I collected 10 kg of grapes at the dacha, it’s a pity to throw it away, I had to make wine: what did I do wrong and why did it explode

If I had known what adventures awaited me, I would never have “signed up” for this business – making homemade wine. But the circumstances were such that I simply had no other choice but to become a winemaker.

And it was like this…

Story from my subscriber Peter.

Why I decided to make alcohol myself

I have been thinking about buying my own cottage for a long time. And finally, I got a chance to buy a small plot with a house from a colleague who urgently moved to another country.

Along with the dacha, I also got a luxurious gazebo, which stood in the middle of the site. Due to the fact that it was all covered with vines, it was pleasant to relax there in the summer heat.

“I don’t have time to harvest,” the former owner of the site said in parting. “So pick the grapes, make the wine!” I did not take these words very seriously then – it was the middle of summer and I simply rejoiced at the opportunity to spend hot days in the cool shade of the vineyard.

And by mid-October, the vineyard that I unexpectedly got was covered with ripe clusters of dark blue fruits. I remembered that the former owner of the dacha mentioned the name of the variety – “Isabella”.

The harvest was really good. There were many fruits, and thanks to the hot summer they were very sweet. I read somewhere that especially tasty wine is obtained from such grapes. Well, what does it mean to be my winemaker!

What ingredients are required

Before getting down to business, I had to take care of the fixtures and containers that are needed for making wine. Several large bottles of 10-15 liters were left at the dacha from the previous owner, but I had to buy something myself.

I must say that I thoroughly washed all the dishes with boiled water and dried them dry. And then proceeded to prepare the ingredients.

So, I needed:

• grapes – 10 kg;
• sugar – 50-200 grams per liter of juice.

If the grapes were sour, as is often the case with the Isabella variety, then each liter of juice would have to be diluted with about half a liter of water.

But, as I mentioned, the grapes that year were very sweet. Yes, and sugar significantly reduces the acidity of berries. So I did not add water, so as not to worsen the taste of the future wine.

The cooking process

Having chosen warm sunny days, I picked and sorted the grapes – only ripe, not overripe fruits are good for wine.

After removing twigs, leaves and other debris, I carefully, trying not to damage the seeds, crushed the berries with a wooden mortar in a large enameled pan, filling it about ¾.

For three days, covered with a clean cloth, the pan stood in a dark, warm pantry. Fermentation began already on the first day – a “cap” appeared on the surface of the pan, which I regularly upset, mixing the pulp (as the crushed grapes are called) with my hands.

On the fourth day, a sour smell began to be felt and the future wine began to sizzle slowly. It’s time to squeeze the juice.

I collected the peel that floated to the surface in a separate bowl, squeezed it out with my hands and filtered it. Filtration is performed through 1-2 layers of gauze (depending on the density of the fabric) by pouring juice from one container into another 2-3 times.

During this time, I rid the future wine of small particles of the remaining peel. But most importantly, during the transfusion, the wine is enriched with oxygen, which additionally activates the action of wine yeast.

With filtered liquid, I filled several glass bottles to about 60% of their volume – wine needs places for fermentation. And at this stage, I was in for an unpleasant surprise.

The bottles needed to be protected from contact with oxygen, but at the same time give an outlet to carbon dioxide, which is formed during fermentation. This is usually done with the help of a special shutter, consisting of a lid and a tube stuck into it, the other end of which is lowered into a jar of water.

So did I. And soon I was no longer paying attention to the characteristic gurgling of water in the jars, going about my business. As it turned out, I relaxed early …

Explosion at the winery

Once, when I entered the house, instead of the usual gurgling, I heard silence. Deciding that the fermentation had stopped and it was time to add sugar, I left the warm pantry and went into the room.

A few seconds later, there was a deafening bang behind me. Out of the corner of my mind, I already understood what had happened, but I refused to believe in what had happened. “It can’t be,” I whispered, “No, no… It’s not with me!”

Frozen, I returned to the pantry, turned on the light and froze! Everything around – walls, floor, ceiling, furniture were splashed with red wine!

In fact, everything was banal: unfiltered particles got into the tube, clogged it, carbon dioxide that did not find an outlet accumulated in the bottle, and as a result, an explosion.

Looking ahead, I will say that since then I have been using rubber gloves exclusively as a shutter. In which case the glove will simply fly off the bottle, but there will be no explosion.

In the meantime, after cleaning up the mess in the closet, I continued to carry my winemaking burden.

What result did I get

It’s time to add sugar. I added sugar fractionally, in small parts, tasting the juice. As soon as it turned sour, I added sugar again, about 50 g per liter of juice.

After two weeks, the sourness of the juice noticeably decreased – the wine entered the ripening stage and stood in a warm pantry for about a month.

In November, I bottled the wine and put it away in the cellar.

And we celebrated the New Year with our own red wine, which was a success, even though I was a beginner winemaker at that time. With laughter, they recalled the “explosion in the wine pantry.” Well, failures happen in every business, but the result justified all the efforts!

I make wine from country grapes every year now. It tastes different depending on the season, but all my friends always like my wine.

And this year I want to expand the “production”. Just an unprecedented harvest of raspberries has ripened. Would you like to try making raspberry wine? Who knows what recipes?