Log Notes: 2010 Rougeon

2011 NY State Fair “Best of Category-Hybrid”

By Larry Kilbury

Betty and I have always liked Tony’s Red from Anthony Road Wine Company on Seneca Lake, so when I was thinking about what to make for my first red wine I asked them what went into that blend. The answer was that it is mostly the Rougeon grape. I had never heard of Rougeon before, and likely not too many other winemakers had either because the juice was very affordable.

I have very few notes on this wine and I won’t make that mistake again! Here is what I did to make my 2010 Rougeon, to the best of my knowledge.

On Sept. 25, 2010, I picked up five gallons of juice at about $5.75 a gallon at Fulkerson’s along with my other supplies. The numbers according to Fulkerson’s: Brix = 17.2; TA = .77; pH = 3.15.

I let the juice sit a couple of days to warm up, then placed it in a pail with a cloth cover. I used table sugar to adjust the Brix to 24. I added ½ teaspoon DAP yeast nutrient per gallon. Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast was rehydrated in 104-degree water for ten or fifteen minutes and then added.

One week later, I racked the juice into a 3-gallon carboy plus a 1-gallon jug. From then on I racked about every six weeks.

I like dry wine, and it fermented to dry. But when we attended an AWS meeting that the club was invited to last year, I learned that a residual sugar of 1.5% brings out a fruity taste without making the wine sweet. So before bottling we conducted blending trials to determine how much residual sugar, if any, we should add to our Rougeon.

I made sugar syrup by boiling one cup of sugar and one cup of water for a couple of minutes and then let it cool to room temperature. We measured wine into three glasses and then added measured amounts of the sugar syrup to each glass. We had one glass with no sugar syrup added, one with 1.5%, and one with 3%. We used small glasses to taste until we made a decision. We decided the 1.5% blend was the best.

I think we used about 11 ml of sugar syrup per 750 ml bottle, times the capacity of the carboy. We didn’t know at the time about needing to add sorbate to prevent fermentation from reoccurring, so we didn’t do that.

The deadline for the State Fair was on May 11 this year, so I bottled about two or three weeks before that. I did not fine or filter the wine.

You can see that I made this wine in the same manner I normally make white wine, and it seemed to work out well. My only regret is that I did not make more, as there is not much left! That’s why I bought 12 gallons of juice this year.

For those who like blending, Anthony Road’s Tony’s Red is a blend that changes every year. It's usually mostly Rougeon with Cab Franc, and some years they add a little Cayuga to the blend if they feel it needs to be more fruity.