How to make wine from a couple of vines in your garden

 

People have been asking if they should try to make wine from vines in their garden. Most often these vines have come with the house and grow up pergolas or on terraces. Their origin is probably lost in time. Even if bought from a garden centre people don't remember what the variety is.

If the grapes taste sweet the thought arises 'why not make wine,' That's where things usually come to an end but they needn't do because making wine with household equipment couldn't be easier.

Everything must be kept clean. Note rubber gloves

First pick your grapes. If there are both white and red, no worries. You can make a 'Blouge' unless you have enough to make two vinifications, one for red and one for white. However, quantity is important as we shall see.

De-stem the grapes. This is not essential but preferable. Doing this also gives you the opportunity for quality control. 

Throw away any dubious ones. De-stemming can be done by hand. It takes a while but is quite therapeutic.

Boots for treading.

Next, crush the grapes either by treading them in a sanitized bucket (use Milton sterilizer for example - widely available for sterilizing babies' bottles). You can use your bare feet. We wear these boots bought in Venice for the Acqua Alta by common request. Otherwise you can put the grapes in a clean baking tray and bash with a potato masher.

Once the grapes start to look more like porridge than berries, you will need to press the grapes in order to obtain the juice. 

Potato basher (left) and Ricer

You could do this by putting them through a ricer or one of those hand cranked food mills.

  

That's all folks.

The 'cake'

Once you have the juice (and this might be less than you imagined), wash, clean out and sterilize one large and one small empty water bottle and pour the juice into them. This is where quantity comes in because you will need a bit more juice to top up the main bottle when it comes to racking as we shall see.

The next bit might involve you in buying a couple of airlocks and bungs. This is easy to do online and costs flumpence. Keep the grapejuice airtight with the bottle tops screwed tightly in while waiting for your order to arrive or make an airlock yourself. Check instructions on You Tube, There are a number of very boring videos telling you how to do this.

After a couple of days the juice might start bubbling producing satisfying burps in your airlock. This is the time to rack the juice off what is called the Gross Lees which will have collected in the bottom of the bottle. Just pour the juice into another bottle or container having sterilized these previously and pour the gunk down the sink, You can return the clean juice to the bottle and top up with juice from the auxiliary (smaller) bottle. Be sure to leave some headroom because the juice will well up during fermentation.

You may rack the juice once or twice again at some later point but basically just leave the juice to turn into wine which it will do miraculously in a couple of months.

The resulting wine may be delicious or not  but it will be yours.

In praise of Uncorked

 

You may think you know all the good wine shops in town but then another emerges. Not a new one, a shop that has been there all the time but you just haven't come across it yet.

Uncorked is in the City, well inside the Square Mile. Copthall Avenue EC2 is narrow street with no parking so we hadn't ever driven past or had any pretext to go there. Now we have because it is a very interesting destination. 

Thanks to Winesearcher we identified Uncorked as the nearest place we could get our hands on a bottle of Ferraris' Ruche. It's a while back so we don't remember which source was singing the praises of Ruche but we remembered we hadn't been impressed that one time we gave it a try.

'Ruche not OK' was what we wrote, perhaps unfairly?

Checking 'Native Italian Grape Varieties (by Ian D'Agata), we read that one of the best producers was Ferraris, hence our foray to Cophall Avenue.

The shop is a treasure trove of interesting wines. The two gentlemen presiding were very well informed and we came away with not just our Ruche but a Mersequera and a bottle of Cincinnato's Nero Buono to replace the one we had bought in Rome. We could have bought so much more.

We had enjoyed a Merseguera at Yarza Restaurant in Valencia and wanted to see if this variety is good in general or only in the case of that bottle. El Enhebro's Merseguera might have been blended with Verdil. It was not the same. 'Good enough but not enough good' as they say in Russia. 

As for the Ruche, on opening the bottle we thought we were getting the 'Ruche not OK' confirmation so tannic and unlovely was the impression. However, by the next evening a transformation had taken place and the wine was simply gorgeous. Never have we experienced such a transformation thanks to a little bit of oxygen. It just shows.

