LEARNING PATIENCE

1997 Apple Wine

We had a great harvest of apples in 1997. Although Phebe made a lot of pies and applesauce, it seemed like we'd never use them all. Rather than let them go to waste, I decided to try to make some apple wine. I bought a beginner kit from a local wine making supply shop and followed the basic recipe for making wine from fruit:
  1. crushed 30 pounds of assorted varieties of apples;
  2. put into the large vat with five gallons of water;
  3. added about 10 pounds of sugar to bring the specific gravity (S.G.) up to 1.100 for a dry wine;
  4. threw in a teaspoon of acid blend, two yeast nutrient tablets, a half teaspoon of pectin enzyme, and campden tablets;
  5. let sit for a few hours, added a packet of Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast and stood back.


Four days later, after the initial fermentation slowed, the liquid must was siphoned off the pulp into the secondary fermenter, a five-gallon glass carboy. An airlock was added and it was allowed to settle out for two weeks. The wine was "racked", meaning that the almost-clear liquid was siphoned off the sediment, called "lees", and put back into the cleaned carboy fitted with an airlock. It was then allowed to "bulk age" in the carboy, down in the cool basement, for ten months. Other than adding some water to the airlock every other month, the wine was finished.

When it came time to start processing the wine for 1998, I realized that I needed the carboy so I had to do something about that five-gallon jug of wine from the year before. I checked the specific gravity and found that it had fallen to .980; using the formula below, that meant that the alcohol by volume calculated to 16.3%.

Alcohol by Volume = (Beginning S.G. - Ending S.G.) / .736 = (1.100 - .980) / .736 = 16.3%

Pretty potent stuff but when we tasted it we were really disappointed. It had a bitter aftertaste which made it just plain undrinkable. It really didn't seem worth the trouble of bottling such awful stuff, but we figured we'd finish the process and see what would happen with a bit of ageing.

I hadn't gotten around to buying any corks or bottles for this part of the project, but I had saved enough empty Old Overholt Rye Whiskey* bottles over the years to do the job. These were washed, filled with the apple wine, and the screw caps put back on. To make them air tight, they were sealed with wax by several rounds of dipping into molten wax and allowing it to cool between dippings. This gave a somewhat ancient and classic look to the bottles, as shown below.



We stored the bottles in the basement for another year. In the Fall of 1999, we got up enough nerve to try the apple wine again. The difference was amazing! During that year in the bottles, the wine had aged to a crisp, dry wine with a nice, light bouquet of apples. Phebe designed some nice lables for the bottles and we added them to our official wine cellar at last. We're really glad we hadn't given up and tossed the batch instead of bottling.

If you're interested in making your own wine, you can download an entire book of practical instructions at http://home.att.net/~lumeisenman/. A great place to learn from others is the newsgroup rec.crafts.winemaking. Supplies and equipment can be obtained from the Grape and Granary in Akron, Ohio. I've made several orders through their web site and have found them to be an excellent source.


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* If you like bourbon, you'll probably love the deep, yet subtle, tastes of rye whiskey. The taste of rye whiskey is to bourbon as a rye bagel is to a corn muffin. Old Overholt is the most mellow, sippable rye I've found yet. If your local liquor store doesn't carry it, tell them it's distilled by the A. Overholt Company of Frankfort, Kentucky. Or go get some yourself; it's well worth the drive.