Last week, I wrote about starting my first batch of home made wine since the summer of 2004. Although it’s normal to leave the wine alone for 8 to 10 days, I checked the specific gravity of the liquid in the primary fermentor and found it was already at 1.000.

So, with the help of my son Colin, 13 years, who is visting me for a week, I decided to rack the wine into the carboy. After cleaning, sterilizing, and rinsing the carboy, I siphoned the liquid from the primary into the carboy.

This reminds me of the time my brother Andrew first tried siphoning. He called me up one night, at about 10:30PM, slurring his words, giggling, and already half drunk. “Ian, how do you use a siphon? Every time I try to do this, I end up with a mouthful of wine that I have to swallow.”

“How many mouthfuls have you had, Andrew?”

“giggle I dunno anymore.” More giggles. I can hear his lovely wife in the background laughing at him.

I tell him to put his wife on the phone, and after some rude but fun comments about sucking, I explain to her how to get a siphon going, and what to do next.

Back to my rack day. Once I had the carboy filled, I noticed that there was a lot of carbon dioxide in the liquid that was coming out of the wine. I tried putting on the fermentation lock, but after about half an hour, it was filled up with bubbles and some of the juices. Best to leave the lock off for a couple of hours to let the gasses escape, top it up with some water, and put the lock on later.

So what’s the “red” part of the day? Well, it was the day to start my red wine, of course. I chose a Valpolicella from Grand Cru – a robust Italian grape, with juice for a 4 to 5 week fermentation before bottling.

The specific gravity of this once I was finished mixing water, the concentrated juice, and the bentonite was 1.080 – which means a wine with about 10% alcohol content. This wine also came with an oak chip infusion bag – Valpolicella does very well with the oak added.

Next week, I’ll check the specific gravity of the red wine, and likely will rack it into another carboy, while checking the white to see if it is ready for degassing – which means a specific gravity of about 0.990 and no observable signs of yeast activity.

For now, I’m enjoying store bought South African wine – a white Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc.

Wine making is fun, and for those that drink wine and are libertarians, there’s probably no better way than to make your own and stop supporting government owned businesses that compete with others.

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