Wine

Edit:  This was supposed to post last week.  Not sure what happened...

Last winter I got it in my head that I should try making wine.  I scoured the interwebs, read tons of sites and blogs.  I figured I could do this.  And I wanted to make blueberry wine, with blueberries grown and picked right here in the woods.

I read all the reviews and did comparisons on all of the wine kits on amazon, picked the one I wanted, and added it to my wish list.

My birthday came and went, with no wine kit arriving at my door.  Mother's Day came and went.  Still no wine kit.

When the blueberries started to ripen in June, I decided to order it myself.  And then amazon laughed at me!  Damn those US sellers refusing to ship the kit of my dreams!  (Oh, fine, apparently there are laws about shipping that sort of thing over the border, and they vary from province to province, so we Canadians are a pain in the ass.  Who knew?)

So I went to the make your own wine store in the little city and asked them for a kit.  They kindly offered me a box of wine.  Um, no.  I explained what I wanted, the fellow said he could order in all the bits and pieces from their supplier, and the cost would actually be less than the kit, and the quality better.  Cool!  But it would take a month or so.  Drat.

Ok, not a big deal.  I could start my blueberries fermenting in a clean, food grade bucket.  The supplies should be in before I need them anyway.

And then the berries played a foolie on me.  Tough pickin's!  No blueberry wine this year.

But wait!  I have so many other choices!  Elderberries, raspberries, pea pods, oh my!  I can make wine.

I went to the little city to collect my treasure.  Except the owner told me the young fellow who had agreed to order my collection had quit and left him in the lurch.  Some stuff had come in, some stuff he had used.  Some stuff he didn't know whether it even got ordered.  He kindly led me around his shop collecting things off this shelf and that, and sent me off with assorted odds and ends, new and used, my head swirling, because, you know, I've never made wine, so do I need that?  What about one of those?  What is that?  On the plus side, he was very friendly and apologetic, and charged me less than half the price of the amazon kit.

I took it home and tucked it away.  I needed to reread instructions, recipes, clear my head.  But that was high into green bean, canning and pickling season.  No wine for me.

Last week, I finally sat and read.  And watched you tube videos.  And cleared my head.  I went in to the little make your own wine store in the big city, where they had all of the chemicals and additives on a shelf for the real do it yourselfers.  I bought a little of this and a little of that.  I probably have everything I need for a dozen batches of wine.

So where to begin?  Well, I like peaches, and this is just too easy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_I1sTZviWw

So, I'll just mess with that a bit...  Hmmm...  These all ask for pretty much the same additives.  I'll put some of that in...

Can I drink it yet?  No, eh?  Ok, I guess I'll have to wait and see.