2014 Vintage Norton - Da Vite a Vino

Listen, if you enjoy wine, few things feel as fulfilling and authentic as the experience of making your own wine from fresh grapes you’ve grown yourself. You don’t have to have a big vineyard. If well tended, just four or five wine grape vines in your back yard should give you a gallon or so of wine.  I know that's not much wine but it's fun and rewarding - it's like watching the completion of the circle of life! 

We harvested this years Norton grapes on Saturday August 2. After crushing and primary fermentation it looks like we will get just about a gallon that will give us 5 x 750 ml bottles. This year I made a 'second wine' by reinvigorating the fermentation with the spent grapes and skins from the first wine by adding sugar, water and more yeast. The sugar doesn't make it sweeter, it just gives the yeast more food to turn into alcohol. The color and taste will be lighter because most of those qualities went into the the first wine. We will get 5 bottles of that wine.

I've made wine many times before from wine grape concentrates for particular varieties. The wine I made for my daughters wedding was Valpolicella for the red and Verdicchio for the white - 30 bottles each. For my sons wedding I made Sangiovese for the red and Pinot Grigio for the white also 30 bottles of each.  

The gallon on the right is from the first crush. The gallon on the left is the second wine The color and taste will be lighter because most of those qualities went into the the first wine. The wine will settle out and clear. In a month or so I'll siphon it off the sediment on the bottom.