Wine Fail
Without beating ourselves up too severely, the process of learning takes some fumbles. Our overly ambitious indulgent-sufficient selves lead to our first underutilization of crops. Growing along the borders of our fence is a native grape vine that yielded hundreds of delicate savory parcels. Due to the seed to grape ratio, a breed more intended for its value in wine. The idea of creating a drink we could share with friends in some sort of spiritual social pilgrimage, left us not wanting to waste a minute. So as soon as the juice press arrived, the harvesting began. Blue reusable Ikea bags spilled over in a cornucopia of abundance.
There was no doubt in our mind, this was going to be amazing. A fun for the whole family affair.
Such a historic beverage routed in ancestry would surely be as simple as juice, barrel and magic.
As we began reading the Amazon suggested book, we realized, just digesting the book was going to take at least 24 hours. There was no friendly bullet points of information or palatable pictures. This was hardcore stuff. Why did we think we needed a book anyhow? We turned to the internet.
Hydrometer, acid titration kit, sulfite crystals, camped tablets - what was this shit? Most how-tos didn’t even reference fresh grapes, they started with pre-stabalized over-the-internet juice. We were on a wayward path and I refused to accept all these tools were mandatory to tradition. We found a cute article about floating toast. Finally we came to some useful information which informed us the fermentation started at the beginning, with leaving the skins at room temperature for 24 hours, then adding them to the juice. But, my partner, always in a hurry to clean-up, had already chucked them in the compost.
All you can do is roll with what you got. It’s now sitting in a cool dark place aging in the carboy. No how-to from us on wine making this year.
We can offer some tips from our mistakes:
- Start with research and reading about the entire process
- Plan ALL steps ahead of time
- Inventory required equipment
- Only then begin picking the grapes
- Press with your feet, don’t waste time with an insufficient wooden press, (that will just take up space later). Using your feet also better avoids crushing the seeds, which can give your wine a bitter taste.
- Save it all, (and not in the compost). Fermentation doesn’t just happen in the juice… but that’s up to you.
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intransfer
