Wine Making

I want to try this approach to get started - it looks cheap and it's supposed to produce a pretty good wine.

http://www.michiganwines.com/buy-sell-grapes

http://www.klinekrestcertifiedorganicproduce.com/KlineKrestCertifiedOrganicSmallFruits.htm

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41825

Results

The wine is good, a tiny bit more sour than I'd like. I back-sweetened just a little. My original numbers were quite a bit off. I ended up needing 6 bottles of juice for 5 gallons. It made 21 bottles, but I also spilled a lot in the process (and drank a bit at various stages). I think 5 gallons should make 24 bottles.

UPDATE: After the wine sat for a few weeks, the sour mellowed out quite a bit. It's pretty good now, on par with a cheap bottle.

Still, it was about $30 for the juice, negligible for the rest; $1.50 / bottle is pretty good. I'm looking at wine kits that run ~$70, that will be about $2.30 / bottle.

Kits

These look good

• http://www.northernbrewer.com/master-vintner-winemakers-reserve-cabernet-sauvignon
• http://www.northernbrewer.com/master-vintner-winemakers-reserve-malbec

Bentonite Clay

• 2 t clay
• 1/2 C boiling water

Stir and let sit at least 4 hours

Mix 2T/gal into the wine and mix the wine every hour for a few hours. Be sure to have used a campden tablet to stop fermentation. This is also a good point to degas if you're doing that by hand.

Timing

Bottling

Cleaning 30 bottles took about 45, but there was a lot of labels, can do it in less than 30 if there are no labels. Bottling and corking took about 20 minutes each.