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RonNH

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Hello, I live up in New Hampshire and have always wanted get my feet wet (pun intended) and make wine ever since I went to a wine making party many years back. I started looking on Amazon and other places to see what was available and to read reviews from like-minded folks. The process of making wine from a kit seemed simple enough and I had been saving bottles for some time so I ordered a six gallon WE Chard kit, one of the economical kits in case things went sour on me. My son-in-law loaned me some of his beer making equipment and I picked up a few needed things like a corker, which was replaced on my birthday by a very nice Italian corker from the same brother-in-law.

Things started well and I got some bubbling action in the airlock on the second day of fermentation and after two weeks, the SG was where it was supposed to be so I transferred the must into a glass carboy. I bet I checked on it twice a day to see how it was settling. I also added some oak chips in a homemade infuser I made from a plastic hydrometer case with drilled holes and a length of fishing line to retrieve it out of the carboy. I had read on some blog that someone had added oak to the second to give it more of a buttery feel.

In the meantime, I scraped,soaked,washed and sanitized 30 wine bottles...this was starting to seem like work but I really enjoyed every second of it. After a month, I checked the SG and it was ready to bottle. I ordered some very nice personalized labels from Next Day Fliers and gave the first bottle to some nice carpentry clients that I had just finished a year long renovation for, with instructions to not open the bottle for at least a month.

Of course I tried a bottle after a few days and it wasn't bad, now it has been bottled for three weeks and is missing a few more but I have plenty left. I then tried a Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir and Australian Chard one gallon kits from WE but they hardly seem worth the 4-5 bottle yield. Tomorrow I will start a six gallon batch of Luna Bianca WE Selection kit and see how that goes.

Thanks for this forum, I have picked up some tips and although I am the newest of Newbies compared to a lot of you, my enthusiasm is going to carry me further and some day I may graduate to crushing grapes and oak barrels. Thanks, Ron
 
You are right, 30 bottles of wine is just about the same work as 5 bottles of wine. Might as well make 30.

Oh, and one more thing...wait 6 months to bottle, longer if you can. You will thank me in a year or so. Time is the best ingrediant you can add to wine.
 

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