GUYS! I am so excited to share that we are making our first EVER barrel of wine! This is something Joe and I have wanted to do for a while and finally booked it. The whole process takes about nine months and I figured you could come along the journey with us! :)
Joe's uncle makes wine ever year at the Gino's School of Wine in NJ. We went with him this year to check it out and had so much fun! We decided to split a barrel with his uncle and my parents because one barrels is about 250 bottles of wine! So when split three ways we will end up with around 83 bottles!! I think we should be set for at least a year, don't you think?!
The first step to making your barrel is selecting your grapes. Since Joe's uncle has been doing this for forever, he had so many different red wines at home so we went over and tasted a bunch. Our favorite wine is Chianti so we ended up picking Montepulciano grapes (one grape you made Chianti with!). The grapes are so sweet and yummy we were eating them as we were crushing! They do have seeds though so we has to split them out.
The next step is going to the winery and crushing your grapes. At first I thought, "OMG yes we get to stomp grapes with our feet!" but things are done a little different here. Instead, you run the grapes through a processor that gets rid of the stems and leaves and just leaves the grapes. The juice is then funneled into a big tub and tested for sugar levels, acidity etc.
Here are a few pics of us during the grape crushing process. We got a little dirty but it was so worth it! This only took 10 minutes and then we got to go inside and sip on some of the other wines that have been made here.
We go back in two weeks to press the grapes. The final two steps are held in February and July and we can then bottle it up and enjoy!
If you love wine, this is such a fun thing to do with your friends or family. It was something different to do and it was a great way to spend some quality time with family.
I will be checking back soon with updates on the next steps!
xoxo On To The Next Trend