When Steve put up his picture of the peach pie yesterday, I commented how we would be having my home made wine with our dinner and he responded about trading pie for wine.
I thought I would put up a topic here so if there are other wine makers on the Forum, we can compare etc.
I started making wine in 1977 and have always made it at home. Never at the store.
I have mostly bought my kits/concentrates from Wine Art, which is now Wine Kitz.
On a few occasions I have bought kits at Costco as I believe they are made by the same Company that makes them for Wine Kitz. The Costco kits make a good table wine for day-to-day drinking.
These days I get 4 or 5 kits a year from Wine Kitz and what I like about their product is that they have concentrates from all over the world with all kinds of different grapes.
Each year they bring in 4 "limited edition" premium concentrates from different countries. I make them each year.
The kits are one a month, December through March.
In the picture you can see the 4 carboys that I presently have on the go. All the wines have been fermented out and filtered and are now aging in bulk in my basement work room. I always age in bulk for 3 months before bottling. Scheduled bottling dates are noted above each carboy.
All bottles will be corked, shrink sealed and labelled. After bottling they go onto the shelving in my cold cellar on their side and I usually wait at least 6 weeks before I open a bottle to see how it is doing.
Hanging on the neck of each carboy is a "log" of what I did and the date.
The latest log is number 273 and since each carboy will produce 30 bottles of wine, that means since 1977, I have made 8130 bottles . I wonder if my liver knows that statistic?
If you have any questions on wine making, let me know.
SDC