Home Brew...Mmm Mmm Good!

I know many of you have heard me talk about how my family makes wine each year. In fact, several of you have even expressed some interest in traveling out to Long Island (which is where the wine is made at my parents’ house) to help out and watch the process in person. Unfortunately, we’ve never been able to line that up, so I’ve done the next best thing…captured it all on film, er well, memory card anyway.

I thought it might be fun for you folks to see some of these pictures of my dad while he was in the act of making his wine. I wasn’t able to join them this time, but I will next fall.

I should point out that the grapes that you see in these pictures were pressed into the barrels about 9 days before these pictures were taken, and have already gone through the primary fermentation process. This means that yeast has already converted much of the sugar in the grape juice to ethanol (alcohol). So what you will see here are the next steps, post crush and primary fermentation. I will do my best to give you some context or play by play of each photo. I really hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do…and you can certainly see my dad is having a good ol’ time while my mom mans the camera.

As part of my play by play, I’ve lined the photos up in the order in which they occur chronologically. I should point out that this year’s grapes were Zinfandel and Cabernet, a bit of a change from the usual Alicante varietal we usually use. Anyway, here we go...

Here you see dad draining the wine for the barrel in which the grapes went through primary fermentation. He will take this wine and transfer it to another barrel which is where the wine will undergo secondary fermentation where the remaining sugars will.






Here dad takes the wine he just drained from the primary fermentation barrel and puts it in a clean barrel where it will undergo secondary fermentation.




Here he take the grape skins, or pomace, and puts it into a presser where he will squeeze the remaining juice out.










Dad cranking the presser, and you’ll notice the flow of remaining juice draining into the bucket.


He removes the pomace after squeezing every last drop out.

Proud papa stands next to his babies, which he will likely begin consuming in about 3-4 months.