Making Wine

Image by terriem
We have an old plum tree in the back yard that puts out some cherry-sized plums each year. This year, it went bonkers…I’m guessing that the chicken coop underneath the tree in the fall added more nutrients to the soil. What to do?
Making jam is the obvious solution, but we don’t eat much jam and we’ll already be making blackberry jam for gifts. So I decided to try wine.
I walked into a local store, the Beverage People, and asked…how little could I spend to reasonably set myself up to make plum wine? I’d told myself that, if I got out the door for less than 0, I’d go for it.
It turns out that the equipment, plus the supplies they recommended for a batch of plum wine, came to . Here’s the first batch, waiting for the addition of yeast tomorrow.
It’s a bit fancier than the dandelion wine my mom made, fermenting in whatever glass bottles were available with balloons on top to act as a fermentation lock. But I’m hopeful for a decent product, and the cheerful fellow at the store pointed out to me that since plum wine finishes fast, I might even be able to enter it in the Harvest Fair. Which, up until Arnie signed an emergency bill a couple of weeks ago, was illegal.
Despite the fact that they legalized home winemaker competitions, taking some of the fun out of it, I might still enter if I get a wine that I really like. But I’ll be sending it out for xmess presents for sure!
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