There's a Reason.......

There's a reason wine is made from grapes - grapes make the best wine. It's really that simple.

Since I had decided that my wine-making would consist of my own grown or foraged goodies (or purchased from locals), I had given up the idea of making regular old grape wine. Grapes are not a great crop here in Maine.

Still I picked up a near-death grapevine plant from the bottom sale shelf at a Lowes...of all places. It's been in the ground a couple weeks now and looking quite happy. We'll see how it does. I might search for a local source for grapes, but I decided I really didn't want to use concentrates.

My grapevine:)

Sorry blog, I made these decisions without you. Don't be offended.

Some Other Stuff

I bottled the cranberry wine. It was cloudier than I would have liked. (I think I need to rack more often). But what I tasted, tasted pretty good. I started this wine on Thanksgiving so it's only about 5 months old. I'm excited to try it next fall.

Here's my label I made for the mead. :)

I'm not sure what the vintage date should actually be? When I set the stuff to fermenting or when it's bottled or what. I'm guessing when it's bottled, however you can bottle a wine years after the fermentation....hmm. I'll have to do some research.

~Salut Linny

The Face of Spring

I do a lot of window gazing at work. At the moment, outside my window is a brilliant sea of dandelions.

I work in an renovated old hospital building (a mental hospital) with a big front lawn. A couple years ago the grounds crew were instructed to go au'natural and let the bulk of the lawn grow to seed. It gets plowed to hay a couple times a season by a local farmer. Despite the grumbles of pollen and ticks, it's quite pretty - right now with the whole big yard blazing gold it's somewhat spectacular (in an unspectacular way of course).

I'd only heard of Dandelion Wine from the title of the Bradbury story of the same name. The book is one of the forgotten masses that I picked up to read, at least once, but never finished.

Anyways, google be damned, seems Dandelion Wine can be quite a delight. I think I'll attempt it.

Stay tuned....

~Salut Linny

A Long Expected Blog

Omg so sorry blog, I've neglected you!

There's a reason for that. This is a wine blog and while the wine sits there's not much to write about.

I've bottled up the mead. I guess I could write about that. I used a very crude method of slowly pouring it off into a spouted 2-cup measuring cup and then poured it into the bottle via funnel. Corking was fun. I bought an Argentinian double-lever corker. Worked slick.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I used recycled beer bottles. Washing them in the dishwasher removes most of the labels (though I'm not sure how much the dishwasher liked that). Then I boiled them.

Mead's done and will sit til at least october (except the one partial that I think I'll consume this evening while I game:).

Not much of a picture, but here's my first lot of bottled nectar:D I need to make some fun labels.

I'll be bottling the cranberry wine shortly.