Vino Italiano 4 Week Wine Kit, Chardonnay, 15.5-Pound Box Reviews
January 18, 2010 by Instant Wine
Filed under Making Wines
Vino Italiano 4 Week Wine Kit, Chardonnay, 15.5-Pound Box
- All ingredients are 100% food grade OGM Free
- Step-by-Step instructions included
- Making Great Wines is as easy as 1,2,3
4 week wine kit. great italian table wines .
List Price: $ 49.62
Price: $ 41.35
Not bad for the money!!,
I was pleasantly surprised by this kit.. I made it to the directions, but added 2 oak spirals (purchased seperately) during fermentation. For some reason, this wine took more time to ferment than the directions stated, which is why I always go by hydrometer readings and not the “guidelines” in the directions. This posed no problem for me as it gave the wine longer to extract flavor from the oak.. My kit took just over 6 weeks from yeast pitch to bottle. Fermentation alone took 4 weeks. This is also the only kit I ever made using tap water, so that “may” have affected fermentation..
All in all, this wine is a winner to me, and everyone who has tried it has given it a thumbs up. The oak gave it the soft buttery and vanilla flavors which I have always loved in a Chard.. If you are not a fan of oaky Chards, and decide to make this, please post your results without using oak. I am interested to see if the oak added significantly more character to this wine or not. For the money, I think this is a steal!! Especially since it comes with corks, shrink capsules and labels!!!
I will definatley be ordering this kit regularly, and already have orders for more bottles!!
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|Makes Very Good Chardonnay,
This kit makes a very nice chardonnay – with some adjustments. First, be careful and use a hydrometer when you make up the wine to volume. My kit made 20.5 Liters at 1.090 instead of 23. In fairness, the kit says it makes 23 L at 1.075 to 1.090. I opted for reduced volume in lieu of diluted wine.
Secondly, the kit does not contain yeast starter nutrients and the kit instructions have you just sprinkle the dry yeast into the wine must. That’s really not a good idea! I bought some GoFerm for rehydrating the yeast and some Fermaid K yeast nutrient to add during the fermentation. Rehydrated the yeast by sprinkling it into 6 grams of GoFerm suspended in 4 oz of water. After 30 min, I added 4 oz of white grape juice (no preservatives) to let the yeast start their metabolism. After 6 hours, I added another 8 oz of grape juice and let the yeast grow overnight. Used this starter culture to innoculate the wine kit must. Added 3 grams of Fermaid K nutrient on the first day after pitching the yeast and 3 more grams when the must had fermented down to about 1.060 specific gravity.
With those modifications and with some attention to the details of aeration and stirring, the kit makes a very good chardonnay. I’ll give it 4 stars because the quality of components makes such good wine. However, if you just follow the kit instructions and sprinkle the dry yeast directly into the fermentation vessel, you run the risk of a very slow start and increased risk of contamination. If you don’t add any yeast nutrients, you risk having stalled fermentation somewhere along the way. The yeast nutrients are cheap; they should be in the kit!
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|Shocked how good this was,
I also modified the kit instructions. I hydrated the yeast, however, the instructions said that you could do this as an alternative to using the yeast sprinkling method. My SG at start was 1.08. The first fermentation ended on day 11. After racking, I added toasted oak chips. I racked the wine again on Day 21 when the SG was .990, and again on Day 23 due to the amount of ugly sediment that was forming quickly at the bottom (and I was going on a business trip). The wine at this point was extremely cloudy, and tasted and smelled horrible. The alcohol tasted very strong and I thought that the alcohol content was way too high. I then removed the oak chips and added the gels. The wine cleared within a couple of days and seemed to darken a bit over the next week. I racked the wine again on Day 33, crossed my fingers and tasted the wine. I was shocked that it tasted good but I wish that it had more body and had more oak flavor and had more body. I have not bottled the wine yet but am thinking of adding more oak and bulk aging the wine a bit longer. Note that I am probably at 20 liters but I am not adding water or wine, but am spraying inert gas (Wine Preserve) into the carboy whenever I lift the airlock.
I like a very oak flavored Chardonnay and this kit contains no oak. That is the only reason that I am ranking this kit as a 4 star instead of a 5. I hope that Amazon continues to sell Vino Italiano kits. I would to try out the red and see how they compare to the much more expensive Vino del Vido and Mosti Mondial red wines that I have made.
Based on my results thus far, I would recommend this kit. I will add more information to this review if I am able to later.
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