Chancellor Grape Variety

[esarkipato]

I'm Looking for anyone with experience with this grape. From what I can find, it's a French hybrid variety that will produce a fruity red wine. And at $0.45 per pound is pretty cheap (comparatively).

Any ideas for a recipe to follow? I'm familiar with Jack Keller's website, but I'm not sure how to treat this grape. Would I follow something like the Merlot recipe? Should I stay away from the Concord recipe as it's not technically a "wine grape"?


Some info in case you are curious:
http://www.snooth.com/varietal/chancellor/?t=images
http://www.vivc.de/datasheet/dataResult.php?data=2446

 

[the_bird]

I'd avoid any Concord recipes since the Concord grape is particularly acidic and low in sugar, which means that those recipes are going to call for the grapes to be treated very differently (additions of additional sugar, etc.)

 

[esarkipato]

Are you saying that the 'chancellor' variety is actually a concord? I'm pretty sure it's a hybrid of two French wine grapes, which would put it at least a head and a shoulder above concord for wine making purposes.

EDIT : I guess I should read slower, you were pretty clear. Good advice!

 

[the_bird]

No, I'm saying that any recipe that calls for Concord grapes is going to be designed specifically to handle the limitations of the Concord grape (high acidity/low sugar). Since those limitations are likely not applicable to the Chancellor variety, those Concord-based recipes aren't going to be good starting points for you.

For example, lots of Concord recipes call for you to dilute the must (because of the acidity) and to add sugar, neither of which step is necessarily applicable for your grapes.

EDIT: I should disclose that I'm not a terribly experienced winemaker, but I do know a little bit about the use of Concords in wine - enough to know that it's *different* enough from real wine grapes that I would look elsewhere for recipes.

 

[esarkipato]

I took the leap and now have ~8 gallons of must fermenting with RC212 with all the skins. It's been on for a week, so maybe one more week and I'll see how much juice I can squeeze out of those skins!! I ended up trying to mirror the merlot recipe on kellar's website.

 

[esarkipato]

Coming around to harvest time again. To update this thread, I experienced some pretty crazy sulphur production. I ended up running the wine through copper tubing I had laying around and WHALA it was free of that skunky aroma.

The wine was really good. Many good reviews even from some wine-o types!

 

[The Govna]

What recipe did you use, esarkipato? I'm getting 70 lbs of Chancellors on Saturday, but I can't find much recipe-wise. Also, any ideas on cutting down on the sulphur production?