Winey tales & Winemaking – Day 1

I tasted my first ever home-made wine when I was exactly 18 yrs old. :) It was when my married-cousin(the word married is important here. In our family, girls are allowed to do anything they want only after they are married:) ) decided that I was old enough to have wine, that she shared the wine she made with me, and I, in turn, shared it with my 15-yr old brother. We’d drink it chup-chup-ke coz alcohol and daaru-talk was strictly prohibited in our house and that is how we finished the whole bottle Akka shared with me. But then, Mom always knew we were drinking it, and she surprisingly didn't have a problem with it, may be because she thought that since it was home-made, it wouldn’t be alcoholic or something. Back then, I didn’t know what getting high meant, but looking back now, I am almost sure that did give us a little high. It was either the alcohol in the wine or the sugar-high, but it sure did feel good. Yeah… I started young :P

The next time I drank wine was around 10 yrs later, I fell in love with it. It was the sweet port wine that S got from Goa, and that became my sole reason to visit Goa henceforth. It was the one thing I asked people to get me from Goa, and the only thing I carried every time I visited that place. After this interest in wine, I tried the wines made by the Nasik wine yards, but never quite liked the taste of any of them. All of them were too sweet and acidic to my taste, and I stuck to my port wine, till Sangria happened! :)

The first-ever time I tasted this nectar was in Hong Kong, in one of the organic cafes of Sohos, and that was it! I got hooked. Seeing my excitement every time the word Sangria was uttered, the husband took it upon himself to make Sangria for me at home, and with practice he grew great at it. He also could not get the taste of the Sangria we first had, but nevertheless, it was the best I had in all of Hyd. The juices he mixes to the wines, and the powders to add spice, make it unique and tasty every time he makes it, and this became the preferred way to have wine in our house, for us both and for the guests we entertain.
After that initial escapade with home-made-wine, the thought didnt even cross my head for years. Only when S told me that his aunt was a master-wine-maker, and that she used to supply the whole family with bottles and bottles of her-much-famed-wine, did the thought of making my own wine strike me. On one of the family outings, I asked the dear lady how she did it, and if she would be kind enough to teach me how to make it. She agreed almost immediately, and that got the whole family excited! (Yeah, even I didn’t know we were a family of Bewdas :P ) This talk happened in June 2010, when she was about to leave to the US, and since it wasn’t the right season for grapes, we decided to postpone the grand activity till Dec, when she returns and when the grapes are sweet.

Its almost December now, and she will be coming back soon. As much as I am excited to try it with her, the little imp in me wanted to try her own version of wine. The visit to the farmer’s market yielded in a good purchase of grapes, the time seemed right and hence this attempt.
I was clear on a couple of things before I started to make my wine -

1. I was not going to make the simple recipe that Akka used to make wine with. Hers was to add 1 kg of grapes with 1 kg of sugar and one packet of yeast. And keep it in a plastic bucket for a week, and then sieve it and bottle it. Simple it did sound, but the taste would still be that of grape juice which is not what I wanted.

2. S is allergic to the sulphites in the wine. We discovered this after he fell sick every single time we had wine during our stay in Hong Kong, and with a little research and experimentation, we discovered it had to do with the wine. Hence, I was certain that I was not going to use the sulphite tablets in my wine.
3. All the recipes I read online for wine-making had yeast in it. Now, I wasn’t sure where to get wine yeast in Hyd, and didn’t have the patience to wait till I get it. Since mine is not on an enterprise level, I wanted a recipe which did not use any yeast, and I got this one, which I followed.
I mashed the 1/2 kg grapes with my hands, and removed the seeds as much as I could and filled the juice and pulp into the two broad-mouthed-bottles I had cleaned earlier.

Fingers-crossed with anticipation, I am going to wait for the juice and pulp to ferment for the 7 days. The next step is to remove the mold, dilute the juice with two parts of distilled water, and add sugar. It would ferment more later. All this fermentation would happen with the yeast and bacteria present in the grapes alone, with nothing external. I love the fact that this would be almost-natural.

Once I see that this step is crossed without any hitches, am gonna get more grapes and start a second batch.
God, please let this experiment passs, and most of all, please give us the restraint to not drink it before its completely done. That is for the next couple of months! Sigh! :)