Wine Making
When we think of making our own wine, many have the image of Lucy and Ethyl stomping the grapes in an early I Love Lucy show. We have come a long way since then. When I first started making my own wine many years ago, I would purchase a wine concentrate from a wine store and go through the stages of adding yeast, allowing this mixture to ferment in a primary container, syphon it in to 23 litre carboys, and filter it a few times over the months before bottling the finished product. That was a lot of work, but I was much younger and probably more ambitious back then
Now the process could not be much simpler. There are many excellent wine stores in our area, and generally they do most of the work for you. Wine kits provide many different opportunities with both red and white varieties available.
Basically I decide which wine I would like to make, perhaps a Pinot Grigio or a Cabernet. Then I go into the wine store and place my order. At the store where I deal now, the owner/manager then takes over and does the work. Most wines are ready for bottling at a minimum of six weeks but I usually prefer to give them three months. When the wine is ready, I take my empty bottles to the store and the owner and I work together to sterilize the bottles, fill them, add a cork, label and shrink wrap if desired. This is an easy process and all the materials other than the bottles are included in the original price.
A wine kit generally produces 30 bottles of wine. There are different levels but we prefer one of the top ones so the kit costs $230 which works out to $7.66 per bottle, a very reasonable price. We have always been very pleased with the wines that we have done in this manner. We often comment if out for dinner and ordering a glass of wine that our one at home is much better. Why not give it a try if you do enjoy a glass (or two) of wine?
Murray Wood
Probus Club of Kingsway-Islington 