...unless of course, you're actually white... then it's just weird.
Make no sense, does it. Well, 3 weeks ago my mom brought me a couple gallons of grape juice that she had painstakenly obtained from a few cases of donated vinyard grapes via a labourious process of mashing, pulping and straining through cheesecloth. My intend of course, was to make some primo wine out of this viscous crimson liquid.
Did I mention a few weeks back about how a friend of my moms gave her a few crates of grapes that weren't ripe enough at the vinyards harvest time, and by time they were ripe, it was too far through the wine making process to use them? Well, anyway, at the time I said hey mom, crush them into jiuce, bring me the juice, and I'll make some wine out of it! She did, she brought it too me, and for the last three weeks I've been fermenting the stuff.
What I probably didn't mention was that this thick purple goo with a specific gravity of 1.075 and a potential alcohol of 11% by volume started losing it's colour the first day I pitched the yeast. I had never seen anything like it... day after day, the purple turned to brown, then orange to yellow as the yeast ate away at the sugars and produced alcohol... I thought for sure the batch must have been infected. After about 10 days the ifermentation was done, so I racked it into a clean carbouy (removing the sediment and yeast) and left it to settle and clear for another couple of weeks. Last night I bottled it. So far, it looks like fairly yellowish white wine. In a wine glass, it's clear, has pretty good legs, but still tastes pretty imature - like alcoholic welches white grape juice, but with a nice wine aftertaste ;-)
So this is the thing that has freaked me out - there's no trace of purple any more... I though for sure this was going to make red wine! How did this happen? It's totally strange. Stranger still, is that it's actually palletable. I think that after a few (or more) months to mature, it's not going to be a bad white wine at all - it'll probably clear a lot more by then too. So bottom line, I got 9 bottles for a dollars worth of yeast and about 30 cents worth of sugar (I topped it up a bit to bring the potential alcohol up from 9.5 to 11%).
Still... it's the damnedest thing how purple grapes make purple grape juice, which makes white wine. What exactly do they make RED wine out of then??? Actually, now that I think of it, I think they crush the grapes but fermet the skins with the juice to make red wine...
Ah yes, Calvin, your very last sentence hits the nail on the head, or the skin on the grape. Remember the informative tour of the wineries, where they explained about making red wine,leaving skins on but just using gentle pressure to pop the skins and release the juices. Otherwise, the wine becomes a white. You know, I had forgotten that too, as the juice from my pressing was so very deep wine red! Live and learn, and enjoy another glass! I wonder just how long it needs to age to become a perfect white?? 400 years??
Posted by: Marm at November 13, 2003 01:22 PMmmm... a white wine that tastes like a red? i've been looking for such an animal all my life! i'm not a white wine fan (is it because of all those heavy metal vampire movies with the hot chicks drinking red wine? who knows?), but i keep trying different ones to see if there's anything i want to drink when i'm eating prawns in dill sauce...
on another note, if you ever get offered a show at mesaluna, take it.. the sound was killer... the bar is expensive, but i brought my own flask of vodka and the iga is just down the street (too many nights have i spent over $30 at the bar that i just played for free... now i'm a b.y.o. boy...) i think i'll have pics up on our site from it soon...
Posted by: sage at November 13, 2003 03:42 PMHey - when did you play Mesa Luna? I don't think I got an invite to that - unless it was the Hallowe'en gig (sorry I missed it...).
Maybe I'll bring a bottle of Absinthe to the Cobalt show :-)
http://msg.mp3.com/artistforums/liststory/?topic_id=164614&month=200311&category_id=3009
it's officially the end...
mp3.com is shutting it's doors and selling it all to cnet...but the music is being deleted...
i saw that coming a year and a half ago
I stopped using mp3.com when they stopped paying me. That was at least 3 years ago...
Hey Como, you coming to Cancun or what?
mesaluna show was on nov. 11... i reckoned you would be bushed from your big trip... i think i mentioned it somewhere in an email or on the blog, but i didn't push the show because we're really pushing the cd pre-release show..
die mp3.com, die!!!
Posted by: sage at November 14, 2003 11:35 AMCancun?
well i'm in th eprocess.....look so far liek that'll end up my plan.....if you can give me some details they will put together a package for me that could probably put me in th esame resot at the same time....so...let me know....other wise i'm either going with sam or by my self....or evem tp Van when you guys are in mexico....cause patty....(darren's patty) is due then...and it would end up a surprise so don't say anything..just in case you don't end up coming through on your arrangements....F*ckers
get it together, get off the wine....LOL...hahahahaha
Posted by: vetiver at November 15, 2003 01:49 AM