Beginning Your Wine Making Adventure

If you want to make wine there is no excuse for not doing so: you need neither license nor cellar and the utensils may already be in your house, flat or caravan -for wine may be made in the smallest of places. To make a couple of gallons of wine is no more bother than to bake a tray of cakes or pickle a few jars of onions, and in comparison the rewards of your labors are far more pleasurable.

A word of warning: The fact that home-made wines do not exceed fourteen per cent (by volume) of alcohol leads the uninitiated to believe that they can drink unlimited quantities without it having effect upon them. How wrong they are! It is a saying in country districts that 'home-made wine is all right when you know how to drink it. The unsuspected kick in home-made wines has to be felt to be believed. Drink home-made wine as you would drink neat whisky.

I ought to say that two people using the same recipes do not necessarily turn out identical wines any more than they would turn out identical sponge-cakes by using the same mixture.

Water and ingredients doubtless have a lot to do with this variation of wines turned out from the same recipe. Fruit and vegetables of different varieties in one brew; harder or softer water in various districts; a wet or dry summer, which would affect the sugar content of fruits; rich or poor soil in which the roots were grown - all these must be allowed for. Commercial producers offset such differences in the quality of their grapes by careful blending, which is a highly skilled operation carried out in laboratories, and which results in each brand of wine containing all the characteristics that have made it popular. Thus two bottles of the same brand of wine will taste identical, even though one bottle may contain as many as eight or nine different wines of varying ages against the other's four or five.

If commercial producers have this advantage over us home producers, do not begrudge them it, for it is the only one they have - as we shall see.

The best utensil to use for boiling ingredients and juices is one of good quality enamel; one sold under a proprietary name is most reliable. It must not be chipped.

Cheap enamel utensils often contain lead in the glaze and this might be boiled into the brew; if this happened the wine would be dangerous.

If aluminum or copper is used there is a slight risk of minute particles of the metal being boiled into the brew. This might poison the yeast, and fermentation would not take place.

For fermentation purposes and for soaking fruits and flowers we may use a china vessel or one made of polythene. China vessels should not be too wide at the rim as this exposes too large a surface to the air. A polythene bucket is ideal - but do make sure it is of polythene, as some plastics are not suitable. And choose a pale color or a white one. Where large batches of wine are made, a polythene dustbin makes an excellent fermentation vessel, as does a strong polythene bag, lining a worn-out barrel or similar vessel.

Now that you have your basic wine making tools, you're going to need to look at getting some ingredients because you can't have wine without grapes!

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