Sunday, January 30, 2011

Wine


I enjoy a good glass of wine. It really is a nice finish to a busy day.
With our desire to learn to become self-sufficient as best we can and with a source for free grapes (bushels in the fall), we thought, what better way to put them up than to try our hand at wine.
This fall we tried our hand at making wine. Tonight we bottled our 2nd batch of 10 gallons. The first batch we did right before Christmas and gave wine to a lot of people for Christmas; 1st Annual St. Brigid Farm Winter Wine. It was fairly good.
Tonight we bottled 10 gallons into 35 bottles of wine (standard size wine bottle- 750ml) and 11 smaller wine bottles (500ml). This is a sweet wine and very tasty. I love a good Reisling and this is very comparable. Maybe a little sweeter even.
I figure on the cheaper end of wine we have nearly $300 worth of wine here that I won't have to buy.
We recycled bottles and the grapes were free so there was very little cost in making and bottling this wine.
It feels good to learn how to support ourselves in this avenue. James also makes his own beer now.

5 comments:

Jane G Meyer said...

Wow, a bushel of free grapes, I'd make wine, too!

Today is the eve of Saint Brigid's feast. Just wanted to wish all of you at Saint Brigid's Farm a wonderful feast day on the 1st. May we all strive to be as good and generous as she was...

Martha said...

That's awesome...mmmmm! Did you take more photos of the process? Did the kids help? Reminds me of the "I love Lucy" episode when she is stomping on grapes barefoot...

Anna said...

jealous :) my dad got into wine making a few years ago, he did all of the wine for my sister's wedding (a shiraz, pretty decent I have to say) and labeled it with their engagement photo and wedding date. I keep trying to get him to pick it back up, but have not been successful yet!

Anna said...

Hey - would love to get some advice on breeds for broiler hens if you have time to drop me a note! we are looking at getting some this spring

ammccollum at comcast dot net

Charissa Ferrenberg said...

Yah! we Helped out, me and my sis did. once in a while my younger brothers would hop in and help bottle them.
~ CJ