Sunday, November 1, 2009

First attempt at making wine

Late on Friday afternoon I decided to pick our grapes. It was forecast to rain the next day and I didn't want to pick them wet. I'd left them as long as I could because I'd read that getting them to be sweet enough is meant to be very difficult.

Picking them wasn't the easiest job in the world; next year I'll have to get either the vine or the rose to go somewhere else!

The following day I settled down to prepare them. I had to get the grapes off the stems, and separate out any that were mouldy, as well as any other foreign bodies that had come along for the ride. It took ages, and in one afternoon I touched more snails and spiders than I ever have before...

Then I mashed them in batches with a potato masher, then put the whole lot into our apple press. The juice was a gorgeous colour, and quite soon the press was too.

My husband suggested we sterilise the juice with a Camden tablet and use artificial yeast, but I wanted to leave the juice natural. The risk is that it might well go peculiar if things weren't clean enough, but if it works I think the result will taste more interesting. So we compromised by adding extra artificial yeast as well, but not sterilising.

We put the pulp in too, in a bag made of muslin. This is what it looked like at the end of yesterday:



And this is what it looks like now:



So something's working!

2 comments:

  1. Love the photo's of wisly, my friends and I have been to harlow car and we were meant to go this back end of the year but not found the time. thank you for your comment it is difficult which charities to support we support three already and some at church.vicki

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  2. I hope you don't have the same experience we once had when making wine. A loud bang in the night and grape pulp spread all over the spare bedroom ceiling

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