old dogs can learn new tricks - part one

moving to petit palais encourages wine drinking, wine drinking can become an expensive hobby, living on a pension does not cover wine drinking expenses, making your own wine becomes a new trick to learn ...

how to make your own wine:

1-  make friends with your neighbours, especially if they own wine crops
2-  secure at least one good oak barrel
3-  collect the following materials:
     clippers
     a bucket
     a trailer
     two big alimentary plastic containers
     a big collander
     a big bowl
     a pillow case
     an alimentary plastic tube
4-  prepare a cool, clean room for the barrel
5-  after the friendly neighbours have finished harvesting their grapes - hopefully by machine - get your     clippers , bucket and trailer, and glean the leftover grapes the machine has missed
6-  bring your grapes home and de-stem them before dumping into the alimentary container
7-  cover the container and recycle the stems into compost
8-  three times a day for about two weeks, CO2 needs to be released from the fermenting grapes by pressing the upside down bowl several times fully into the container to let air in - be sure your arms are clean
9-  when fermentation has finished the grapes are pressed taking them out with the collander, placing them into the pillow case, and squeezing them hard into the other container which will also receive the remaining liquid ... almost wine now !
10- using the plastic tube and basic physics notions, transfer the collected "wine" into the barrel where it will go through the malolactic process which, depending on temperature, might be finished in about one or two weeks - it can be speeded up by inserting a fish tank warming rod into it
11- after the "malo" is finished let the wine develop its qualities in the barrel for about a year ... and voila !

it is recommended to bottle the wine ...

during the year your wine is resting in the barrel you can collect enough bottles for your wine - you surely know enough people that drink wine
you will need to buy the corks though
and possibly get a manual "corker" on loan
gather friends and neighbours and promess them some free wine to give you a hand bottling
rinse the bottles, transfer the wine into the bottles with your plastic tube, leaving about two cm espace on the bottle neck, cork .. decork .. and drink !!

santé !!!!