If you were to tour a commercial winery, you would see a lot of heavy equipment and several large fermentation tanks outside the winery; inside you would observe a variety of stainless steel storage tanks and oak barrels, with hoses strewn about the concrete floor. Then you'd probably believe that the idea of winemaking in a living room is a ridiculous one. However if a person wants to make wine (a perfectly civilized and legal endeavor), and if he or she lives in a small apartment, then the ridiculous somehow becomes possible. Let us examine the problems and joys of domestic vinification.
Most of the time my home winery is no more bother than a small cactus on a window sill. Granted, a houseplant is certainly less conspicuous than a half dozen five-gallon carboys, numerous bottles of various sizes and shapes, and a Yugoslav oak barrel. (Ignore the eighteen cases of bottles hiding behind the couch.) But by arranging these containers efficiently, I don't give up much living space to the hobby. If more company shows up than I have room for, I can easily convince one or two guests that it's fun to sit on a barrel instead of a chair. All the while my wine lies in repose, patiently waiting for time and gravity to do their jobs.
If I have you thinking of establishing a winery in your living room to provide a needed conversation piece, don't make a rash decision until you hear what happens in October and November each year. Since I'm not wealthy enough to buy quality grapes, I go to a friend's vineyard and pick his unwanted second crop grapes. These are small clusters that ripen two or three weeks later than first copy. Picking vines limited to second crop is like panning for gold where others have preceded you: If you're patient you'll get something, but you wish you had arrived first. My usual goal is to get two hundred pounds of grapes, a manageable amount to work with at home. To get that amount would require just forty-five leisurely minutes of picking first crop from ten or eleven vines. However, since these vines have only second crop left, the picking time increases dramatically--up to twelve man-hours of wading through hundreds of vines, twelve hours of searching for tiny clusters that may be hiding anywhere under the leaves. For this reason a picking crew, preferably two gullible friends, is mandatory. After all, I must save some strength for the big solo job that awaits when I get the grapes home.
After I muscle two plastic trash cans containing the fruits of our labor into the living room, I feel exhaustion creeping up on me, but there's no time for rest. Several more operations remain before I can quit. The first, obviously, is to crush the grapes. Lacking both money and space for an automatic stemmer-crusher, I rely on a time-honored technique that requires me to change into shorts and wash my feet. (I, too, considered this alternative revolting and unacceptable until finding out that a friend who makes better wine than I stomps his grapes.) Grape treading is much faster than crushing by hand (especially if you have size 13 feet), and it has a surprisingly soothing effect on feet that spent the morning trudging through a vineyard.
After crushing, the next step is determined by the type of wine I want to make. If I'm making a red wine, I leave the skins in during most of the fermentation, and thus have several days to rest before pressing. I need only add a little sulfur dioxide to kill off spoilage bacteria and wild yeasts before calling it a day. However, if I'm making a white wine, either from white or black grapes, I must press right away. White wine from black grapes? Sure! Virtually all grape varieties have colorless juice; the pigment is in the skins. Thus, to make white wine from black grapes, one presses immediately after crushing instead of fermenting with the skins present. In any event, I face the unpleasant duty of pressing today. Using only a small basket press, this is a time- and energy-consuming operation, one that wipes out both an evening and a winemaker.
When I've finally completed this task, and the juice (or must, as we call it) is safely capped up; in carboys, the winemaking for the day is done. Now the housework begins. A juice-soaked press, two trash cans containing a total of eighty pounds of skins and stems, and miscellaneous smaller implements sit on newspaper in the living room, silently demanding attention tonight. The skins and newspaper go out to the dumpster, but where's the best place to clean such large, unwieldy equipment? In the bathtub, of course! By leaving the door open, I can listen to whatever late-night talk show happens to be on. When I've washed everything, when I've scooped all the skins and seeds out of the tub, only then can I escape to the bedroom. As I do so, I vaguely remember awakening eighteen hours ago, looking forward to getting out for a morning of fun in the sun.
The next day begins with new challenges. Adding a starter culture of yeast to the must takes just one or two minutes, but it's followed by one or two days of worrying: Will the fermentation start? Usually, but not always, it does, If it does, then I have other hurdles to clear depending on the wine type. For reds, the big question is when to press. The answer to this question will determine the sensory characteristics of the final product: the wine can be anything from a rose' to an inky fluid that will take twenty years to become drinkable, depending on how long I leave the skins and seeds in. Unfortunately, the best time to press may turn out to be between 2 and 4 a.m. on the sixth day of fermentation. The practical winemaker then must decide whether to press too soon or too late.
Whites present a different problem, namely the need to maintain a cool fermentation temperature. Since my refrigerator is too small to hold the entire amount (typically fourteen gallons of must), I put half in, then eight hours later replace it with the other half. This rotation schedule continues for two to four weeks, until the fermentation nears completion.
After the billions of yeast cells have finished their miraculous conversion of fructose to ethanol and carbon dioxide, many operations remain before the wine is ready to bottle. But I can carry these out at my leisure during the following weeks and months. Therefore, I am ready to clean up and make the place look roughly as it did in September. Gradually the unpleasant memories fade; they are replaced by feelings of pride and satisfaction. "Making wine in the living room?" I reply casually, as I offer the disbelieving visitor a glass of my 1974 Napa Valley Cabemet Sauvignon. "Hell. there's nothing to it."
If you'd like to read another article I've written, see "Making a Theatre Organ Record."