The tradition of accompanying a festive feast with a drink of alcoholic beverages goes back thousands of years. In antiquity, in many countries, wine was consumed instead of water because of the unsuitability of the latter. And the custom of serving alcohol on the table, ideally, has nothing to do with drinking. Doctors emphasize the benefits of a moderate amount of wine for the body, it all depends on the quality of the drink.
What is sold in our stores and supermarkets often has absolutely nothing to do with a natural drink, with the exception of the name on the price tags and labels. But nobody forces you to buy a surrogate. There is nothing complicated in making isabella wine at home.
Why did we choose this particular grape variety? The fact is that it grows almost throughout the territory of our country, with the exception of the regions of the Far North. The variety is quite unpretentious and hardy, besides it has a pleasant taste and does not apply to table varieties. So the wine from the "Isabella" variety is an ideal option for home-grown winemakers. Next, we’ll talk more about the process of preparing a drink.
To make isabella wine at home, you will need the grapes themselves. If you have the opportunity to assemble it yourself, then do it in dry, clear weather, preferably without waiting for the first frost. If you do not have your own vineyard, look at the dry clusters in the market and make sure that there is a grayish coating on the berries. We will talk about it below. In the absence of plaque, quality isabella wine at home simply will not work.
For every 10 kilograms of grapes you will need about three kilograms of sugar. Clusters should be dried if necessary, but in no case should you wash them. This is a categorical ban. The fact is that the gray coating that the berries are covered with is a real wine yeast. And if it is washed off, there will be no fermentation. as a result, isabella wine will not start playing at home.
Unclean clusters of grapes need to be hand-picked from berries. This is done in order to avoid excessive astringency and bitterness of the finished product. Bite a grape twig lightly. Feel the bitterness? All of it then goes into wine, if you decide to neglect this advice. For lovers of tart wine, we note that the bones contain quite enough tannins, and if their quantity seems insufficient, then you can just leave only a couple of brushes.
Then, in an enameled bucket, you need to thoroughly mash all the berries manually or with a wooden cracker. You can, of course, use the method of the hero of Celentano from the movie "The Taming of the Shrew," but in a city apartment it is difficult to crush grapes like that. In order for no berry to remain whole, you need to take grapes in modest portions. Yes, this lesson is not for five minutes, but no one promised you the ease and speed of the process. After all the grapes are crushed, the container with it is covered with gauze and left for a week in a warm place. But you should not forget that juice is fermenting in you. A couple of times a day, the wort needs to be mixed by hand or with a wooden spatula.
After all the cake rises up, it must be traced through gauze. Do not spare your hands and squeeze out each portion of the pulp (cake) well. After all, the amount of the final product depends on the quality of the spin. The drier the pulp, the more wine will turn out.
Pour the squeezed juice into the bottles, add sugar and cork with stoppers with a water lock. If you do not have large bottles, you can use three-, five- or ten-liter jars, and instead of a cork with a water lock, put a rubber glove on the neck . In the glove, you need to make a couple of punctures with a needle.
Homemade Isabella wine should roam for about three weeks. The fact that the process is over, you will tell the absence of gas bubbles in the water lock or blowing off the glove. Now the wine needs to be decanted, but so as not to disturb the sediment. The easiest way to do this is through a flexible tube according to the method known to every motorist or aquarist. A flexible hose is lowered into a jar or bottle so that its end does not reach the sediment a little, and we take the other end into our mouth and draw a little liquid into it. Then quickly transfer the tube with pouring wine into a clean bottle. If you have a shortage of glass containers, then temporarily you can use plastic bottles. Now the wine needs to ripen for about a month (at least). All this period it should be stored in a darkened and preferably cool place, in addition, you will have to express it a couple more times.
Only after all these conditions are met, you can finally pour the resulting drink into beautiful bottles and start tasting the wine made by yourself.