I have officially upgraded my wine making equipment to a 3 and 6 gallon kit 😆.
Plus I brought 3 different wine kits, which I will be putting my custom touches too!
Looking forward to getting started on these new wines:
– Cabernet Sauvignon (1 Gallon)
– Cabernet Franc Icewine (3 Gallon)
– Pink Moscato (6 Gallon)
I’ll be breaking down each one of these kits over the next few weeks, so stay tuned 🍷
One of my favorite fruits to eat straight off the tree’s as a kid was Loquats (aka Japanese Plums). I used it as inspiration in this wine blend.
This wine has an amazingly fragrant aroma a beautiful color. It already taste sooo good, but needs a little more aging because it’s really strong (16% Alc Vol).
Loquat Zinfandel Recipe
Ingredients:
Directions:
It’s Wine Rack Friday…LOL!!!!
Women, If you are every looking to conceal some wine or just want a little extra push up! Well, I’ve found the product for you…The Wine Rack Bra!
I can’t even keep a straight face while typing this…But I guess there is something out there for everyone! Who want’s one?
Here’s another great combo…Wine & Latte 🍷☕🍷☕🍷☕🍷☕
Thank a bunch to Bright & Balanced for sharing the following recipe on their blog:
Ingredients
Instructions
Since I love Wine, this post made me want to find any other recipes featuring the amazing combo. So here you go 🍷☕🍷☕🍷☕🍷☕
Ingredients
Instructions
(Courtesy of Good Girl Dinette and via Sprudge)
Ingredients
Instructions
Since it’s watermelon season, I decided to make Watermelon Wine. After researching recipes, I realized it’s one of the hardest fruit wines to make due to how quickly it spoils. Additionally, it doesn’t maintain it’s red color and changes to a yellow/orange color.
My Experience
For some reason, I thought my experience would be different if I juiced my watermelon first. Ahhh, no…my wine didn’t spoil, but it still turned yellow/orange. Who wants to drink a yellow/orange Watermelon Wine? I don’t!!! It’s just not right for my mental :?.
The Solution
Most winemakers add red food coloring to get it back to red. However, I figured there has got to be a way to keep it red. So, Apples came to mind 🍎. When you cut a apple, it begins to change brown due to oxidation. However, you can stop it by adding an acidic juice (i.e., Lemon, or Lime juice). So, I added fresh lime juice to my next batch.
After fermenting in my primary, I noticed the juice was still red! Then I transferred it to my secondary, and watched as the days and weeks passed….still red!
So, if you are looking to make Watermelon Wine, add some lime juice to keep it’s natural color.
I saw this and started to laugh…but I guess when it comes to your wine, you’ve got to lock it down 😆🍷
It’s called the Lockey Bottle Safe, if you are interested!
Our last wine making class was absolutely amazing!
I brought in the Brie Toast with Chardonnay Soaked Raisin (Recipe) and received tons of compliments.
Now for the fun…
Throughout our previous classes, we made different types of wine (Riesling, Malbec, Raspberry Mead, and a Blend with Table Grapes).
So, now it’s time for bottling!
Step 1: Sanitize Bottles and Corks
We used the following sanitizing rack. Simply add your sanitizer to the top with your corks. Then you can insert each bottle over the white tip and push. It will shoot sanitizer into the bottle. Once done, you sit the bottle on the rack go dry.
Step 2: Siphon Wine into Bottles
Step 3: Cork Bottles
We used the following corker model, which inserted the corks easy.
Step 4 & 5: Label and Heat Seal Wrap
We used the following equipment to seal the pvc wrap on the bottle.
The final product:
After bottling our batches of wine, we had Graduation. So, it’s official! I now have my Doctorate of Winemaking 😉
Hey there everyone…It’s been a while since my last post but there are more fun and exciting post come 😆🍷
We planted muscadine vines in February of this year…I’m so happy to see my vines growing and starting to bud grapes already! These will be made into wine of course 🙂
If you haven’t read my prior weeks Wine Making Class, click the links below to view:
Vegas
Unfortunately, I missed Week 3 Wine Making Class because of a conference I had to attend in Vegas (Bitter/Sweet). However, I did have my fair share of wine and amazing food while there.
Needless to say I was completely exhausted the next day, but still had to put on face at the conference until my flight home later that evening.
Fortified Wines
I did however, have one of my fellow classmates recap Wine Making Class for Week 3 for me on Fortified Wines. To add a little background, I am a Fortified Wine Lover. So, when I heard this was the class I would be missing I almost canceled my trip (Not Really, but I thought about it…LOL).
So, what is a Fortified Wine….It is a wine that has very high alcohol content due to the addition of a distilled spirit, normally Brandy. The original purpose for fortifying wine was preserving it for longer periods than traditional wine. Most (but not all) Fortified Wines are really sweet. This is due to the distilled spirit being added during the fermentation process and forcing the wine to stop fermenting because of the high level of alcohol being added. In other words, the yeast that is used to ferment the wine, will crap out once the alcohol content reaches 18-22% and will leave unfermented sugar in the wine making it sweet. The following are some of the known Fortified Wines:
This class was instructed by one of DeFalco’s Wine Club Member’s who is great at making Fortified Wines. He covered his techniques which involved using Everclear vs. Brandy. The main purpose of the use of the Everclear was to avoid changing the taste of the wine, because when you add a distilled spirit, typically the flavor profile changes.
The class tasted a lot of fortified wines that night….I believe 10 total. Mind you, fortified wines range from 18-22%, so a glass or two if you have a good tolerance level, is enough to get most people tipsy.
All in all, I missed a great class for my favorite type of wine; however I’m glad I got the Cliffsnotes!
Wine by Ari 