Don't write to me. Don't ring me. Don't call to the house. This is wine-making time for me. I'm sterilising equipment, weighing and washing fruit, labelling bottles, praying for the year of years, but I'll be happy if the standard remains as high as last year's - especially the elderberry, the glorious elderberry of just a few weeks away. No, I do not compete with the Marques de Riscal, or with any other of the wonderful marqueses of Spanish vintages, about which I know a little, or the often bewitching wines of the Languedoc, about which I know less, never mind the Californian tantalisers. It is just that "home wine" is in a different category, and not only because it uses fewer chemicals than its commercial fellow travellers.
Look at it this way. You like beef, pork, chicken; but you don't compare them with venison, hedgehog, pheasant. Right, now we are getting somewhere.
"You should share your passion with others," a female friend urged, "for is it not a crying shame that so much good fruit is wasted in Ireland today when it should be turned into wine or, at least, into jam, giving seasonal employment to many, ideally working for a small, handy, local co-operative?"
A good "coort"
Having long advanced past the 70 mark, I can remember the berry-picking of youth, a great and rare opportunity for a good "coort" in a distant field, way back in the Thirties and Forties.
Nowadays, it seems, few go that way any more, because the berries are not mentioned in the TV commercials. And who among the younger brethren, anyway, would recognise a blackberry from belladonna?
Right, then, I will let you in. The first and obvious think is education. Visit the local library. Read all about it. Take your time. Write notes. Don't be satisfied with one author: read three or four.
All writers agree on one fundamental point, and emphasise it often: cleanliness, that which is next to godliness, according to my poor mother.
In your ordinary dealings in life, I know, you take chances and fairly liberally at that. Making wine, you take no chances. You sterilise everything.
The wisest way to start making wine is to buy a kit. Ring the advertising manager of this paper and he (or is it she?) will send you a list of places where kits may be purchased.
For example, if you live in Dublin, you will find the retail store for such products fairly close to Trinity College; another such outlet is in Patrick Street, Dun Laoghaire; and very likely every parish in Ireland has one (or should have).
From reading the books you will by now have a good idea of the basic principles, mainly that boiling water kills unwanted yeast; that sugar is changed into alcohol by using another kind of yeast at the right temperature; and that the fruit in use supplies the taste. Wine may be made from all fruit, most vegetables, and many flowers (I am considering the possibilities of garlic).
Follow carefully the instructions which go with every wine kit and I will be surprised if you write to tell me of your failure. Of course, where the kit says "sugar", supply the sugar, not salt or baking powder: taste it, to make sure (I address myself to men, of course, not to women, who know these things). Water temperature is important: water bubbles when boiling but, if in doubt, ask a female. Yeast is added when the liquid is cool (in temperature, I mean; water is always cool in the other sense: It is cool to drink water).
Ready to drink
The great advantage of the kit is that, normally, you should end your great introduction to wine-making with seven bottles of wine almost ready to drink or to share with your friends, and at a price just a fraction of what the grape wine would have cost you.
If, of course, you have large quantities of grapes from your glasshouse, garage or what was once the children's room, you can compete with Spanish, French, Italian, Chilean, Romanian, South African, Californian wines, or whatever you are having yourself. Unless grapes become available in shops at about 20p per pound it is not economical to buy this fruit for your wine. Go, instead, to the hedgerows and exercise your arms and fingers.
Some authors advise you not to wash the fruit but, having weighed it, I think it safer to do so. When picking fruit I do not dip below a certain altitude because I have been warned against foxes' urine (and I wouldn't put it past the badgers, either). Foxes these days are all over the place, even along the canals; in the early mornings I see them often even in Rathmines and Foxrock, busy at bins.
Having raised your morale via the kit, and having proved to yourself that you can make wine, and that even if it tastes rather different to what you have known previously as wine, your product is potable. From there you go to a recipe in one of those books, again following meticulously the instructions, and within a few weeks you find yourself giving lessons to the neighbours, as they taste the product.
When to bottle
Bit by bit one equips oneself with a weighing scales, fermentation bins, demi-johns (large bottles which take the wine from the bins after the initial, vigorous fermentation has died a little), and an object which, when put into the product, will tell you when to bottle.
As to bottles, many taverns and hotels will be glad to supply you with as many as you are willing to take away; but be sure to sterilise them. I use bleach, which is cheap but dangerous. A lot of water is needed to get rid of it (and just a wee drop will spoil all your best efforts). Ask the partner how she sterilised the babies' bottles and leave the job to her, if willing.
Finally, please don't try to sell your product without having discussed the matter with the Revenue Commissioners. It is legal to make wine for yourself but it is not legal to sell it, or to exchange it for something else, without some arrangement having been made beforehand with the Revenue, a crowd not to be crossed. Slainte mhaith!