Black Grape Wine

When we still lived in Christchurch, we had a rather prolific grapevine.  We had no idea what variety it was, there were no tags and it was there when we bought the place.

Hubby had an old recipe book that had a chapter on beverages - most were wines and liquers.  Hubby had previously tried the grape wine recipe but when he opened a bottle of it a year or so later, it smelled like petrol and the colour was uneven (dark pink/purple at the bottom and clear at the top) so he'd thrown the wine out.  He'd written some of his calculations in the book and gotten them terribly wrong somehow.

I tried making wine from the recipe, exactly to the recipe.

Grape Wine (from the NZ Truth Cookery Book circa 1960s)

3 lb. black grapes, 4 quarts cold water, 3 lb. Sugar.

Put grapes in bowl and crush.  Cover with water, let stand 5 days, stirring several times daily, then strain.  Add sugar and stir until dissolved, set in a warm place to ferment.  Leave 10 days, then strain and bottle.

I bottled this wine and then had to clean up all the bottles that blew their corks.  So I put what remained back into the brew barrel and waited until the air lock stopped bubbling and then bottled it again.  It was a lovely pink colour, somewhat sparkling and very sweet.

The next year I made it again, but I did it in two batches.  One was straight grapes, and the other was blended with redcurrants.  The idea was that the redcurrant mix wouldn't be as sweet.

As it turned out, the grape wine was very different from the previous year's.  It wasn't as sweet, it was a darker colour and tasted a lot like port.  Very drinkable and rather alcoholic.  The grape and redcurrant mix took a few years before it tasted like anything worth drinking, but now it's very nice.

My grapevines this year had finally grown up over the archway and the grapes were hanging down and easily pickable.  This is from just two grapevines.

What is left of the grapes I didn't pick.

This time, I used not just my own grapes but some frozen ones I'd been given.  Some friends had been told that freezing your grapes first makes better juice more easily extracted.  All up I mashed 11 1/2 kg of grapes.  Then I did the maths for how much water I'd need.  48 litres of water.  Crap.  I didn't have anything big enough to hold it all.  So I asked the Hive Mind that is facebook how soaking the mashed grapes in less water would be likely to affect my wine.

Most of my homebrew winemaking friends said that they never add water.  Many of them never add sugar either.  Their wines are purely grape juice.  Hmmm.  I then consulted google, the ultimate guru on all things.  I found articles explaining where water is added after fermentation to keep the alcohol content to a level able to be sold legally in some countries.  I found an article that talked about how long to leave the skins in the water to improve the colour of a red wine.  Then I found an article explaining how water keeps the fermentation process going.  I also found an extremely technical article that included calculations to determine how much tartaric acid to add to your water based on degrees Brix and a whole bunch of measurements I'd never heard of.

I dithered and second guessed everything for a few hours.  Then I decided to follow the recipe as well as I could.  My recipe has been working for me for years.  I always make a great wine that tastes good and has a high (although unmeasured because I've never quite understood or bothered to find out how to do that) alcohol content.  I used a large plastic storage crate and added in what water would fit and left it to do it's thing for a week.

Meanwhile, I went and bought another brew barrel fermenter.  When it was time to strain and add sugar, I strained it into one of my brew barrels.  When it started to get a bit full, I split the total volume in half into a second barrel.  I put all the skins and pulp that I'd strained out back into the storage crate and added water.  I let it sit for a while and then strained it again to top up my wine to the total volume of water I was short.  I added the sugar to both barrels, put the lids on and fitted the airlock bubblers.  48(ish) litres of wine fermenting away madly.  And they are fermenting madly.  Two weeks later and the bubblers and going flat out.

Two brew barrel fermenters fermenting madly.