Wednesday, January 21, 2009

the art of making wine..


I was surprised yesterday when another case of wine arrived at our doorsteps. I completely forgot about it as the company supposed to send me a case quarterly. oppsss I immediately cancelled the next one since I have enough bottles and although I collect them(hope you don't think we drink every night) it's not my priority at the moment.
So while sorting them in my little rack I suddenly remembered the ones we made last year. I asked Alex how many bottles we have still. To my surprise we only have these out of 24 bottles. I don't know how many we have given away and relatives have had. We have 10 bottles which include the tea wine, cherry wine, and two lots of Cabernet Sauvignon.
We had to throw most of the wines from that German grapes we collected. That was the first one and obviously it didn't go very well. It was far too sour and although we put enough sugar it made it more alcoholic. Plus since it was the first batch, we didn't realize we used the wrong type of cork hence the wines weren't fermenting properly. It was a disaster cause the cork didn't fit the bottle well as we thought and air turned the wine sour.

However the Cabernet Sauvignon mix was a success and surprisingly the tea wine. Many commended on the taste as you wouldn't expect a wine out of tea but it did work. The taste was sweet enough and you wouldn't notice the tea aroma as much but a bit more of the acidity. However the black cherry wine was really good..smooth on the pallete, drinkable, and you could smell hints of cheery.

We still have these bottles in the outhouse waiting to be used for the next batch. They were leftovers from the holiday season and don't worry we didn't drink all that. Alex is still concocting on what to do next but he's got a definite name to call it 'Sweet Revenge II' You could probably guess now what the taste would be. So what's the next challenge??? I am contemplating on Merlot and Port unless you have another suggestion..

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