Have you ever decided against something because of the length of time it took to complete it?
Cinnamon rolls that take three hours to make?
A three-and-a-half-hour movie?
Chicken that needs to marinate overnight?
Winemaking is a cinnamon roll, marathon movie, marinated chicken process. Not only that, it requires even more scientific measurement and ability than baking.
We entered the world of winemaking by jumping into the water without asking the temperature. Partially as encouragement to our friend Drew* and partially from a love of learning and trying new things, we set out on the adventure of changing six gallons of grape juice into wine.
*Drew loves to say that if he won the lottery, he’d buy a winery. Well, one should never tell Jess their dreams, because she’ll make them chase them.
In spring 2022, we took a way-more-advanced-than-we-were-prepared-for class on winemaking. A few weeks later, we picked up wine juice and were like parents of a newborn, looking at each other like What do we do now?!
The truth is, you can add yeast to juice and make wine without any of the technical stuff, but if you want guaranteed good wine, you might want to do things like test the wine and add various chemicals to aid in the quality of the end result. You know, all the things that require science.
I have an inordinate amount of new vocabulary words thanks to this journey.
Here are a few:
Brix: a measure of total dissolved solids which helps figure out the amount of sugar in the wine
Bung: a rubber or silicone stopper for a carboy
Carboy*: the glass vessel the wine is made in
*There is a slim chance I would’ve known this word before this process and an even slimmer chance I would have known it was related to wine, however, when I told my Italian teacher about the process and used this word in English, then described it in Italian, she instantly knew the Italian word for it—despite the fact that she also told me Italians don’t often make wine in their homes because there is so much available to them. I tell you all this for the mere intrigue cultural differences continually brings me.
Hydrometer: an instrument that measures the dissolved solids to get an estimate of the amount of sugar in the wine
Lees: dry yeast cells leftover from the alcoholic fermentation aka sediment
It’s been quite the learning process. We ran into a few snafus, but ended up with a Chardonnay any first winemaker could be proud of.
From start to finish, the process took a little over a year. And, not to get too wishy washy, when I see our wine bottle and the year 2022 written on it, I think about our wine when it was just juice. I think about how far back in time one short year feels and it puts life in perspective for me. We’re all like bottles of wine. Like the grape juice, we start with the potential to be something even better and that potential gets nurtured and stored up in us. When poured out at the right time, it can benefit us and others, but poured out at the wrong time, it can turn people away and possibly cause harm.
Here’s to pouring your wine out at the right time.
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