Gather Round the Table: Making Wine at Home (plus a great ceviche recipe!)

Regular readers know of my penchant for all things local, and while Iowa is now producing a few very good wines, it remains a challenge for some people to get wine they enjoy made close to home. One simple solution: make it yourself. It may sound daunting, but it isn’t really. In some ways it’s even easier than homebrewing beer, even if it does take a little longer, and it’s a hobby that can pay for itself rather quickly.

There is only one ironclad rule – sanitize. Wine is a fermented beverage, which means it is produced by the interaction of yeasts with the sugars in grapes. The byproducts of this interaction are alcohol and carbon dioxide. If other microbials get in there, it will result in other byproducts, none of which are beneficial to the wine and a few of which are just downright nasty. Thus every piece of equipment that will come into physical contact with the wine (and this includes your hands) must be thoroughly washed and sanitized. Just pretend you’re a surgeon when you’re doing it, albeit perhaps with a lower salary.

Home winemaking is, in many respects, just like its more popular cousin, homebrewing. The obvious difference is of course that we’re talking about grape juice rather than barley malt that is fermenting. The more subtle difference though is that, unless your are making a sparkling wine (which I don’t recommend for beginners), you’re going to let the carbon dioxide I mentioned escape to produce a still wine – meaning no bubbles.

Essentially all you are going to do is prepare the juice, add the yeast and let nature do its magic. But to create something good, there is some monitoring involved: checking temperature, acid/sugar levels, air exposure, etc. For all this you need equipment, and while there are many sources online, there is a great supply store just up the road in Dubuque called Bluff Street BrewHaus. There you an get all the equipment you need to get started as well as a kit full of ingredients for your first batch, all for about $100.

OK, these days 100 clams seems a lot to lay out, but when you realize that you’ll get about 2 cases of wine, and still have the equipment left to make more it becomes a pretty good deal. In addition, there’s the fun of the process and the potential camaraderie of making it with friends and family or even joining a home winemaking club (there are several – search online). There is nothing like the pride of accomplishment when you take that first sip of a good homemade wine. And even if your first attempt does not work out so well, there are loads of people around to help identify the problem and turn it into a valuable learning experience for the next batch. Experience after all is not just the best teacher; it’s the only teacher.

If you choose a light white wine for your first one, like a Pinot Grigio or even a Sauvignon Blanc, then this might be just the accompaniment. Ceviche is not, as some would have you believe, raw fish. It literally cooks in the acid if the citrus juices.

Ceviche:

1 pound scallops, cleaned and sliced

1 shallot, julienne

1/2 cup roasted red bell peppers, julienne

2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped

1 lemon, juiced

1 orange, juiced

1 lime, juiced

1 orange, supremed (remove the segments from between the piths, so they look like the canned mandarin type)

Mix all ingredients together and let sit for at least 2 hours stirring often to coat scallops with citrus juice

		Kurt Michael Friese, Gather Food Correspondent
	Gather ‘Round the Table is a regular feature of Gather Essentials: Food. Chef Kurt Michael Friese is a freelance food & wine writer & photographer. He is also the co-owner - with his wife Kim - of Devotay, a restaurant in Iowa City, serves on the Slow Food USA Board of Directors, and is owner/publisher of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. His book, A Cook's Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland was released in the fall of 2008. He lives in rural Johnson County, Iowa. Keep up with Kurt Michael's food series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.

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