Wine not?

Dear Shayne,

Since we're already making liqueurs and beers, why not round it off with an Alcoholic Hat Trick, right? Yup, we're also making... wine!

Can't take too much credit for this, as we are involved with 2 other couples who have waaaay more wine-making experience than we do, so we were really along for the ride, contributing money, muscle, and plenty of tasting to the cause.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos during the pressing. Such a bummer. While we did not do it Ethel and Lucy style, it was still pretty cool.

But here are a few other photos...

In October, we transferred the wine from the steel barrels to the oak barrels for the final few months. This is the last part of the transfer:


Right before bottling, we had to clean and sterilize all of our bottles. Since we did not have a bottle rack, we drilled a bunch of holes in a sheet of plywood and put it between two sawhorses. Worked great:


We bottled the wine a few weeks ago -- here it is, coming out of the barrel:


And here it is, filling the bottles:


We got about 8 cases of wine out of the deal. Here they are, filling the Mini:

(Heh. Mini full o' wine. Pretty great!)

I'm pleased to report that the wine is... GOOD! As with all of these crazy alcohol endeavors, it's hard to know how things are going to turn out as we invest many months into making the final product. So I'm happy it worked out!

Now I need to work on making labels... :)

love,
kelly