Joy of Home Wine Making (19 page)

This is just a basic recipe with no frills. You need a lot of grapes and a lot of time, but hey, we’re having fun, right?

Equipment:

A BIG nylon straining bag or two smaller bags

18 lbs. of red wine grapes (I told you it was a lot)

1 Campden tablet, crushed (highly recommended)

1 packet Montrachet yeast

Sounds simple, huh? Check over the grapes, remove any moldy ones, stems, leaves, bugs, etc.

Put the grapes into a nylon straining bag (or two, if you can’t get a really big one) and crush the grapes in the bottom of the primary fermenter. Use very clean hands, or a big sanitized potato masher. Squish the daylights out of the grapes, turning the bag or bags around and around. (If you have a grape crusher, or can borrow one, use it, of course.) You should have juice up to the one-gallon mark and somewhat over, because of the fruit pulp.

Let the juice settle out a bit and check the PA of a clear sample. You are aiming for 10 to 12 percent PA. If there is less than that, then your grapes weren’t as sweet as they should have been.
You’ll have to add some sugar dissolved in a little water to make it up.

If the PA is higher, well, it’s OK up to 13 to 14 percent. If it is more than THAT, remove some juice and add water to make it up and thin out the sugar from the grapes.

If you happen to know how to use an acid test kit (not difficult, they come with instructions), check the acid and adjust that, too, to 65 to 70 percent. If you don’t, then don’t worry about it. Everything is probably OK.

Stir in the Campden tablet and cover the mixture for twenty-four hours. Add the yeast. After fermentation starts, stir daily, squashing the grape pulp in the bag. When the PA gets down to about 4 percent, lift out the bag and let the juice settle. Should smell pretty good!

Rack the wine into a secondary glass container, topping up with a little water or fresh juice if necessary. Bung and fit with an air lock. After another four weeks, check the PA and rack off into a clean secondary fermenter.

Now let it sit for a few months, racking it maybe once. Wait till it clears and ferments out dry. Bottle it and keep it for six months before trying. There you have it! The flavor will depend on the grapes, of course, but it will be real grape wine!

WINE GRAPE WHITE WINE

Did you know that you can make white wine from red grapes? The biggest difference between the two kinds is that you never ferment the white wine “on the skins.” You press the juice and get rid of the pulp and skins immediately. There are, of course, white wine grapes that start out white, but you still don’t use the skins. So, get the best you can and let’s go for a ride.

Equipment:

a BIG nylon bag AND an extra primary fermenter

16-18 lbs. wine grapes

1 Campden tablet, crushed (highly recommended)

1 packet champagne or Montrachet yeast

Check over the grapes, get rid of any moldy ones, get rid of stems, leaves, bugs, stray satyrs and their panpipes, etc.

Put the grapes into a nylon straining bag (or two, if you can’t get a really big one), and crush the grapes into the bottom of the extra primary fermenter. Use very clean hands, or a big sanitized potato masher. Squish the daylights out of the grapes, turning the bag or bags around and around. (If you have a grape crusher, or can borrow one, use it, of course.) Add the Campden tablet now. You should have juice up to the one-gallon mark and somewhat over, because of the fruit pulp.

Pour out the grape juice into the second primary fermenter and squeeze or press the remaining pulp as best you can (a grape press would be nice, but not too many people have one lying around).

Let the juice settle out a bit and check the PA of a clear sample. You are aiming for 10 to 12 percent PA. If it is less than that, then your grapes weren’t as sweet as they should have been. You’ll have to add some sugar dissolved in a little water to make it up.

If it’s more than that, it’s OK, up to 13 percent. If it is more than THAT, take some juice out and add water to make it up and thin out the sugar from the grapes.

If you know how to use an acid test kit, then check the acid and adjust that, too, to 70 percent. If you don’t, then don’t worry about it. Everything is probably OK.

Cover for 12 hours and fit with an air lock. Add the yeast. After fermentation starts, stir daily. When the PA gets down to about 4 percent, let the juice settle. It might be pinkish, but that’s OK. Many white wines are.

Rack the wine off into a secondary glass container, topping up with a little water or fresh juice if necessary. After another four weeks, check the PA and rack off into a clean secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock.

NOTE: Discard the pulp, or save it in the fridge and use it in the next couple of hours to help ferment and flavor a grape concentrate wine, or grape wine made with fewer grapes and added sugar. This is a pleasant trick as old as the hills. It’s called making a “second” wine. You can just use sugar and water and the pulp, fermenting out on the pulp. There’s still sugar in there. Use your hydrometer to help you figure it out.

Now let it sit for a few months, racking maybe once. Wait till it clears and ferments out dry. Bottle it and keep it for six months before trying.

NOTE: The above method is OK for a few gallons, but if you are making any more than ten, you need proper equipment (which I discuss in Part Three in More Equipment and Some Refinements) and more knowledge. Check the bibliography for books that get more serious about grape wines than I do in this book, and consult with people who are also serious.

WHOLE GRAPE TABLE GRAPE WINE

Table grapes aren’t as sweet as wine grapes are. But you can still make “whole grape” wine with them by adding a little sugar and a little acid.

Follow the above recipes, and simply add enough sugar to achieve the proper PA. It probably won’t need much…say, half a pound to one pound extra sugar and a teaspoon of acid blend. If you are using white or light red table grapes, add ½ teaspoon tannin to the must. Dark red grapes use ¼ teaspoon.

Thompson-like grapes will be a little bland; you might want to sweeten them at bottling time.

CONCORD, ETC. GRAPE WINE