Making Wine with Friends

AND WE ARE HAPPY WOMEN!!!

We are reconvening the Woman’s Workshop Winery this fall (although we are more than thrilled to have strong good looking men show up).

The lease was renegotiated to allow us to start before the first of 2016. It’s a good thing too because the supplies have been getting low. I have way too many friends who drink wine.

Michele wants to make sparkling wine this year, so she is tasked with doing the research to come up with what needs to be done. She already has bought bottles, caps, and wires. We’ll see. She and I went up to Annapolis Homebrew and did a buy of supplies – both liquid and hard. Valpolicella, Amarone, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and a couple of others.

Word has gotten around about the group so we have had inquiries, and all are welcome. We started on October 2 but I had started a peach chardonnay and a dry Californium chard the week before to get in the bottle for the tea in December. Michele made it but by the time she got there I had started an Austrian Traminer-Riesling. The plan is to add some of the F-pack in the middle of the primary fermentation. We processed the 2 wines started last week to secondary fermentation. I had added some of the F-pack to the peach chardonnay so that the final product isn’t to be so sweet.

We tasted and worked the homemade wine/shrub fermentation mixes; adding potassium metabisulphite and potassium sorbate; and capped it to see what happens. Her’s with the leftovers of the shrub wasn’t bad. Mine which was a wine recipe from the small lots book was HORRIBLE!!

After that we talked about the sparkling wine and got the TV to do YouTube for Sparkling Wine – the usual “make it in the basement/garage” types but got an idea of the process.

Until next time.

#Wine #2015Season