Anybody here making their own wine?

[hedgehog]

I'm not sure which forum this goes in, but my question is this:

My husband wants to make red wine. We have room for several vines. Anyone have any suggestions as to the grape variety?

[Iterate]

1. To have fun making wine, you'd want

from 5 to 20 liters of juice. That's why most people start out with concentrate or buy grapes locally. For new vines, you'd be lucky to get one or two liters per vine -after a couple of years.

One fun thing about beginning with concentrate is the chance to experiment. Even the "failures" are usually drinkable or they make a good vinegar. It's amazing how tolerant you can be when it's your own.

[Major Nikon]

2. I used to make it before I was old enough to buy my own

I used grape juice from concentrate, bakers yeast, and sugar. It tasted like holy hell but the effect was the same.

[Major Nikon]

5. The balloon was used as a one way valve

You poked a couple of pinholes in it which allowed the gas produced by fermentation to escape without letting air into the jug. It works pretty well actually.

If they got a bad smell, it probably means they were fermenting something other than yeast, which can and does happen, especially if you don't sterilize well between batches.

[harmonicon]

3. Well, I don't know if this counts...

but if it just *has* to be red, the way I'd make it is by pouring some vodka into a red slurpy instead of a blue or coke slurpy, for instance. That's as close as I've ever come to making wine. I hope it helps.

[siligut]

6. Merlot grapes are supposed to be easy and hardy

http://www.tytyga.com/Merlot-Grape-p/merlot-grape-vine.htm

I don't know anything about growing grapes or making wine, but I have visited Napa and watched Sideways.

[jmowreader]

8. This is my family's legendary Dago Red recipe

Making this got Granny Pucci thrown in jail three times during Prohibition, so you know it's good.

This makes a year's worth of wine but you'll see how to scale it back.

First get your equipment: a washboard, an old whiskey barrel and lots of gallon jugs - two jugs per gallon of wine.

Next get your supplies: Zinfandel grapes, sugar, raisins and water. It is a 1:1:1:1 ratio: a pound of raisins, pound of sugar and gallon of water for each box of grapes. Uncle Geno used 25 boxes of grapes.

If you have a basement this is where you do this.

Next, make the first run: Rub the grapes against the washboard to break the skins, throw them in the barrel, put the lid on and go away for three days. Then start tasting it. When it tastes like wine put it in jugs. Do NOT give it another day to get better unless you need lots of vinegar.

Now make the second run: Chop up the raisins. Put raisins, sugar and water in the barrel, let ferment three days and start tasting.