2008 Merlot Wine

I racked the 2008 Merlot today. It had a great deal of sediment, and it continues to be a substantial drinkable wine. The wine is "simple" without a lot of tannin flavor, despite the treatment with tea leaves from last month.

It is free from off flavors, and should continue to develop. I am going to let it age until the end of the summer at this point. As you can see the color is dark and the clarity is limited.

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January 2011 Update
This wine was really good after a year, but at 2 years it developed an acidic favor that I found distracting. I don't know why this happened, because the bottles and corks looked OK.

There is not much of this batch left, but I intend to add 1g per 750 ml bottle of potassium carbonate to help it.

White Gernache Update

Easter is coming up, and I wanted to get another racking in. The wine is much improved from January. It is drinkable, but it still has an off-flavor that could be yeast, but might be mold. 

As in January, the off-flavor disappears if one aerates the wine. Of course I could be fooling myself, although my DW agreed. 

The color and clarity are great. As pretty as you could want. It is a little golder than standard because I topped off with some cranberry/apple juice.  The picture at right is the actual wine. I recently failed to place in a photo contest, so I am trying to come up with some entries for next year.