.

A Small Tribute: Villa Armando

I thought I was going to come home and take a break from working on this site, but I have discovered that “blogging” can be somewhat addictive! That’s all the better for my readers, and I guess I am doing what I enjoy, after all.

I wanted to share a little secret about a traditional table wine that I truly love and that wine is…

Villa Armando is a traditional red table wine, similar to that of Campobasso’s Mellow Red Wine. It has a hand crafted and homemade
style that captures the full-bodied taste missing from most table wines. If there is one wine that reminds me of that home made “dego red”, as my friends so fondly referred to it – this is it. A friend of the family turned this onto my mother and the tip was passed to me… What a delightful gift!

It took me a while to discover who were the brains behind this operation, and it turns out that it is Blue Moon Wines from Walnut Creek, CA

from the product page:

From Our Family to Yours Since 1948In a world where wine brands come and go, Villa Armando stands apart – introduced, owned and bottled by the Scotto family for three generations:

“My brother Sal and I introduced Villa Armando in 1948. We sold it door to door in downtown Brooklyn, where our friends and neighbors appreciated the old world quality and wine styles. Today, it’s still the wine we pour at our family table and enjoy with food and friends. We hope you enjoy it, too.”

– Anthony Scotto, Sr.

Using Zinfandel, Alicante, and Muscat, they have recreated the flavorful, fruity, rustic wines enjoyed by many Europeans back home.

Other Varietals include a Mellow Rose and Mellow White. I have yet to find or try these.

This wine is 16% Alcohol by Volume… fairly high, considering most tables wines generally fall between 8% and 14%. It does taste a little dry for a table wine, but personally, I like it.

Do yourself a favor and try to find this wine. Give it a chance. Not all good wines need to be expensive, and this one hits the nail on the head at $19.99 per gallon. I found this gem at Lariccia’s Italian Foods in Youngstown, OH. If you cannot find it, contact Blue Moon Wines to see if it is distributed in your local area. It seems that they cover most of the United States, so hopefully you shouldn’t have a problem locating it.

Creovino! Rates it:

Nursery List for the Backyard Amateur

If you think you might be ready to start growing your own grapes next season, here is a list of suppliers you might want to have on hand.

I came across these while browsing and thought I would share. There seems to be some really good deals with some of the suppliers listed. Who knows, you might even live close enough to one of them for local pickup.

If you know of any other nurseries that should be added, please contact me. I will put it in the list.

Beer and Wine Hobby
155 New Boston St.,
Unit TWoburn, MA 01801
PH: 1.800.523.5423
www.beer-wine.com

Concord Nurseries Inc.
10175 Mileblock Rd.
North Collins, NY 14111
PH: 1.716.337.2485
www.concordnurseries.com

Double A Vineyards
10277 Christy Rd.
Fredonia, NY 14063
PH: 1.716.672.8493
FX: 1.716.679.3442
www.doubleavineyards.com

Great River Vineyard / Nursery
35680 Highway 61 Boulevard
Lake City, MN 55041
PH: 1.877.345.3531
www.greatrivervineyard.com

Inland Desert Nursery
32508 W. Kelly Rd.
Benton City, WA 99320
PH: 1.509.588.6615
www.idnursery.com

Miller Nurseries
5060 West Lake Rd.
Canandaigua, NY 14424
PH: 1.800.836.9630
www.millernurseries.com

Nursery at Ty Ty
4723 U.S. Hwy 82 W.
Ty Ty, GA 31795
PH: 1.800.972.2101
FX: 1.299.388.8108
www.tytyga.com

Orchard Valley Supply
PH: 888-755-0098
FX: 1.704.455.4952
www.orchardvalleysupply.com

Silver Creek Vineyards & Nursery
23393 Double Arch Rd.
New Douglas, IL 62074
PH: 1.217.456.6641
www.silvercreekvineyards.com

Vintage Nurseries
27920 McCombs Avenue
Wasco, CA 93280
PH: 1.800.499.9019
www.vintagenurseries.com

Homemade Monitoring

Ideal wine storage is just about 13C (54- 56F). How do you make sure that your cellar is always this temperature? Well, that may take a little more than monitoring, but remote monitoring in a nice feature to have in your wine cellar.

Homemade Wine Cellar Monitor using OWFS

If you are a hardware hacker and like to tinker around with electronics
like I do, then this may be of interest to you.

The setup uses the OWFS program – an easy way to use the powerful 1-wire system of Dallas/Maxim. This is a simple and flexible program for monitoring and controlling the physical environment. You can write scripts to read temperature, display information on an LCD, log and graph.

