July 9 2007
In the midst of all of this talk about wine ratings and review methodologies, I think it’s useful to re-visit and remember how simple wine is to make.
This helps keep me grounded, for sure.
I don’t think people try to be a wine elitist, but the knowledge to be proficient in the language of wine is forbidding enough that sometimes I think enthusiasts lose sight of the forest, for the trees—like the bad organic chemistry professor unable to communicate at a level that a wide-eyed student can understand.
I was reading one of my wife’s magazines, an arty D.I.Y. magazine called “Craft” and there’s an interesting article written by a bicyclist/adventurer, Alastair Bland, who spent seven weeks (and 2000 miles) bicycling throughout Greece.
Faced with a light load, and plentiful fruit stands in the summer of ’06, he did what any lover of vinous things would do, he made wine.
His seven steps to making fruit wine should be a moment of clarity for anybody (me included) who seeks to elevate wine to a throne of worship.
I’ve paraphrased and excerpted the article to just the net-net (the article, in the current issue, volume 3, isn’t online yet).
Step 1: Pick a half-gallon of berries (mulberries, blackberries, et al)
Step 2: Juice the berries using a clean sock to separate the juice from the pulp
Step 3: Move juice to a screw top container; like a Nalgene bottle for example, leaving room for fermentation
Step 4: Add yeast, specially bred wine yeasts work, as does bread yeast from a countryside baker
Step 5: Ferment, allowing for 7-10 days; at day 4 or 5 it will be spritzy, but drinkable; wait for the full fermentation to complete
Step 6: Decant from sediment; using clean sock if handy; pour back into a clean vessel
Step 7: Drink! Mulberry wine is a rustic, punchy, big-boned beverage, dominated by yeast aromas and lingering traces of berry. There is little tannic quality, making it surprisingly smooth. The alcohol runs at 8% by volume. Don’t expect a first-rate drink—this is travel wine. Enjoy it in the afternoon, but remember that it’s always 5 p.m. somewhere, and in Europe it doesn’t really matter anyway.
For other fun related crafting projects (for those crafty and/or their husband or wife) check out the Craft site—including the project to make stamps out of discarded corks.
I now stand fully re-calibrated on wine and ready to go back to normal programming, but I wonder if Russ from California Wine Hikes has this as a part of his program?
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