vino in the house!!..and on the floor, and on the counters, and on the...

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Let's just be blunt for the sake of wrapping this post up - our family likes to drink.  Not like we're throwing alcohol back in the middle of the afternoon everyday, but we don't shy away from a glass of wine..or two.. at dinner, ...and we don't throw dry parties.  So it only makes logical (and financial) sense that we start a'brewin our own label of wine...right?  After taking a few lessons from my dad (who started making his own wine when I was still in high school), we started our first batch last year. 

After all that sittin' and fermentin' (please don't question why I am writing in a hillbilly accent - just go with it), we fixed to get it bottled in November.  If you've ever siphoned anything (I have no idea why you would have), you know that its like taking tiny shots of whatever you're siphoning to get it a'flowin' through the tube...so please imagine us standing in our kitchen with barrels of wine on the counter and towels on the floor, half blitzed trying to get this wine bottled.  yea, ridiculous.  Where was your son at the time, you ask?  In bed...so was the dog just for safety's sake...not the baby's bed...his crate...ah, whatever.

So after making a very obnoxious mess, that was relatively funny at the time, (thank you Mr. Clean Scrubbers!) we got all of our first batch of wine bottled up and ready for holiday distribution!  We are calling our label:  The Grape Chameleon.  The back label reads:

Just as you are a social chameleon; the parent, the friend, the lover, the sibling, the pawn, or the boss - our grape chameleon can also be what you need it to be, when you need it; an escape in a bubble bath at the end of a hard day, a touch of romance to a dinner date, a hostess gift, or a splash of flavor to your favorite dishes.
You are adaptable all day long; so should your wine be flexible too.

Unfortunately, all pictures of the mess are currently trapped on our desktop downstairs which for some hateful reason has had a motherboard issue.  So you'll need to imagine the scenario in your mind.  Think blood red wine everywhere, B down on one knee with siphon tube in his mouth, and me laughing hysterically.


In case you are wondering, there is a magical machine that then squeezes the cork down into the wine bottle to seal 'er up.  Its kind of scary and I'm a little afraid every single time that its just going to shatter the bottle and we'll end up with glass shards sticking out of our shins...luckily that didn't happen.

We order in our grape juice.  Its really a quite easy and fun project if you're interested in trying it out.  I'm happy to share hilarious first-timer stories!  Next up on our brewing fun is following in Brandon's dad's footsteps...Don't want to spill the beans, but it starts with a moon and ends with a shine. 

Just another upside to marriage - when the siphoning gets to be too much - pass the tube.

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