Wine making alwayse has been like a magic to me. There's something I didn't know, something I could not explain, something misterious, something noble, something witchcraft'e. It's even in the bible: "Jesus turned water in to wine". HOW? Please be more specific. Greeks refered to it as the "DRINK OF THE GODS". Isn't this THE BEST comercial in the world? Wouldn't you whant to drink the same stuff the Gods are having??? That just sounds to good to be true. And regular people can make this stuff? I can make it? Are you kiding me? I can make the same beverage that Zeus was having with hes friends in the Mount Olympus? This thought alone just gives me the shivers. And then it turnes out that it's not that hard. All you need is some juice, sugar, yeast and patience. And then again it turn out that it's NOT that simple: you need to have the right berries at the right time, you need to have the right yeast, you need to know the amount of sugar that needs to be added + you need to know what you're final drink you whant to tast like... And a 100 more diferent things that can be described with one word - EXPERIENCE. And this is the thing you can't get from reading books, reading blogs or waching DTube videos. So what is my experience with wine?
I have faint memories that my father had a "wine tank"??? I dont now the right word for it. We call them "ballons". It's a 20 L glass "bottle". I remember my father had two of them. From the top of the bottle came out a small plastic pipe and the other end was in a glass with watter... And there where bubbles coming out... And we where not alowed to touch it... For a smal kid it seemed like magic. And when I hrew up, I whanted do to some magic my self. I slowely started asking questions and what I found out was that everyone had diferent recepies, diferent tehniques, diferent approach to the process. Started reding stuff online and I understood that there is no ONE RIGHT way do it. I just need to start doing it and I will find my own way.
So I found my fathers old glass tanks, but they where dirty from inside. And it's super hard to clean the inside of that thing. So I got some sea sand and water. Pored them in the glass tank and started rolling it around on the ground. My idea was that the sand will work as a scrub. But there was a smal rock in the moss where I was rolling the tank and it broke. That was my first experience on my own. In summer of 2016 we moved here from the city. I alwayse thought that it's super cool that you have some homemade beverage if some guest come to visit you. Its like a sign of a good host. So I took the rest of my fathers old "wine tanks" and tried to make some wine. In one tank I put red currant and in the other one apples. And then for a small test I put some gooseberries and blueberries in a 3L jar.
When fermentation was ower, my dad said that the red currant wine was really good [the wine he used to make also was from red currant]. It could not be compared to the stuff he used to make. For me it didn't seemed that good. Taste was to weak. And I started to have some doubts about home made wine. Becouse everyone said that the best wine can be made out ot red currant. And if this was that "awesome stuff" that people where - I'm not impresed. But that was only until I took the lid off of the jar with blueberries.... Now that was some magical experience. I'l go more in the details in some other post - this is starting to get to long.
Last summer there where practicle no blueberries in the forest. All I got was a realy small bucket so I had to improvise with other things. I got a bunch of strawberries, black currant and some cherrys. Here's what I came up with:
You can clearly see which one's are our favorite. It looks like Nr.2 and Nr4. need more time. I suppose it has something to do with the cehrrys - they seem to fermentate a lot slover then others. I need to find some more info about cherry wines. If you have some good advise or know some good sorce of info - leave them in the comments.
Thats all for now. Soon I'l make another post where I will describe how i made that blueberrie wine.
Hope you will have a great day ;)
