Homemade Wine

Making wine at home, is a tradition that I have seen my grandmother and mother follow without fail. Its just the perfect thing to be served with Christmas fruit cakes. It is also something that is first served for the newly weds when they visit our home. The joy of christmas gets doubled when little things involved in the celebration has that personal touch of love. This wine is just the perfect example of that.

Last christmas, I tried making my mom's wine recipe for the first time. I went wrong with the schedules of stirring, and made a wine that would just make you high in just few sips. Wine making is not at all difficult, but ya remembering and sticking to the schedules is. So the second time I made it, I kept reminders and kept the calendars marked to follow it accurately and WHOLA! We were sipping on a wine that was just THE PERFECT. 

Now that it is that time of the year when you soak up the fruits for the fruit cake and also get ready for wine making to be served for christmas, I thought I should be posting it without any delay.So here you go. Make it and  enjoy the coming christmas with the homemade wine and homemade Christmas fruit cakes. 

Ingredients

1. 1 kg of Black grapes, preferably seedless
2. 800 gms of sugar
3. 1 tsp of yeast
4. 1 1/2 litres of water (boiled and cooled completely)
5. 1 tbsp wheat grains

Method

• Wash the grapes thoroughly. Refer notes.
• Pick a glass jar/ceramic jar which has atleast double the volume of the water used. In this case, I would go by a 3 litre glass jar. Wash and dry it.
• Add the washed grapes in the jar. Crush them with your hands. Try to crush or break open each grape. Add the sugar, yeast , wheat grains and water. Give it all a mix. 
• Cover the glass jar tightly. Place the jar in a place which is cool and dark.
• After exactly one week, open the jar and stir the ingredients with a wooden spoon/laddle.
• Until the 21st day, keep repeating the same process of stirring in the ingredients with a wooden spoon, preferably during the same time, everyday.
• Let it rest on the 22nd and 23rd day. On the 24th day, transfer/strain the clear liquid on the top to glass bottles. Wine is ready. 
• Serve it with christmas cake. 

Tips

1. Soak the grapes in water with 1 tbsp of salt for 2 hours. Rinse and wash it couple of times to reduce the harmful side effects of pesticides, if buying the grapes from the market.
2. Quality of the grapes does determine the quality of the wine. So make sure you pick up grapes that is sweet and not sour.
3. Make sure you stir the wine with wooden spoon only. Do not use any steel or aluminium spoons for it.
4. Make sure you keep to the stirring schedules strictly. If you go by each step, exactly the way its mentioned above, you can't go wrong.