Making Wine

I happen to have a fondness for wine.  Did you know that?



This sign is on one wall in my kitchen.  Good food, Good wine, Good friends.  Yay!

These pictures are on another wall in my kitchen.  I have little wine racks above my cupboards, but sadly, they are empty right now, so I won't be sharing pictures of my empty wine racks.  Because who wants to see those?

Thankfully, there is this cool little place in town that helps me out when my wine racks get empty.  They know me well there.  It is called Wine Creations.  You can learn more about them on their website here.  They assist with all the hard parts of making  your own wine.  My hockey mom's club decided recently that it would be fun to go and do a few batches of wine.  We gathered a few months ago at the store to taste a few different kinds and decide what we wanted to make.  After one red and one white were chosen, we mixed the contents of a kit with a bunch of water in a big bucket.  (you will have to imagine a bunch of water and some other stuff in a big white bucket, since I did not take any pictures of buckets to share with you.)

Then we had to wait a long, long time.  About 8 weeks.  While we were gone, the handy employees did all this magical stuff while our wine fermented.  I'm pretty sure they waved some magic wands and said some magic words to make the magic happen.  Really, they just watch the temperature, allow the fermenting air to escape a few times, and add a few things here and there.  Also, somewhere in the process they transfer the wine from the big white bucket to a carboy, which looks like this:

I don't pay too much attention to all those details since I don't have to worry about it!

Then, after you wait a really really long time, you get to go back and bottle your wine.  This is the fun part.

First, Kerrie demonstrates how to disinfect by squirting some secret disinfecting potion into the bottles.

Next, Jennifer rinses the bottles and lets them drip dry on the drying rack.

The bottles are taken from the drying rack,

and hooked up to the filler machine, where the wine is pumped from the carboy to your bottles.

Each bottle is corked, and foiled in the shrink wrap machine, as demonstrated by the lovely Missy.

They are then labeled and boxed up, ready to take home.  (Do I sound like an episode of How It's Made yet??)

The foils you can choose are very pretty.

Here are some of the other customer's carboys sitting, waiting, and fermenting.

I love seeing this local business take off so well.  Every time we are there, they have a huge number of buckets and carboys brewing. 

So, while we didn't get to stomp grapes like Lucy did, we had a ton of fun, and got to taste several kinds of wine (that's really my favorite part).

Check them out if you are local here, otherwise check if there is somewhere similar wherever you are.  A fun ladies night out!

XOXOX

NH