Welches and Wood Chips Feb 2020

I'd heard of using wood chips to flavor wine and heard that it works best with red wine.  So I made a simple batch of welches wine.  I used 3 cans of concentrate to make a gallon of wine.  After the fermentation mostly stopped I boiled some hickory chips (only ones I had) to make sure any natural weird yeasts were gone.  I actually didn't like doing this step because I could see a lot of flavor going down the drain when I poured off the water.

I racked the wine off of the lees and it tastes pretty good as is.  I put three small handfuls of chips.  I'm checking every 2 days for taste.  This morning after 2 days It tastes great.  I didn't taste wood but I do taste something different.  Kind of exciting and interesting.

2/28 - So then I got the flu and it sat a few more days.  I guess it's been 6 days.  I'm tasting something, it tastes good but I wouldn't define it as woody.  It does have a more mellow taste, quite good actually.  Still waiting until I taste hickory or it starts to go south before I end the experiment.

3/4/2020 - Ended the experiment last night.  Put the wine in a half gallon bottle and shared the remaining with Mary B.  Very tasty.  I think the wood mellowed the wine some.  I don't really taste any wood flavor.  the chips were very red so they absorbed something.  I felt like the alcohol content was pretty weak, weaker than when I started.  Can't prove it but there it is.

I think next time I'll make it stronger and will be sure to take some readings.  I'm putting the half gallon away for a while to see how it changes.

May 20 - Cleaned up the wine storage area and found this.  Decided to have some and ended up "sharing" the remaining half gallon with Mary B.  It aged really nicely and wow, what a kick.  Almost too strong (said no one ever).