Homemade Wine: The Final Product

Wine - Finally we drink!

The wine, once fermented, is put into re-used glass wine bottles that have been steam cleaned. The color of this wine that was made almost borders on a dark rose, and has a higher alcohol/acidity level.  It is served in regular bar glasses (no fine crystal here) and is always served with food (as it always should be).  In this case, my favorite, what you see above is authentic tomato pie from a brick oven, old-world style.  I am fortunate to get at least one bottle of this wine per year, and I usually save it for homemade foods, and special occassions, one glass at a time (never the whole bottle in one shot).  DO NOT put it in the refrigerator, it will go bad, rather, keep it in a cool, dry place in your home.  

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Authentic Homemade is not like store-bought or vintage wine.  It is stronger and tastes very different.  Most of us love it, because it reminds us instantly at first sip, of the wine our ancestors, uncles, grandparents would drink.  Many who never had it before will find it strong, and depending on how well/poor it is made, it can taste like vermouth, or something worse like vinegar. In any case, one of my other favorites (other than that made by my cousins in Sicily) is that of Rome. The grapes in Rome are in fact white (Frascati is a wine from the region of Rome) and my cousins there too make it, but its a white homemade wine and tastes wonderful.   The best I ever had here in the US, is the wine you saw being made contained within these pages.  The worst, was a Dutch friend who claimed that his was checked up regularly by a "wine doctor" but it tasted awful.  I am sure it had nothing to do with his ethnicity, but more lack of knowledge.  You see, its hard to just make wine for the very first time and have it come perfect.  So get used to it not being too good the first few years around, but DO NOT give up.  You will reach perfection.  If you continue and carry down the recipe year after year, generation to generation, you can have something that was made the same way today, as it was a hundred years ago, and your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will thank you and enjoy something as simple as this they way you did a hundred years earlier.  Its the only way you can transport yourself in time and join them in this simplest of pleasures.  

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