How we make our own wine.

First of all, let me say hallo to all of you.

Until a few days ago (till Friday) I had been at home in Ciechanów and couldn't read and write over the internet since we don't have a connection - it's to far from the main line.
I will stay as S-chan's place until Sunday or if I am lucky, a bit longer - only if I know when my Master exam will happen. So far it has been as pleasant as usual here with S-chan. I am learning for my exam, I cook and we have a very good time. Unfortunately she needs to work so for instance right now I am alone. I made pumpkin soup - I will write about it later on - and as promised, I would like to write something about the wine my father does.

My father started making wine 2 years ago. He prepared himself, printed and read decent instructions, bough some glass balloons and other equipment (you don't need too much though) and made some wine.

I must say - and S-chan can agree with me - it was very good. It didn't look or taste like some cheap wine, we wouldn't even guess that it was home made.

My mother likes it as well. To be honest, my father uses a slightly complicated method in order to make very good wine; you have to count a bit how much sugar and water you should add. If you use special wine making tables and think a bit, it is not difficult at all.

This year I was able to help my father in the preparations, so I would like to say a few things about that.

First of all, you have to have some juice. Preferably from real fruit, although you can make some good wine in your flats, using decent 100% juice from tetra-packs (you can find the recepies on the internet easily).

I will simply say what my Father does, more or less. It is actually fun to make wine :D

My father gets real grapes - no special kind, just standard European grapes, from our neighbors. In a few years we will have some as well.

1. After picking, clean the grapes a bit - remove the leaves, the pieces of boughs but don’t exaggerate – and don’t clean it.



2. My Father pours boiling water over the grapes to kill the wild yeast ()



3. We simply left the grapes in an old tub for 2 days so that they had time to release juice. There is a different method though; you could press the freshly picked grapes to get juice. Since we don’t have a special fruit press, we used a meat mincing machine to crush the remaining juice out of the fruit. Then we leave the pulp (called most) for 1 day to realease the juice and add the juice to the rest.






4. After that, we got the juice to a great glass balloon (typical for wine) and added yeast – this was not normal baking yeast, if you want to get really good and strong wine that can stay in the cellar for a few years or more, you must use special kind of yeast – they are cheap and can be bought in wine shops. You must also use special yeast nutrients.
   Very important to add here – the balloon and the containers you use for wine must be very clean. There is a special substance you use for cleaning – contains sulphur. Since you will need it later for clarifying the wine and stopping the yeast, you will need it as well. All the things should be easy to get and cheap.




5. You have to add boiled water – but always cool (less than 28 degrees C) and ALWAYS boiled


6. Always write on a piece of paper how much water you add, don’t bee too exact but you should know up to a liter how much water you added. The same with sugar and the citric acid (the same as used for cooking, or artificial lemon juice is good as well)



7. Finally, you follow some recipe and add the proper amount of sugar and water. If you want strong wine, you use yeast for strong wine and you must add much sugar too, since good yeast stops working when the alcohol level is about 18%, it has to have some food and that is why you need to add sugar. If you add too much, the wine will be too sweet though!



8. After you add everything you must wait, wait, and wait. Then after a while, you put the wine in a different balloon (in this way you separate the wine from the rest of the sediment). Then you wait again, after some time though, you will be able to add a special chemical substance with sulphur in order to kill the remaining yeast and clarify the wine. Don’t worry – this substance is used in every wine – even the best French wines! I suppose then you simply pour the wine into bottles and close them, put in your cellars, and wait for an occasion to drink it.

Here is a web site with some advice and recipes:
http://www.easy-wine.net/how-to-make-homemade-wine-step-by-step.htm

don’t worry – this seems a bit complicated but you can make your own wine more easily.
Here are some nice photos from the wine making process (the text is in Polish)
http://www.chefpaul.net/wino01.html