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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Making Primo Wine, not Swill

Last fall I was handed a large store of Concord grapes, say 20 pounds. The entire bunch of them were fat, very ripe and tasty----if a person likes the Lambrusco variety. They are not the best wine grapes but if the cabinet is filled with jams of various persuasions, the grapes have to be wine bound.
So off to the freezer they went after it was learned they are improved by freezing because the sugars develop more. Plus, I had to go hunting, or was it fishing, or up to the brewery.? Me, I forget.
A few days ago the time arrived and they were given the big thaw. The entire batch was squeezed to dickens and dumped into a bucket along with a few cans of frozen pure juice from the grocery, a few pounds of cane sugar, a touch of magic chemicals from the brew shop and set in motion to become fine wine.
I know, this is not exactly the recipe for "fine" wine but it is what I had and wine is still better than rotting fruit, even if it is marginal wine. It will be better than the stuff I had in prison. You know, the crap made over night by dumping tomato juice in a dough mixer and then adding yeast. Turn up the heat and in the morning, first thing, there will be alcohol.
Now it is time to wait. As of this writing both batches (the second is a second squeezing of the same grapes. This is commonly done in Europe) were "working" real good, or well depending on where one is form.
My last batch made from apple juice started out as marginal, but I kept testing and through the year they got better but still only slightly above what might be called swill. I tested one about a year and one half out and it was quit good! However, I noticed that there was only one left of five gallons. All the rest had been consumed by testing. I will have to remember that rule on this batch. But 1.5 years is a long time and at 67 one hates to wait too long. I will have to act accordingly. I just need to make a lot so that we are covered for 20 years, or 20 months. 20 days? Tomato wine again?

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