Back in the low countries

 

Note the hour glass in Death's hand. He doesn't seem interested in the smoker.

In the exhibition of women artists at the MSK,  Ghent ('Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam 1600 - 1750) we discovered Judith Leyster (1609 - 1660) and many others who were outstanding painters. This cautionary image was painted in 1629. 

Interestingly glass wine bottles only became common at exactly this time. The squat shape is also typical of the era. The smoker has a tankard.

 

A more modern masterpiece was de Linie's blend of Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewuertztraminer and Pinot Blanc at the Hemmelse Modder Restaurant in Amsterdam. The restaurant's name translates as 'Heavenly Mud.' In this case it was a matter of Hemmelse Wijn.

De Line is in Brabant, North Holland. It was founded by Marius van Stokkom in 1977. He was one of the first modern winemakers in the Netherlands. In the beginning he selected 7 suitable varieties from a total of 40. Between 1980s and 2010s, De Linie grew into a professional winery with approximately 4,500 vines and a production of 5,000–7,000 bottles per year. Marius' white wine was the first Dutch wine served in KLM's business class.

 

The jolly drinker also by Judith Leyster.

A trip to Greece, hotspot for rarities

 

We've said it before - not that it needs saying - Greece is one of the world's hotspots for grape varieties. It may even be the fountainhead for grapes found in many parts of Europe. Malvasia, Aglianico, Greco, Grechetto and Falanghina for example. And those are just the Italian ones. The fractured lanscape between mountains, isolated valleys and hundreds of islands was one of the causes of the diversity. There are thought to be around 300 different sorts.

In Athens, we visited this beautiful winemerchant called Mr. Vertigo.

The gentleman in view was in fact Italian but extremely knowledgeable about Greek wine as well as the many wines from all over the world available from this excellent shop. 

Among the Greek and we should say Cypriot rarities we found Yiannoudi (aka Giannoudi). Described as rare and indigenous, grown mostly on the slopes of the Troodos mountaines, Paphos and Limassol in Cyprus. Said to produce structured, aromatic and ageworthy red wines. Once near extinction it has bee revived by the Makarounas winery as above and Vlassides and Vassiliades wineries. Not mentioned in 'Wine Grapes.'

Spourtiko, another Cypriot is indeed covered in 'Wine Grapes' who attest to its light and zesty qualities. There were less than 2 ha in 2008. Now maybe 10 ha.

Morokanella. Please see our previous post in which we hail this delicious white variety from Cyprus as a major discovery. Made as an Orange wine as per this bottle. We're sorry we didn't add it to our haul of wines bought on this Greek trip. 

Volitsa looked promising. A North Pelopponese red aka Volitsa Mavri according to 'Wine Grapes' who also raise a problem with this grape: lack of healthy plant material. We were both lucky and unlucky to find this bottle at Mr. Vertigo. The former because it must be very rare and the latter because the wine is poor.

and Vasilissa. Another Cypriot rediscovery. A white wine grown in the Paphos and Omodos regions, Vasilissa is being revived by the Oenou Yi, Makarounas and Vasilikon wineries. Said to be round and full-bodied with moderate acidity.

At another Athenian wine shop in the Monastiraki district, the staff were as ignorant as those at Mr. Vertigo were well informed. We asked about wine made from rare Greek varieties and drew a blank. So left to our own devices and at times struggling with the Greek alphabet, we found nonetheless

Santameriana. Another rare variety indignous to the area around a village called Santameri in Achaia (Pelopponese). Also known locally as Asprouda of Patron or Asprouda of Patras. Asproda means 'Whitish' by the way and is the generic name given to several distinct white varieties all over Greece. Used as a name for any unidentified light-berried variety. In a country with grape varieties to spare this is understandable if a bit annoying.

