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Once my godfather San Sanych came to visit me. He did not name the specific purpose of the visit. We whiled away the time discussing completely different topics: from the structure of the universe to the problems of drinking water and the number of ground squirrels in South Africa.
Quite by chance, the conversation turned to our favorite topic of experimenting with alcohol, or “handmade,” as we call it. We came to the conclusion that it would be nice to make homemade wine from the autumn grape harvest.
Do you grow grapes that do not have outstanding taste? You have ripened an unprecedented harvest of grapes, and you do not know where to put such a quantity of berries? From it you can make wine with a rich taste, aroma and color, than not to let raw materials go to waste.
Not for nothing that the ancient Greeks revered the god of winemaking Dionysus. It was he who, according to ancient legends, taught people how to prepare a simple and at the same time such an exquisite drink.
The story of my subscriber Nicholas.
Why I decided to make my own wine
Many grapes ripen in autumn at home, in the country, with relatives. Someone grows it specifically for winemaking, someone grows table varieties.
In my case, my grandfather planted several bushes of blue grapes at home, which has excellent yields. It obviously did not come out in terms of taste and size. It tastes sour, the bones are large.
From year to year, it served only as an aesthetic canopy in the yard, which saved me from the heat, until a sacred thought came to me: “Why not make wine out of it, since it is no longer good for anything?”.
Later I learned that under the Soviet Union this variety was used for precisely such purposes. It was decided that it remains to wait for autumn, when the grapes are fully ripe.
What ingredients are required
To make homemade wine, we need the actual grapes, sugar, boiled water, and nothing else.
It even turns out somehow unusual that, in addition to spending time, special financial injections are not needed, and the resulting wine itself will not be ashamed to put on the table for guests and drink a glass at dinner yourself.
Sugar is needed because the natural fermentation process lacks the natural sugars of the grape itself. If you do not do everything in proportion, then you can get vinegar fermentation instead of wine.
Grapes are being poured
If you want to make fortified wine like Cahors, you will need alcohol or, at worst, vodka. With proportions, everyone decides for himself, ideally, use a hydrometer in the process and add alcohol-containing liquid to the desired degree.
However, I personally prefer to be content with the percentage of alcohol content that resulted from natural fermentation.
The cooking process
So we crept up to the most interesting moment – the manufacturing process.
Our grapes are ripe. In the middle lane, this usually happens in early October. In other varieties and in other climatic zones, ripening may be earlier, but a prerequisite: the grapes must be ripe. It is in ripe grapes that the concentration of yeast on the clusters is maximum.
Attention! If the berries are harvested in the fall, it is important not to let the frosts “grab” our future raw materials, since some of the yeast may die from low temperatures, which will inevitably drag out the fermentation process.
After harvesting the grapes, in no case should they be washed. It is necessary to clear the bunches of brushes, thereby the berries will begin to let the juice out. Peeled berries should be crushed and poured into a plastic or enamel bowl of a suitable size. Here you can add sugar diluted in boiled water. The proportions are as follows:
- 4-7 kg of grapes;
- 10 liters of water;
- 4 kg of sugar.
All you need to mix and leave in a warm place.
There are options to crush the berries along with brushes, because yeast fungi are also present on them, but I personally don’t do this: there should be enough yeast on timely harvested berries.
After about a month or two (the classic period is 40 days), the bones should be completely separated from the fruits. At this stage, we need to strain our future wine, ridding it of seeds and grape skins.
You can use regular 3 liter jars
Gauze is ideal for this. The straining process is very important, because without it it will be difficult to get a clean drink without suspensions. The filtered mixture is poured into glass containers, better known as “bottles”.
Next, we need to make a “wine work indicator”. Behind this scientific name is an ordinary medical glove with a hole, stretched over the neck of the “bottle”.
Yeast, in the course of their life, process sugars into alcohol with the release of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is trying to get out of the dishes, meeting a glove in its path. So she puffs up.
When the fermentation process ends, carbon dioxide ceases to be released. The glove deflates, signaling us that it’s time to move on to the next step – separating the wine from the sediment.
For the same purposes, you can use a tail lift – a small tube coming out of the lid and lowered into a small container of water – by the bubbles from which you can determine whether the fermentation process is going on. But using a glove is somehow more practical and you don’t need to be smart.
Draining is best done with a hose from a dropper. A bottle of spent wine cannot be lifted and poured simply through the neck, as the sediment will rise, and we will get a cloudy liquid at the exit, and the nectar will drain through the dropper hose without taking anything extra with it.
If everything is done correctly, then in the spring it will be possible to take a sample from freshly made wine.
What result did I get
What did we end up with? The wine came out clean, with a ruby hue, very pleasant on the palate, moderately strong. I did not measure the alcohol content, but it felt like it was about 12-15%. The golden mean in winemaking.
Ready and chilled result of labor
Now you can pour the wine into bottles or hide it directly in the “bottles” already in a cool and dark place. The wine is perfectly stored for years without losing its properties.
The amount of wine obtained from one productive bush should be enough for my family until the next season.
There are many ways to make homemade wine, I just described my personal experience. One thing I can say for sure – every time I am satisfied with the result.
Homemade wine is nothing compared to what you can buy in the store. Moreover, everything is made by hand, which is why the drink acquires some special charm. Do you agree with me?