Homemade Wine

Grapes are not your only option!

Grape Stompin Lucy

Making homemade wine can be a great joy!   The thing that comes to everyone’s mind is that famous I Love Lucy episode, where Lucy and Ethel are stomping on the grapes.   In fact, people ask me if I stomp on grapes, which I immediately say no!  In this modern era, we have machines that are used to crush grapes and other fruit.  Many times, I actually just use my hands or a potato masher if I am making a small amount of wine.

Grapes are hard to grow.   I am growing them in my backyard, but I have to say it takes a lot of work to produce excellent wine grapes.   Everyone knows that wine can be made from grapes, but most people don’t even think about other fruit.   I find growing blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries so much easier than growing grapes.   In addition, homemade wine made from grapes takes a long time to make before it is drinkable.   Wine made from other fruits, like raspberries, takes a lot less time before you can enjoy it.

Raspberries and Blackberries

Uniqueness is where the beauty of homemade wine really comes through.   The homemade wine I made from organic black raspberries that I grew in my backyard is an example.   There is nothing like it in the store and it is an absolutely delicious wine.   It takes a lot of fruit to make homemade wine and I know a lot of you are thinking that raspberries are expensive.   If you have the space to grow them, it is easy and you will not only have raspberries for wine, but also breakfast, desserts and other uses.    Best of all, they come back every year and they would be free.    Blackberries are even easier to grow.   I made a few videos on my YouTube channel for you to check out, where I show how I grow these berries.  If  you would like to see them and get some growing helpful hints, please look there.

If you don’t have the land or desire to grow your own fruit to make homemade wine, I would recommend finding a pick your own farm and see if you could pick some berries at a good price.   There is something about the connection with the plants, picking the berries, being in nature and then being able to drink a glass of homemade wine that you could say that you picked the fruit yourself.   It is really cool.

Making your homemade wine from grapes requires a lot more fruit than if you made wine from berries.   It takes approximately 4-6 lbs of berries to make a gallon of homemade wine, where it would take 10-15 lbs of grapes to make a gallon.  Approximately double the fruit!

If you decide to grow your own berries, I would recommend researching what grows best in your area and just go for it.   It may take two years for the plants to establish themselves, but it is worth it.   I recommend freezing the berries and then thawing them first before making homemade wine with them.   You can see the whole process, where I made my Organic Black Raspberry Wine on my YouTube channel for reference.

I noticed the other day when I was at BJs that they were selling big bags of frozen blueberries.   I imagine that it would be easy to make homemade wine by buying a few bags of these frozen blueberries and fermenting it out.   I know of folks that have won awards for homemade Blueberry Wine!  I will probably be doing that soon enough and making another winemaking video for that, too.

I hope you enjoyed reading my article on homemade wine making.  You are not limited to grapes to make wine and you have a lot of options available to you wherever you live.    Please keep checking back on this site, as I will begin posting actual recipes for the homemade wines from fruits.

Until next time, let’s raise a glass of homemade wine!   Salute.