Saturday, September 13, 2008

Wine Making....Are You Making Wine Yet?

Welcome to this wine making blog. If you are making wine now, you know that you can produce a high quality product from your home at a fraction of the cost of retail wines. If you are not making wine now, I have only one question..... Wine Not?

Wine making dates back to the days of the cave men who fermented berries in wooden bowls. Obviously we've come a long way from those days and there are new modern ways of making wine. For those of you who don't have access to vine grown grapes, there are alternatives. There are several products on the market today that produce high quality wines. They are referred to as wine kits or wine juice kits. Most of these wine kits produce 23 liters or 6 gallons of wine in about 28 - 42 days, depending on the kit.

The wine kits come in the form of concentrates, semi-concentrates, or full-strength must. Must is the term used for grape juice that is not yet fermented. With concentrated and semi-concentrated juice, you will need to add a certain amount of water to reconstitute the juice, but they produce really nice wines. Full-strength must does not require the addition of water, therefore, producing a superior quality wine.

In addition to the wine juice kit, equipment is required to produce the wine. There are equipment kits ranging from a basic "bare bones" fermenting kit to "complete" equipment kits with all of the bells and whistles that go with it. The wine making hobby is NOT expensive. The average cost per bottle is about $3.