I just got another batch of wine going Sunday night. Chianti. It’s a red wine and more dry that I usually make. I thought it was about that time in my process to try something new and different. That makes a total of six batches of various wines and two batches of beer rippin’ in the cellar.
In my efforts to stock the cellar, I started most batches in the spring. I did start another batch of Watermelon wine over the summer, but it was just too delicate and didn’t survive the fermentation process. It smelled and tasted horrible. That was 3-gallons I dumped about a month ago. After much research, it turns out indeed that Watermelon wine is pretty difficult to make. It is usually better when fermented with another fruit that has more body. I’ll try it again one day.
Most of the wines will be ready to taste around Christmas. But really, they’ll be tasted, adjusted if needed and then bottled to do another 6 months or so in the cellar. I of course always hand a few out ’round the holidays.
I didn’t want all the wines to be done at one time, so hence my efforts to stagger them. It’s my goal to always have something new ready to be tasted, or bottled.
I have always been a fan of country wines i.e. wines made from fruit instead of grapes. I think it may be mainly because I don’t like spending money on base ingredients. I get that from my dad. I am fine with buying my supplies etc., but it gets costly to always have to buy your base ingredients. I grow my own cherries and blackberries in the back yard. While I do have 7 grapevines of various variety going now, they won’t be producing grapes for another year or so. I am planting additional grapevines (and a shitload of various garlic varieties) next Spring.
I did bite the bullet and bought 4 gallons of Gewurstiminer grape juice in late spring just so I could have a grape wine going. I have three other cherry type wines going. One of them also has blackberries in it. Damn that sounds good don’t it? One batch is going on 4 years old. All the wines are going great and they are coasting. That’s why I decided to start a red wine. Yeah, I bought that juice too, and that’s all for this year I promise! Again, my reasoning was because I’ve never made a red grape wine yet and well, I guess you can’t be a vintner without those under your belt.
Anyway, I have about 40 more gallon freezer bags jammed with cherries for other evil experiments 🙂 Ok, that’s all for now.
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