I’ve been making wine from fresh juice since 1994. The juice I use is imported into Canada by Kamil Juices from Ontario. Kamil imports 100% vinifera grape juice from Italian, French and German vineyards. Kamil Juices are not from concentrate nor are they wine kits. Imagine if you harvested grapes from a commercial vineyard. Then you would crush and press these grapes and use the extracted juice to make wine. This is how Kamil Juice is processed. In the environment which I live this may be as close as I’ll ever get to making wine from fresh grapes.
This fall I put down three juices from Kamil. A Merlot and Nebbiolo from Italy and a Cabernet Sauvignon from France. The Merlot and Cab are still in the carboys and the Nebbiolo is bottled. I’ve been using these juices for some time now but this Nebbiolo has to be one of the best. It’s a big wine with lots of tannin and backbone. When I poured this juice into the fermenting bucket I knew it was something special. It’s colour was inky black and it smelled fantastic.
After the juice was fermented I racked it into a carboy and added an American Oak Spiral then left it for six weeks before filtering and bottling. The finished wine is impressive and I may have a potential star ageing in my cellar right now. I say a potential star because I don’t know how it will evolve with time. It’s a big tannic wine that will require some extensive ageing.
I’m very happy with my Nebbiolo right now but the anticipation of something even greater is what drives my passion for this fascinating craft.
There has been a push recently by the Canadian wine kit manufacturers to rebrand the amateur wine making industry. And I think it’s long overdue. Let’s face it our craft has never been taken serious except by those who participate. There are many reasons for this. The fallout from the Prohibition era and its bad wine is one of the main culprits. At that time wine was made by unknowledgeable and sometimes unscrupulous people whose main purpose was to produce alcohol for intoxication or profit. The result was the proliferation of some foul tasting stuff that seriously damaged the reputation of “homemade wine”. Of course with this explosion of uninformed amateur wine makers came a plethora of misinformation. Bad techniques and practices that still persist today.
Then we have the commercial interests who do their best to perpetuate the legend of “homemade wine”. They joke about it and make snide remarks. When they know the truth is that most commercial wine makers started just like you and me—In the kitchen doing small batches of wine.
Wine making is a craft. It requires knowledge, persistence and passion. Crafting great wine is within the realm of every wine maker. The more you learn and practice your craft the better you will become.
So it’s time to stricken the phrase “homemade wine” from our vocabulary and replace it with crafted wine. We are not “home wine makers” we’re craft wine makers. It will take some time to rebrand but I have vowed to do my small part. From this day on I will not use the words home or homemade in any of my writings pertaining to wine making. It’s craft wine for me from now on.
