Concentrating the flavour

[Cellar_Rat]

Due to space, and hoping I can get rid of some Seyval (ideas please?) this year I am going to make less wine.

Perhaps only 300 litres, but I intend to concentrate the berry flavours. In the style I suppose more like an Australian red (but using Italian grapes).

I have noticed that if you leave grapes overnight in say your car - you will notice they sweat -buckets.

My thought is to leave them, whole for a few days (perhaps 5) spread out well, turned daily, with a fan and a dehumidifier? With a view to gently removing some of the moisture - I suppose gently raisoning them?

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Has anyone tried this?

or any reading / links on the subject?

or an Australian winemaking techniques handbook?????

[fatbloke]

The "sweat" is dehydration. Whether that actually concentrates the flavour or not, I don't know.

Though I would suspect that your biggest hazard would be moulds. Commercially produced raisins, sultanas, currants etc etc are carefully dried with temperature controlled, forced (and probably filtered) air drying.

Sure, you can get "dehydrators" that use a little heat, but trying to use either method in a "Heath Robinson" way at home is likely to be difficult.

You'd need a hell of a lot of space, not forgetting the kind of hardware necessary to dry quantities large enough for even a 5 gallon batch.......

Whether there's a way of juicing them and then lowering the moisture/water content of the juice, I don't know......

regards

jtfb

[Rich]

Brian, have a read up on how Amerone is made. It's very close to what you are suggesting. It is also a splendid wine.

[bzac]

Well those big concentrated australian and california wines with their big alcohol levels and concentrated flavours are made with grapes that have gottan very ripe and dehydrated on the vine.
so first option would be to get some very ripe grapes.
amarone is made under some pretty careful conditions , i suspect doing it at home, you'd get mold pretty fast. especialy if your grapes have already spent a few days getting from the vineyard to you/

another trick would be to do a sangee , that is bleed off some of the juice right after crush , making a rose or blanc des noirs with the bleed off juice . but the must left behind will have a much higher skin to juice ratio , concentrating the colour and flavours.
some exzymes added at crush will also draw more out of the skins.

[goldseal]

another trick would be to do a sangee ...

I have done this for the past three years, on Ciliegiolo, Merlot and Montepulciano.

The resultant rosés have probably been my most drinkable wines to date - my suggestion would be to use a more white/rosé orientated yeast (such as D47 or 71B), and the acidity will probably need to be a bit higher than the red must from whence it came.