SeaCat’s Rest Wine

For a while I’ve been saving empty wine bottles that guests of our oceanside apartment have left behind with the vague notion that I will someday make a batch of wine. Last year I actually planted a vineyard and the plants did great over the summer of 2010. I did not allow them to produce fruit however, since this is what you are supposed to do for the first few years. Over the winter I bought a few wine kits, reasoning that if I wanted to utilize my eventual harvest to the utmost, I should get some practice in winemaking.

I couldn’t believe how easy it was. The making of the wine consisted of :

1. boiling a couple gallons of water
2. dump a gallon of the boiled water into the primary fermenter
3. add an envelope of powdered bentonite, a type of clay which helps to settle out the solids
4. dump in the juice from the kit
5. pour in enough water to reach the six gallon mark and
6. pour in the wine yeast

This whole process took less than an hour. At this point I had no idea if the end product would be drinkable, but I did know it would be cheap. The per-bottle cost was under $3.

The directions called for “racking” at regular intervals. This is the transfer of the wine from one container to another, to allow leaving behind the sediment. At the final racking two envelopes of fining (clarifying)  agents are added and one envelope of sulphite as a sanitizer. Then in two weeks, bottling, and the first chance to taste the wine.

I’m no great judge of wine, but I will proclaim the two batches I made as highly drinkable. If others agree (given a respectable time for aging) I will offer my guests a bottle or two. Of course I don’t intend to sell them, just please save the bottle!

In the vineyard, I did my first pruning in early April.  Pruning is necessary to limit the number of buds; too many buds produce too many fruiting clusters and produce small, low quality fruit. I haven’t decided whether I will allow fruiting this year (a second pruning operation removes the flowers) but I suspect I will allow a few per plant. The other thing I did which is exciting is to attempt to root the cuttings. This is happening now, and consists of placing the cut twigs into a moist pot of soil over a heating pad. Supposedly I should see root growth in a week or two. When this happens I will move the pots into the sun so that the buds will start to produce leaves. Then I can expand the vineyard to accommodate another 12 plants. These are all frontenac gris vines, a hardy variety developed by the University of Minnesota.

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