A Tasty Benefit Of Filtering Red Wine.

The penny drops for me about a House-Wine...

As I have told you recently, any work to do with making wine is fun despite the jolly hard physical aspect of it. We filtered & bottled wine the other day. Each action requires time and a lot of cleanliness. In fact this cleanliness is the major time waster. Yet 100% necessary.

In case you are wondering how one cleans: we only use a high pressure water hose. Only water gets used to clean the wine barrels, filters, pipes etc. No cleaning liquid is used. Gosh, that would be awful and leave a never ending aftertaste vintage after vintage. Imagine getting a whiff of Sunlight liquid with your red wine...?

At the start of any wine activity ( filtering, bottling etc ) the equipment used gets cleaned again. Before & after. Not much fun but what can you do. We had finally set up the filtering paraphernalia and even before we filtered the wine itself, about 100 liters of water got filtered first.
Cleanliness = fabulous wine .

It was rather fun to at first see the water shoot through the pipe and then it started to pink as the first bit of red filtered through. The trick was to know when the last bit of water mix is out of the pipes. Just in case, a big bucket got filled with the deep purple liquid that smelled like heaven. This red wine aroma alone would have switched any white wine lover to red. Once the bucket was filled, the rest of the filtered wine got pumped into its proper home.

After all was done and dusted, cleaned and cleaned again, this bucket of deep purple nectar was filled into about 5 or 6 liter bottles. As you might have guessed, this is what the Garagistes call their " House Wine ". A wine not to be sold but good enough to drink yourself or haul out when friends come over.

As a helper of this wine making process, I got given 4 of those House wines and the other day I cracked a bottle open. Funnily enough, these bottles get closed with a lid similar to a coke bottle. No corking there!

When I took the first sip of this House wine, it was as if a philharmonic orchestra of flavours performed on my tongue. This ordinary house wine was out of this world. The delectable berry note was front and center. The red wine taste was pure and sensual. Overall it had a lightness that made it uncomplicated to have a second or third glass.

A simply divine wine indeed. Can you imagine, what the actual wine tastes like if the house wine
( which is a tad bit diluted with some water ) makes you break out in a song of praise, joy and sheer pleasure at being able to drink wine...

P/S: My Mum is the wine maker / Garagiste! Mum, I bow to you.

Biggi