A wonderful cycle governs the world of winemakers, a cycle that measures each season in its harvest of fruit, and the wine made from it. This time of year, as the days get shorter, and the leaves start to change, signifies one thing to wine lovers, the harvest.
I've been a winemaker for five years now, and the passage of time has never been marked more beautifully or as meaningfully for me as it has since I've started making wine each fall. Each growing season is unique, and literally the effects of an entire year of weather are recorded in grapes of a given year. Each bottle from each vintage is a time capsule of information, recording my skills and judgments as a winemaker and the resources applied to it.
As an amateur winemaker, my pastime has profoundly influenced my experience and appreciation of wine, as well as my awareness of time's passage. Through making wine, I've come to learn how wines acquire their characteristics, through vinification, and the limitations that the winemaker has placed on him by the grapes themselves. Winemaking is an excellent way to learn about wine from the ground up. It is also a simple, pleasurable, and financially rewarding hobby. ( Assuming your first attempt at winemaking is successful, the expense of the grapes and equipment will be more than covered in savings on wine purchases.)
The key to making wine, or pursuing any hobby seriously, is to do little reading and research ahead of time, so that you know what youÕre doing before you start to do it. There are several excellent, straight-forward books available to first-time winemakers. University of California Cooperative Extension publishes Making Table Wine At Home , a no nonsense and up to date booklet. Philip Wagner's Grapes into Wine is a more in-depth book, though a little long in the tooth. (Disregard his advice on not using cooperage for storing wine.) Getting any knowledge under your belt is important, I suggest, however, that you avoid reading any book that contains wine "recipes" for making wine from bananas, raisins, dandelions, and the like.
Once you're fortified with the basics, you'll need to make some decisions about what style of wine or grape varieties you'd prefer. Any decision in this regard should be governed by what good quality grapes are available. There is no point in trying to make a nice Chardonnay from cheap Central Valley California grapes. It simply can't be done. The rule is simple: buy the freshest, well-balanced (good sugar and acid), lowest yield, premium varietal vinifera grapes - preferably grown in a moderate climate - that you can get your hands on.
There is a real glut of quality winegrapes in North America and most everywhere in the world now, with so many new wine regions now on the map. So, it is a buyers market, and grape growers are generally more than interested in selling to amateur winemakers. If you live in an area close to a winegrowing region, chances are that excellent quality grapes are available direct from the grower, at reasonable prices, especially if you pick them. In major cities there are usually many sources of winegrape suppliers, offering just about any type of grape grown.
As far as space and equipment goes, depending on the amount you wish to make, you'd be surprised how little is required. Ten gallons of wine could easily be made in anyone's kitchen, or up to 500 gallons in a typical garage. The equipment needed for ten gallons of wine would total no more than $100.
Assuming your grapes for ten gallons cost $200, a fair price for top- quality grapes, your total cost per bottle would be around six dollars. Considering the fun involved, the educational value, and the fact that your wine could possibly rival wines costing many times more, this is a real steal.
If you put some love and care into the grapes you choose, and your winemaking, you may make something that will grow and improve with the passage of time, and you will also have tapped into that cycle of time keeping that Man has kept alive since the development of agriculture thousands of years ago.
- Tom Davis, Vancouver, Canada
