Petite Sirah Port Recipe

Yield: 4.5 gallons or 20 bottles

Ingredients:

At Crush:

• 5.5 gallons (55 lbs) macerated Petite juice with skins

• 15 ml 10% Potassium Metabisulfite solution

• 4.5g Opti-Red

• .45g Lallazyme EX (or other pectin enzyme)

• 5.85g FT rouge tannin (or other red tannin)

At Fermentation start:

• 50g American oak chips

• 50g French oak chips

• 4.5g Fermaid-K

• 10g Go Ferm

• 8 g GRE yeast

At Fortification:

• 2.3 liters 150 proof Everclear (or other high proof brandy)

At Stabilization and Bulk aging

• 3 separate ¼ tsp Potassium metabisulfite additions.

Directions:

1. Prepare fruit: After grapes are crushed, destemmed and treated with 10% Potassium Metabisulfite solution, add enzymes and tannin. Cold macerate for 3 days. Punch down daily.

2. Start Fermentation: Add oak chips and Fermaid-K. Make a yeast starter with 100 ml water and Go ferm. Mix into juice and set aside. Keep temperature between 75-85 F. Specific gravity should be between 1.080 and 1.1.

3. Punch down: Punch down for 2 days or until Specific Gravity reaches 1.030.

4. Fortify: ABV should be 9-11%. Add brandy to raise ABV to between 18-20%. Brandy should stop fermentation, retaining around 30% residual sugar.

5. Press: After 2 weeks, press wine off skins and oak.

6. Rack: After 2 weeks, rack wine and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite.

7. Add SO2: At 3 months, rack and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite.

8. Bottle: After 6 months, rack and add ¼ teaspoon metabisulfite. Filter and bottle. Age at least 1 year in the bottle.

Notes:

At fortification, we had just over 4 gallons at 10% ABV. To dilute Everclear with 75% ABV, we blended these quantities using a pearson square:

Credit: Adapted from Northern Brewer.