Fruit of the vine

We had a huge crop of white grapes this year and decided to put netting up to keep the birds out of the arbor. In early September I harvested the grapes and crushed them for their juice and made a 5 gallon carboy of wine. Yesterday I siphoned the wine into fresh 1 gallon bottles to complete the last clarifying before bottling. The grandsons stopped by while I was doing this and asked how the wine tasted so we had a little sampling. Not bad for home grown, pretty darned good in fact. Ma thought it could be a hair sweeter so I added a simple syrup to each of the gallon jugs and I’ll be filling bottles in two weeks. The alcohol content of this wine is at 16% but doesn’t make the wine taste “boozy” in the least.

I had extra juice from the initial process and froze it. I got that out along with some raspberries and plan to start a white grape-raspberry wine today, just a gallon this time. This batch is getting a champaign yeast that will tolerate 18% alcohol. I’m thinking the fruit will hide the extra couple percent of alcohol pretty well.

Tomorrow I make jelly from High Bush Cranberries. This stuff is outstanding in flavor. The berries were picked in the wild near Two Harbors this fall.

Doing wine or beer is a labor of love. Doing it the right way is only way to go. I like your wife taste. Sweet dinner wine!!! sipping too!!!!

Can you post the recipe for jelly. I have high bush cranberries but never use them. They seem very bitter, even the birds won’t eat them.

Pick the berries, discarding any bad ones and for every quart of them, add about 1/2 cup of water. Simmer the berries on the stove gently, don’t boil hard, until the berries are all burst. Help them along with a fork. Line a sieve with a couple layers of cheesecloth and strain the the juice from the berries. You can gently ball up the ends of the cheesecloth and lightly squeeze the remaining juice from the berries.

Get a couple boxes of Liquid Certo pectin and follow the directions for COOKED raspberry jelly. Nothing to it.

I don’t water bath the jars after filling and covering. Instead I set each jar on the cover for 5 minutes as soon as the cover is applied and tightened. Then I flip the jars over and allow to cool. Store this jelly in a DARK area, preferably cool, and use within 6 months or the jelly tends to darken. The flavor is there, it just gets dark.

18 bottle corked up today for Ma. Come Christmas Eve she can get giddy.