Anyway, the story of Santameriana is a gripping tale. After Phylloxera there were only 10 vines left. A heroic grower, Panagiotis Dimitropoulos of the Sant'Or winery in Santameri rescued these remaining 10 vines which his father had planted at the edge of his vineyard and re-planted them at a 600 meter altitude in the foothills of Mount Skolli. There are now 1.5 ha. Orange wine is made of this variety as well as white. Reports tell of an intense and fruity taste with peach, pear, honey and white flowers in the mix.

We also found a Sideritis in this shop. We very much enjoyed our Orange Sideritis bought from Shrine to the Vine in Lambs Conduit Street, London. 

We first discovered the peculiar Messenicola the fabled Lemonia Restaurant in Regents Park Road, London. Lemonia actually has a Cypriot connection rather than Greek but not a lot of people know that. You might have thought their wine list would have had a big selection of Greek or even Cypriot wine but they seem to think their clientele would prefer to drink French wine with their Dolmadakia and Kuneli Stifado. 

So it was quite something to find a Messenicola at one point on their winelist. Messenicola or Messenikola Mavro is found near the Plastira Lake around a village called Messenikola, Karditsa (Thessaly). The name is supposed to come from a certain French/Venetian official known as Monsieur Nicolas who is supposed to have introduced the grape to that region. From where? Who knows? 

Avgoustatis. Not exactly rare - the second most planted grape in the Ionian islands (2008). Deep coloured, soft tannins and good acidity. Avgoustatis means 'of August' denoting early ripening. 

Kidonitsa or Kydonitsa is a white grape from the Peloponnese described in 'Wine Grapes' as "almost forgotten." Brave sould including Yannis Vatistas and George Tsibidis make varietal wines and the Antonopoulos winery have planted it elsewhere on the Pelopponese. Everyone agrees Kidonitsa is promising and the government have given subsidies to plant it but it's proving hard to promote.

Kidoni is Greek for Quince and the wine is said to haev a quince-like taste.  

Savatiano is actually Greece's most widely planted variety full stop. Who knew that? This may be because it is widely used in the making of Retsina. It hails from Central Greece as well as other parts of course. It can make bland, high alcohol, dull wines but in the right hands can be good.

The bottle above looks like a dessert version, so Savatiano is pretty flexible. 

Mavro Moscato of Tyrnavos. We think this is none other than Muscat of Hamburgh which seems to crop up quite a bit in Greece. We came across Rose of Muscat of Hamburgh more than once (see below). This is obviously 'a thing' and very good it is too. 

Not far from there was  the main market of Athens, Not for the faint-hearted, it looked much like it might have done in ancient times. In some corners it certainly smelled like that. You could buy wine there as well as meat and fish.

Retsina. We would have loved to have tasted these wines in 1.5 litre plastic bottles. Just a sip which we are sure would have been interesting. For the unbelievably low prices we could have chucked the rest down the sink but we didn't go there.

Also an interesting shop with rather better fittings and an eclectic range reminding you that we were not far from Romania, Ukraine and Russia:

Odesa Brut and Semi Dry 'champagne'

'Soviet Sparkling'

Armenia and Romanian white.

Armenia and Romania

Muscat of Hamburgh Rose

In another part of town, at the Acropolis Restaurant, that Muscat of Hamburgh rose we've been talking about. 'A thing' because we came across others. Really good. We tried to find out where we could get some but were told the winemaker made it exclusively for them.

Really tasty Kotsifali

 And at the airport, Kotsifali. We had this soon after our return and were very pleasantly surprised. A truly excellent wine. So it was a surprise to read in 'Wine Grapes' that Kotsifali is 'Oft-maligned' and '...it is easy to see why the variety is not treated with great respect...'  

 It is the second most planted variety on Crete and is rarely found outside there. This one by Fragospito was oaked and came in at 13%

'Wine Grapes' published in 2012 says Kotsifali is rarely found outside Crete but Winesearcher has 4 producers (including Lyryrakis) whose Kotsifalis are offered by many online and retail shops here. Perhaps this is a sign that the world is coming around to Kotsifali? it should.

We were only in Greece a short time but look what we found! This is truly an amazing country for wine grape diversity.