Home Made Grape Wine!...

"God made only water, but man made wine." -- Victor Hugo

My passion for wine started right from the childhood days having grown up in a Town with the majority of Christian Communities!..

There are hundreds of methods of making wine all over the world, but I've strictly stuck to the Central Kerala recipe, here.I would highly recommend this method as this had been cent percent successful to me with the Perfect Outcome!!.

"People spend too much time tasting wine; not enough time drinking it" --Andre Tchelistcheff

Yes, I am in the above category of "people”.. not a lover of wines but would love to sip a little, sense and appreciate the deep taste of the heavenly drink!..
My own proverb for wine would be-
'Knowing and appreciating wine can be compared to the knowledge of appreciating Diamonds…as it needs skill to differentiate between the good, better and the best!..'

And so when my better half turned back a couple of months ago with a box fully packed with bunches of deep red juicy grapes fresh from the vineyards, I was overjoyed!!
A part of it was passed over to relatives, a part went to make Grape juice preserve and a part was saved to make Wine!..

I made a litre of Grape wine from:

Red Grapes (with seeds)-300gms
Sugar-300 gms
Water-800 ml-boiled and cooled

Active dry yeast granules-2 tsps
Water boiled and warm-100ml-for dissolving the yeast

Wheat a tbsp(optional)
1 egg white(optional-I avoided)
Sugar for colouring-4 tsps more or less

Fermenting Wine.

Clean & wash grapes well.Remove the stalks.Wipe them dry one by one and crush with your finger tips.
Transfer the crushed grapes in a ceramic jar(I used the traditional Bharani, cleaned well enough and sun dried)..Add half the quantity of sugar (150 grams),water,egg white yeast dissolved in water and wheat.Mix well using a clean sun dried wooden spatula.Keep this airtight for 3 weeks(21 days) stirring with the wooden spatula every alternative day.

On the 22nd day, strain the mixture using a muslin cloth and discard the pulp. Add the balance sugar to the wine.

Wine 'before' and 'after' colouring.

Colouring the wine by caramelisation.

In a clean dry wok, add the sugar kept for colouring (3 tsps) – place on fire, stirring continuously till the sugar melts and acquires a deep reddish brown hue; taking care not to burn.Now add about 1-2 tbsps of hot water to this syrup little by little and mix well.Cool and add this whole syrup to the wine. Mix well.The wine would have attained a beautiful deep red colour by now.
Store the wine in a clean bottle closed with a cork & use. There would be a cloudy formation towards the bottom of the bottle.Need not worry.Pour out to wine glasses carefully not to disturb the sediment as far as possible.

The uncaramelised glass of wine you see here is slightly cloudy as it was poured out from the bottom.I reserved just 200 ml before colouring, to blog :) and finally ended up in disturbing the fine sediment :D..

"I made wine out of raisins so I wouldn't have to wait for it to age." -- Stephen Wright

Well, I too was a little impatient to wait till three weeks.So I actually used 3 tsps of yeast and fermented for just 10days as the temperature was quite warm here. I would taste the wine every time while stirring the jar and strained the wine when it reached its stage of fermentation(10 days).This strictly depends upon the outside temperature, the amount of sugar and yeast in the mixture.Wheat(starch) and egg white(protein) are used to speed up the process.I avoided both.

Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages" -- Louis Pasteur

Wishing You all a Merry Christmas !...