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I myself put wine and make good moonshine, so home gatherings with friends usually take place without purchased alcohol. I like to surprise with an unusual drink. Once he poured some new wine for his friends and asked them to determine what it was made of. It was wine made from tomatoes, that is, from tomatoes.
“Come on! the guests did not believe. “And there will be nothing after it?” It won’t, I answer. Wine is like wine. Although a little unusual.
The scent is pretty authentic. Someone catches the presence of honey notes, someone chords of fruits or flowers, but there is, of course, a subtle aroma of tomato juice, although this is if you know what it is made of.
As is often the case, the wine was born by accident, without preparation and without any knowledge of the process.
This story was sent by my subscriber Vadim E.
How did I come up with this
Our tomatoes were born, while mostly large varieties grew out and began to burst. These are not suitable for pickles, but it’s a pity to throw them away. My wife and I caught up with tomato juice, spun different types of adjika and that’s it, the fantasy is over.
Where to put the harvest? And then I came across an article on the Internet about wine made from tomato paste or tomatoes.
They wrote that tomatoes, in fact, are not vegetables, but fruits, as vegetables, we began to use them only out of a gastronomic habit. And from a botanical point of view, tomatoes are just fruits, since they have seeds.
By the way! For Canadian winemaker Pascal Michet, who produces tomato wine according to his great-grandfather’s recipes and sells it under the Omerto brand, the first problem was the need to convince the authorities that tomatoes are fruits, otherwise the product could not be called wine.
Apparently, his arguments were convincing.
Today, Mishe produces two varieties of tomato wine – velvety and dry. This is the only brand that produces tomato wine in the world.
After browsing the Internet for everything related to the production, I realized that the process is the same as during the fermentation of ordinary berry or grape wine: mash, soak, ferment and squeeze. Here is how I do it in detail.
How to choose tomatoes and other products
In general, Pascal struggled with the choice for a long time, looking for the best varieties for his cool climate. We live in the Rostov region, we have a lot of these tomatoes of different varieties, they rot from excess sometimes until late autumn. I took the largest, sweetest, thin-skinned and with small seed boxes.
For example, the well-known cream, which is also a dulka, is not very good, since its peel and pulp are hard, dense, such tomatoes give little juice. “Bull’s heart” goes great, their juice is not so pronounced red, but rather rich pink. The second batch was made from yellow tomatoes.
Wine connoisseurs will say: “Ugh, sugar is no longer wine!”. But without it, nothing will come of it, lactic acid fermentation will pass and vinegar will turn out.
The recipe also requires tannin and pectinase – the first for the addition of tannic properties, the second is an enzyme for the destruction of pectins. I don’t use them. Maybe with them the wine would have turned out lighter, but I achieve transparency by settling.
The recipes contain cultural wine yeast. They are put in to increase the degree, but I get by with wild yeast, which is found on the peel of the fruit. I also make sourdough – without it it is more difficult to start the process.
And since at this time I still have grapes left, I generously add crushed grape berries. This time I poured about a tenth of the tomatoes. Maybe that’s why the grape notes appear in the wine. Such a blend is only beneficial, it seems to me.
I give my own recipe, without any problems and difficulties.
Important! Raisins should be taken only unwashed and, if possible, untreated with preservatives. Such a nondescript, devoid of shop gloss.
Now the recipe
For 10 kg of tomatoes:
- 1,5 liters of warm water;
- 2 kg of sugar;
- 1 teaspoon of citric acid;
- Xnum g raisins;
- 1 kg of grapes (optional)
We cook this way:
Without wine yeast, sourdough is needed. I do it in advance, three days in advance. I put crushed grapes in a jar (raspberries ferment even better, if any), pour 100 g of water with a teaspoon of sugar, pour raisins.
In a dark place, the sourdough stays warm for 3-4 days until it begins to puff, ferment and emit a slight specific smell.
I smash the tomatoes in the food processor. I did this with yellow tomatoes – I can’t say that it somehow affected the final taste.
If you do it like Misha, then you need to sprinkle the halves of the tomatoes lightly with salt so that they give the juice more quickly, and start crushing like grapes
I pour the mass into a stainless steel container (you can use it in a large bottle). I put it in a dark place. After two days, fermentation begins – all the cake (by the way, there will not be very much of it) will rise to the top. Remove the cake, squeeze through two layers of gauze.
Pour syrup from water and 1,5 kg of sugar into the resulting juice (I leave half a kilo of sugar for later, I add it during the fermentation process).
I put citric acid and sourdough. I mix. I transfer all this into a 10-liter bottle. It is necessary to leave a quarter of the container free, so I get the rest, I pour it separately.
I put on a glove with a hole (you can also use a water seal). I put it in the shed. We have just the right temperature there at this time.
Soon the tomato fraction began to separate – it rose up, a transparent liquid formed below. The upper red cap was getting smaller and thicker.
After three weeks, I took off the top, carefully poured off the wine, strained it, and poured it back into the bottle. The taste turned out to be unsweetened, I added the rest of the sugar – a pound. So he clarified a couple more times, draining already through the hose without sediment.
Pure transparent young wine bottled.
Сonclusion
The picture is just red tomato wine. None of the yellow ones survived. But it is lighter, almost like white. The photo does not convey the true color. The wine is actually lighter, darker than white, but lighter than rosé.
Somewhere in February, the wine is completely ready. I keep it in the basement in glass bottles. The lighter yellow tomato went faster.
Of the red ones, it remained, but after standing warm, it became like champagne. Apparently, it’s only grape wines that improve with age, I can’t say about tomato wines. I add it to the marinade for meat, it shows itself very well in this capacity.
The result is this: as an experiment, you can make and drink a little. Because, from my own experience, wine is not without surprises.
Drinks very well. Some say that it is more pleasant than grape. But I personally had a headache the next morning. For some time now this is the main alcohol indicator for me. However, this may be an individual matter. And what do you think?