Learn more about OWFS here.

Once I finally get things in order, and have a functioning wine cellar, you can bet I will try this out. It seems like a truly easy way to monitor without the expensive equipment. Furthermore, you should be able to automate temperature control systems with this.

One thought I always keep in mind though, and it sounds so cliché, is that good wine is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. I try not to let technology make me lazy. These fancy devices weren’t around for our ancestors to use, and they controlled their environments just fine.

Wine Cellar Management Software

Wine cellar management has to be quite a task when your collection starts to get into triple digits. I can only wish (at the moment) to have a wine cellar with such contents. When I do this software seems to be quite promising. Wine XT seems straightforward and easy to use.

From the publishers site:

“Wine XT for Apple Macintosh MacOS X is an essential tool to manage the contents of your wine cellar with your mac. This wine database offers a clear presentation and flexibility in use on your Mac. Pleasant and easy to use, Wine XT makes it possible to enter information in a fast way by easy functions like other Mac Os X software. You can manage your wine inventory and your own wine tasting notes. You can note sight, smell, taste and the quality of a wine in your wine collection. Manage the wine cellar racks, reviews and used wine with this wine collector accessory. Using the MacOS X system address book for winery and supplier addresses.”

Wine XT even offers international support for 10 different languages – although not complete translations.  It runs on Macs only – I have not came across any PC equivalent. Personally I am a Mac user but would be interested in locating a PC version of such software.

Wine XT can be purchased from its publisher’s site:

http://www.wine-software.net/

The Grape We Have Grown to Love

Wine grape varieties represent only a small portion of a family of more than 600 species. Each grape variety has its own exclusive properties including:

• Acidity
• Color
• Flavors
• Skin Thickness
• Size
• Yield

Of these many different types of grapes, the best wine grape is the European Vitis vinifera. It is a liana (woody climber) growing to 35 m tall, with flaky bark. The leaves are alternate, palmately lobed, 5–20 cm long, and broad. The fruit is a berry, known as a grape; the wild species is 6 mm in diameter and ripens dark purple to blackish, with a pale wax bloom. In cultivated plants it is usually much larger, up to 3 cm long, and can be green, red, or purple.

The European Vitis is considered optimal because it has the right balance of sugar and acid needed to create a good fermented wine, without the addition of sugar or water. It has been said that a wine is only as good as the grape; a
poor winemaker can ruin good grapes, but a good winemaker isn’t going to make great wine from inferior grapes.

The grapes’ history is intimately entwined with the history of wine, with wild grapes being first harvested by foragers and early farmers. For thousands of years, the fruit has been harvested for both its medicinal and nutritional value. Changes in pip shape (which is more narrow in domesticated forms) and distribution point actually began occurring around 3500-3000 BC. It was around this time that domestication of wild grapes took place in southwest Asia or southern Transcaucasia (Armenia and Georgia). Cultivation of the domesticated grape spread to other parts of the Old World in pre-historic or early historic times.

Grapes followed European colonies around the world from Africa, to South America and Australia, when they arrived on North American shores around 1600. In North America, hybrids were formed with species from the Vitis genus native to that region. Some of these were intentional hybrids created to combat Phylloxera, an insect pest which affected the European grapevine. The effects there were far greater than in North America, and in fact managed to devastate European wine production in only a matter of years. Later, North American rootstocks became widely used to graft V. vinifera cultivars so as to withstand the presence of phylloxera.

In North America, growing Vitis vinifera was limited mostly to the relatively mild West Coast, starting in New Mexico and continuing into California and The Pacific Northwest States. However, due to the research of Konstantin Frank, it is now widely grown in harsher climates, such as New York State, western Michigan and southern Ontario. Dr. Helmut Becker’s work in the early 1980s even brought Vitis vinifera to the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia.

Read more about Vitis vinifera here.

Side note on “Variety”

The word “varietal” means “of or pertaining to a variety.” Types of grapes are “varieties”. Wines made from a single variety are varietal wines. So, for example, a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wine is a varietal. The cabernet sauvignon grape, zinfandel grape and merlot grape are varieties of grapes. According to US law, as long as it has at least 75% of a particular variety of grape, the wine can be labeled as that variety.

Welcome! Benvenuto!

This is the start of a great new wine site. Just as I enjoy a nice
relaxing glass of wine, I like a good read as well. Hopefully this
site will prove to be valuable for all wine makers and enthusiasts alike.

Stay tuned for many good articles and updates along the way.

Chindun!