Making our own Wine!

Growing up with a homebrewer for a father, I learned a lot about making beer. Over the last few years I have really begun drinking more red wine, and was curious to how it's done. I thought it would be fun to find a way to make our own! Although the most local company I found was not one where we get to go barefoot and crush our own grapes Lucille Ball style, we still have the pleasure of knowing we made it ourselves!

 We went to Tigard Winecrafters in downtown Tigard, Ore.

 The shop was cute and we were able to taste wine before we decided what kind to make!

The owner, Sharon, also sells wine by the bottle that is made in store.

 Since this wine shop doesn't do actual grape stomping, she purchases the juice from a large wine vendor and then we use it to make wine. It comes in this large plastic pouch and is a very concentrated juice that smelled delicious!

We dumped it in a large bucket

Added tons of water

 And added grape skins and seeds that help to add flavor.

Toss them in....

 Add wood chips to add some additional flavor...

 And stir!

Then we added in the yeast by making a big whirlpool with the spoon.

We sealed the container and will let it sit for 6 weeks before we go back to bottle!

The lovely shop owner Sharon Sand taught us how to make the wine and assisted us in the process. She told us a lot about how she started this business not too long ago and has been having a great time doing something she loves. She was really inspiring! Between now and when we go back to bottle the wine, we will be creating our own wine bottle labels. Since I tend to be challenged in the artistic department, I enlisted Tiffany from tiffwilldesign to create my labels. She is at work now on those and I will do another post after we bottle! The wine will have to age until December---which is perfect because these bottles will make wonderful Christmas presents! I'll let you know how the bottle-ing process goes when we do it in July!