Last year around this time I wrote a post about my education in wine-making. I originally thought it would be great to carry a wine-making kit in the FARMcurious store; after all, I did already carry a beer-making kit. I saw that many of the brew stores had them for a few hundred dollars, which honestly seemed like a lot so I started asking questions. As it turns out making wine at home from grapes is a huge endeavor. You generally have to make it in large batches because you order the wine grapes by the pallet load when they're in season. You then make giant batches of wine, starting at five gallons and up. That's all well and good if you already know how to make wine but if you're a beginner the prospect of having to buy an expensive kit, order tons of grapes to end up with five gallons of wine that may not even be any good is not that appealing. Considering you can get a pretty great bottle of bordeaux crafted by an expert for about twenty bucks right now, I would leave it to the pros. That said, a lot of people, homesteaders in particular, end up with a glut of backyard or neighborhood fruits during certain parts of the year and you can only make so many jams, dried fruits and infusions before you start looking for something else to do with those fruits. If you're like me, wine has likely crossed your mind at one point or another but you don't have the slightest clue of where to begin. As I mentioned in my earlier post the more I spoke to the beer experts, the more I realized what I was looking for wasn't really out there yet and I needed to create my own product. With a lot of help from the amazing guys at Brewmaster in San Leandro, I finally ended up what they and I think is an excellent beginner's kit. I learned a long time ago that I can't sell anything I haven't tried myself so I hope you enjoy my post on how easy home wine-making can be with a little direction and some tasty fresh fruit! If you're interested in ordering the kit for yourself you can find it
here or read more about using it
on this blog post.
