Making wine at homeMaking wine at home isn't necessarily easy. There's a lot of work involved, especially in cleaning and sanitizing, but the sense of accomplishment the winemaker can get from producing 30 bottles of extremely drinkable white...
Actually, my Ruby Cabs seemed easier to handle than the Zinfandels I did last year. A qualification: I have been stripping them from the stems by hand, then crushing them with my feet (a bow to tradition!) and they seemed to come off the stems easier by hand than the Zinfandels. I'm not sure how they would handle in a typical stemmer-crusher though. Only made about 4 gallons of juice from 2 lugs, but I did not have a press available at the time. Squeezed the pomace in a mesh laundry bag by hand till my hands ached, and decided it was worthwhile to put some of my weldings skills (what they are) to work and build a press out of some allthread and some scrap iron I had laying around. It's functional enough to work with an improvised press basket (wire mesh trash can) and the lid off a plastic storage container to catch the juice and direct it into a bucket, but I plan to refine it a bit more.
I am oaking the Ruby Cabernet right now while secondary fermentation winds down, and will try a mix with some of the good stuff. In 2 years, hopefully I will have all the Chambourcin and Seyvals I can handle from my own backyard, but in the meantime I am trying different grapes as I educate myself. It might not turn out half-bad after all
