It's wiiiiine time!

Last year I took on the project of making my own wine.  I had an over abundance of tomatoes, that weren't going to ripen in any sort of timely fashion, so the only rational thing to do was make wine!

I traveled down to the local wine and beer making shop and invested in the tools. When I say investment, I mean "If I only make one batch of wine this will be the dumbest thing I ever spent my money on" type of investment.  But I was committed, even when the owner told me that he hadn't heard of anyone making wine out of green tomatoes in years.  Bring on the challenge!

So the wining (whining?) commenced.

A million pounds of tomatoes, 2 lbs of sugar, some mashing, some stirring, some Mr. Wizard science shiznit, and off we went!  After 5 days of letting my witches brew sit, I bottled it. Excuse me, they are called carboys.  I like to refer to them as "Those jugs that look like Poland Spring water bubbler containers."  The wine store gurus don't seem to like my analogies.  Regardless, it looked like barf.

Every three months I had to transfer the wine from one jug to another, as the pros like myself call 'racking' (yes, I'm now a pro), and the sediment falls to the bottom of jug.  How does one go about transferring the wine?  Well, you siphon it like you ran out of gas and are stealing it from the car next to you, that's how!  I impressed myself with my skills and I was lucky enough to accidentally taste my fine brew.  I'm lucky I lived.

Long story short, we fast forward 12 months.  I'm on the last leg of the wine tour and what is supposed to be a nice white wine looks like an amber beer.

Oh well.

So I return to my new hangout spot to buy corks.  Afterall, I'd been drinking a ton of wine in preparation of bottling, so that my cheap ass wouldn't have to buy wine bottles from this place.  This girl ---->ME<-----is always thinking!  The man helping me was asking me a million questions, which of course I couldn't answer (What's the alcohol content? Green tomatoes huh?  Have you tried it? Did you follow a recipe? - No wineguy, I just threw a bunch of things in a bucket and let it stew for 12 months for the hell of it.  And I hope it has a high alcohol content so that every glass after the first tastes better and better, like my fine wine should!).  More Mr. Wizard purchases, a bag of corks, and a corker, and I was ready to wine!

And yes, my fancy wine corker was $30.

Steps to bottle wine.  Soak wine bottles in some sort of magical chemical to peel of the labels (and in case you are wondering, if you are fancy, you too can have your own personal wine labels - mine has been dubbed Vineyard de Sledge).

Bottles soak for 24 hours and with some elbow grease, the labels do come off.  A little glue residue never hurt anyone, right?

After the labels come off then you must sanitze.  You swill this white magic powder around, with some water, and your bottles are ready to be filled.  But first they must air dry.  Of course, I'm sure I could have spent a million dollars on a fancy wine bottle dryer, but I figured I'd do-it-yourself first.

Attempt 1:

Fail.  Bottles won't dry.

Attempt 2:

Semi Success!  Thank goodness for a raffle prize win at a bachelor party, thanks AV!  But, sadly, all the bottles don't fit.

Attempt 2 1/2:

Success!  Take THAT Pinterest!

Now I'm ready to bottle.  Once I find the motivation.  And get over the fear that this wine will taste disgusting.  Stay tuned!