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Anybody making wine this fall?
#132816
10/16/05 12:16 AM
10/16/05 12:16 AM
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Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 839 Elmwood Park, Illinois
YoTonyB
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Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 839
Elmwood Park, Illinois
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Can't hardly walk down an alley the last six weeks without slipping on a grape skin or getting splashed with grape juice!
I haven't made wine for a couple of years. A friend of my dad's crushes grapes every year and gets about 150 gallons. I would always help with the crush and the press and take home about 15 gallons. But I haven't crushed grapes with him for a few years and hadn't given it much thought until I passed a neighborhood produce store (just a half-mile from the house) and saw their message board advertising wine grapes and pails of fresh juice. Bought two buckets of burgundy juice a couple of weeks ago and just grabbed a bucket of blush zin.
Assuming everything goes well, I should be drinking the zinfandel next summer and the burgundy by Christmas (although that might be a little early for the Big Red!).
tony b.
I like to drink wine more than I used to -- anyway, I'm drinking more...
"Kid, these are my f**kin' work clothes." "You look good in them golf shoes. You should buy 'em"
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Re: Anybody making wine this fall?
#132819
10/16/05 11:08 AM
10/16/05 11:08 AM
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Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 15,058 The Slippery Slope
plawrence
RIP StatMan
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RIP StatMan
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 15,058
The Slippery Slope
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Zinfandel is my absolute favorite, but I never knew that the grape did well in Chicago.
"Difficult....not impossible"
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Re: Anybody making wine this fall?
#132827
10/18/05 02:18 AM
10/18/05 02:18 AM
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Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 839 Elmwood Park, Illinois
YoTonyB
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Neighborhood Guy
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OP
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Underboss
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 839
Elmwood Park, Illinois
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Turnbull -- on the way into work this evening, I passed a house that easily had 200 empty grape lugs on the curb waiting for garbage pick-up tomorrow. That's 3-1/2 TONS of grapes and that will probably yield 250-300 gallons.
Plaw -- because of the severe winters, the midwest is a notoriously difficult place to grow the grape varieties (vitis vinifera) typically associated with good California or imported wines, including zinfandel. So the grapes or juices used for winemaking are trucked in from California, usually from the Central Coast, or occasionally imported from Europe. The native grape varieties in the midwest are a different variety (vitis labrusca or vitis rotundifolia) or they're engineered hybrids which tolerate the climate, and other environmental factors, better than the vinefera variety.
Did you know the zinfandel grape is one of the few that can produce a white or red wine? The dark-skinned grape yields a clear juice when the grapes are crushed. Crushed and pressed immediately, you'll get a white wine or a blush. Crushed and allowed to ferment on the skins before pressing, the naturally occuring acids and the alcohol will extract color from the skins producing a rose or red wine depending on how long the fermentation takes place on the skins.
Sicilian Babe, look for the Caravello brand of Limoncello. They also make an orange (Orancello?) which is also very good. Limoncello poured over a Johnnie's Italian ice has become my personal version of an Italian lemonade! How is your husband making his Limoncello?
tony b.
"Kid, these are my f**kin' work clothes." "You look good in them golf shoes. You should buy 'em"
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