Author Topic: grow your own wine?  (Read 459 times)

Alfred

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grow your own wine?
« on: Jul 30, 2020, 01:23:26 PM »
The lady who lives next door to me has many interesting things growing in her garden and i noticed a grape vine evidently growing up some trellis work , i believe they are the red grape variety. ,and they are getting bigger,being watered regularly,


her mother when visiting her told my wife and us that we might be need when it came to treading the grapes, my wife replied wash your feet first as we had a good laugh over the garden fence,


how ever its amazing to think that fifty years ago the idea of growing grapes would have been considered  unlikely, yet today our climate has has changed and is obviously got a lot warmer ,


so i wonder what else the lady next door might end up trying to grow, ?


Q are you adventurous, if so what might you have tried growing, ??

biglouis

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #1 on: Jul 30, 2020, 04:50:39 PM »
I had a big phase for making my own wine in the 1970s. I did not grow anything myself but did use "country" recipes for making nettle, blackcurrent and gooseberry wine from ingredients which grew locally in the fields. I was fortunate to live on the very edge of Liverpool with plenty of farm lands and fields where "stuff" grew wild.

I did try making wine from kits but they were not the same.

My goosegog champagne was excellent.
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Traveller

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #2 on: Jul 31, 2020, 07:51:07 AM »
My late father made wine from just about anything.   It was mostly ghastly.  He also had two large greenhouses and in one he had a grape vine that stretched the length of it.  It produced a good number of grapes, but his wine making was never too successful.

I'm in the process of making some nettle beer.  No shortage of nettles!
You'll have had your tea.

GrumpyOldFart

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #3 on: Jul 31, 2020, 07:51:22 AM »
how ever its amazing to think that fifty years ago the idea of growing grapes would have been considered  unlikely, yet today our climate has has changed and is obviously got a lot warmer
I thought grapes had been grown in England for wine making for 2,000 years! The Romans never went anywhere without planting grapes! We have a lot to thank them for   :)

Sheila

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #4 on: Jul 31, 2020, 08:19:25 AM »
I used to make wine.  The most successful one had lots of wallflower petals in it but I can't remember what else!

I remember that I had to syphon the brewing wine into a clean demi john and clean the sediment from the original one.

One morning I sorted out several demi johns sampling a tiny bit of the wine to see if it needed more sugar.  I then went to the supermarket and realised I was walking a bit strangely as the pavement had become uneven!

Michael Rolls

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #5 on: Jul 31, 2020, 08:27:10 AM »
Tiny bit?
Mike 😊
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Alex22

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #6 on: Jul 31, 2020, 09:26:12 AM »
Not wine, but my Dad used to make ginger beer, much to the annoyance of my Mum, as he'd keep bottles of it in the bottom of the airing cupboard.

I think he had to stop when a bottle burst, so Mum had the final word. 😉
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klondike

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #7 on: Jul 31, 2020, 09:32:03 AM »
I made wine for quite a few years. One superb demijohn of elderberry I never succeeded in reproducing, many that were passable and no small number that you've save till already drunk.

Just about all had sultanas as a major ingredient with a variety of other things as a flavouring. We were friendly with the couple next door and regular boozy Friday nights ensued. We still exchange cards and notes with them all these years later. He was proud of his elderflower wine and I think a parsnip or some such. I had to be quite sozzled to manage either.

One notable failure was rosehip. I'd gathered pounds of the things and was boiling them up in an enormous aluminium pan. You are supposed to avoid metal pans if possible but I had no choice. As it happened it made no difference as they stunk the house out and there was a scum of maggots on the top so the whole lot went to add to the compost heap and I had one hell of an ear bending.
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Michael Rolls

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #8 on: Jul 31, 2020, 09:33:00 AM »
Mum used to make ginger beer when we were kids and used cider bottles, the ones with the black, had rubber screw cork with the red sealing ring. She kept the bottles in the bottom of a cocktail cabinet we had which had outward opening double doors. One hot summers evening one of the bottles burst - shows how good a seal the cork made because it was the glass that gave way, not the cork and the 'explosion' was so powerful it blew the doors open, although didn't damage them. Rather a mess - thankfully, the cabinet stood on lino, not carpet
Mike
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klondike

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #9 on: Jul 31, 2020, 09:37:49 AM »
Exploding bottles are quite common with home beer brewing as they have to still be fermenting when bottled or they are flat. With wine you make sure that doesn't happen by using campden tablets to kill off the yeast at the end of the fermentation. You can still get accidents and popped corks though. All homemade is best stored somewhere that sort of problem isn't too important.
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biglouis

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #10 on: Jul 31, 2020, 12:03:27 PM »
The demijohns I used had a sort of valve closing which "popped" as the wine fermented. The sound caused a lot of amusement when I had guests.
Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools.

Alfred

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #11 on: Jul 31, 2020, 12:41:19 PM »
Although iv never tasted it rhubarb wine, is supposed to be really delicious, to drink,


Q; have you tried it, and was it as nice as has been said, ??

klondike

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #12 on: Jul 31, 2020, 12:56:50 PM »
The thing about home made wine is that there is no such thing as "rhubarb wine" there is only the batch of rhubard wine that Edith made last year. Even with the same recipe the output will vary and you can be sure that there will be lots of recipes and lots of vintners who probably won't do exactly the same thing at the same time every time and that's not even considering the variation in the actual ingredients.
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Coastal

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #13 on: Jul 31, 2020, 06:58:43 PM »
I buried a couple of empty Merlot bottles in the garden ....... Nothing happened ??? 
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klondike

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Re: grow your own wine?
« Reply #14 on: Jul 31, 2020, 08:57:08 PM »
You must have planted them the wrong way up. Common mistake.
So long and thanks for all the fish