Our Own Wine

One of the things about Canada that is not as great as the U.S. is the alcohol prices.  Last year, I gave J the book Boozehound for Christmas.  It it a really interesting book about the history and backstory of different alcohol and cocktails, and as a result, we decided to keep more of a complete bar in our home.

Moving to Canada, this was the wrong time to decide to diversify our drinking.  For example, Woodford Reserve Bourbon is $25 at the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) and $18.90 at the ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) store in Virginia, both state-run liquor stores.

Our next door neighbors offered us a fantastic glass of wine at their house. After complimenting them on it, we discovered that they had "made" it themselves at a local winery.  Here, you begin by adding yeast to the grapes and juice, and then you leave the mix in the winery for about 2 months, where they care for it.  Next, you go back to the winery where you bottle and label your wines.  Then you can enjoy.

We bottled Amarone-style wine, which goes for about $30 a bottle in the LCBO, and we've been really happy with our wine.  We named our wine "Phoney Baloney Amarone" and  "it's a terrible situation" after a story from one of J's co-workers.  We were able to get 30 bottles for about $250 and the cost of the bottles.  We can reuse the bottles the next time we bottle wine, so we don't recycle these bottles, we rinse them and save them for next time.

According to Judy at our winery, on-premises winemaking is popular in places like California, but may or may not be available in certain states, depending on local laws.  We ordered our wine from a kit, but some places may be more hands-on.  It was really fun.

I have fun pictures of this, but am having problems syncing my phone with my computer and got someone else's cloud pics so this time, no pics. But I didn't stomp on grapes like I expected either. Maybe next time.