Adventures in Winemaking

For the last couple of years I have taken an interest in red wine. It makes me feel much more sophisticated than my sex-on-the-beach, Mikes Hard, Kokanee days! Mind you, the purpose of those drinks was to get drunk! I like a glass of wine to enjoy and savour. I can have one glass and feel the warmth throughout my body. Yummy! My tastes run mainly to the Australian Shiraz but I have been branching out and trying different kinds. I have realized that I don't like wines that are too dry and that have a lot of tannins. I like a thick, full bodied wine. I would really love to take a wine course, just for fun.

During the summer, my neighbours and I were all hanging around outside enjoying a glass of wine (white for most of them, red for me) (By the way, don't you just love the suburbs!) When one of my neighbours mentioned that they had previously had wine made and bottled it themselves and that it worked out to being a very good price. They wondered if I was interested. Of course it took no thought on my part! So we planned it for this winter and that was that.

A few weeks ago my neighbour called to say "it's ready!" We made an appt to go and sample the batch and bottle it. We met in my neighbours driveway at 8:30am yesterday morning on the coldest day of the year yet (-26 with the windchill, that's -15 degrees fahrenheit for my american friends!) with coffees in hand and headed off to the wine store. I had the opportunity to meet another neighbour that I had not previously met so it was a nice drive getting to know one another.

We got to the winery, (this one to be exact: http://www.vinbella.com/ )and unloaded our empty bottles from the trunk. The wine is even cheaper if you bring your own bottles (woo hoo!) so we'd all been saving them for the last few months (I must admit that my contribution was slightly smaller than the rest, of course they don't have 2 small kids to look after!) Once inside, the owner brought our buckets of wine (60 Litres I do believe) to the work area and showed us what to do!




The first step was to clean the bottles with a chemical solution and then to rinse the same bottle in water and place on a "tree" to dry. The next step involved placing the clean bottles into a machine that would fill the bottles with wine, then came the corking (which the owner did), putting the bottles back in the case, paying and we were done! We have ordered a Merlot and becuase it was only 8 weeks old (still a baby!) the ownder recommended that we let it sit for another month or so. I'm not sure how long I will be able to wait but it will only get better with age! So, I made it home with 25 bottles of red wine at less than $2 a bottle! What a score! On average I would spend $12-$15 on a bottle of wine, so this is going to be a huge money saver! And with the holidays coming it will be nice to have wine to bring to parties and whatnot.

This is what the wine bottling machine looked like.

It was a really fun experience with great people. They were laughing at how interested I was in the process but then remembered that I am a stay at home mom and don't get out much!

Next summer I would like to take a drive to Niagra or some other wine region and visit a real winery. I have visited a rum bottling factory in Cuba and that was a really interesting place so I can only imagine what a Vineyard muse be like. I will have to do some research and plan a trip for us!

I can't wait to try my wine and to actually be able to cook with it! Usually when a recipe calls for wine, I choose to omit since I want to keep my wine for drinking but now I have lots to spare! In fact, I am going to scour the net for a beef stew recipe that hopefully calls for red wine (so that I have a reason so open a bottle of course!)

We are already talking about our white wine order for this summer :)