Wine Making Made Easy
previously published in: Women newsmagazine April 2000 AND
Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover’s Soul 2007
When my father suggested that he and I try brewing our own wine I was admittedly leery — my only experience in viniculture was a vague recollection of an elaborate set up in the basement of our family home, many years ago.
It was the early sixties, my mother and her sister decided to try their hand at making wine. (I should point out that the antics of these particular sisters are legendary within our family). The extent of their research on the art of wine making amounted to watching an episode of “I Love Lucy” in which Lucy and Ethel stomped the fruit-of-the-vine in hilarious fashion.
They scoured local second-hand shops and rustled up the equipment needed to start their operation: a couple of shell-cracked 25 gallon crocks and several miles of siphon hose. They ordered, what seemed like, a ton of luscious deep purple grapes and set to the messy task of juicing them.
I vividly recall the sensation of the cool, meaty fruit oozing between my freshly scrubbed, seven-year-old toes and the sticky squirt of juice on my legs as I marched on the spot in a 25 gallon crock. My toenails were dyed a nifty shade of black by the process and the skin on my feet was tinted blue for several days afterward.
I have no idea what happened to the contents of the crock after it left the kitchen, or what rituals took place in the dim light behind the furnace, but we all grew familiar to the heady fragrance of fermenting fruit wafting from the basement. Their successful vintages were celebrated with wonderful toasts, the disasters, however, were silently flushed down the toilet, or on one instance, wiped off the walls.
I remember waking one night to the sound of breaking glass and popping corks – apparently a temperamental batch of banana wine had blown its top and the bottles were exploding under the basement stairs. I believe this marked the end of my mother’s wine-making adventures.
Fortunately the art of amateur wine making has evolved over the years; it is now a consumer friendly enterprise attractive to even the apprehensive vintner.
My Dad and I ventured into our local ‘You Brew It’ a couple of years ago, armed with little more than an appreciation of red wine and the desire to brew our own for Christmas. Our experience was so rewarding that we have been making our own wine ever since.
We have our system down to a science; every six weeks or so we saunter in, bottle two batches of wine and set two new ones to perk. Our greatest challenge has been choosing the type we want to make. The selection is overwhelming: Barbera to Zinfandel. Lately we have been basing our decision on the color schemes of the labels.
We take turns being the ‘starter’ of the new wine; a process which encompasses sprinkling a package of yeast over a giant bucket of juice (it’s exhausting, but someone has to do it). Six weeks later we return with our stash of wine bottles, an impressive and varied collection of glass finery gathered from the recycling bins of family and friends. I am the designated filler of the bottles, my Dad, the corker. We work like a finely tuned machine; wine making is serious business.
The entire process takes just under an hour. We never get dirty feet, the house never smells, and we end up with 60 bottles of wine. Does it get better than that?