GREAT HOMEMADE WINE

I found this site where you can actually adopt an olive tree. This idea was created by Jason Gibb and Cathy Rogers who set up Nudo in 2005 after buying and restoring an abandoned 21 acre olive grove in Italy’s Le Marche.

It gives people all over the world the opportunity to adopt an Italian olive tree and receive its olive oil. The trees available for adoption are not just from their olive grove but a collaboration between a group of small scale, artisanal olive producers in Le Marche and Abruzzo. Each olive farmer keeps responsibility for the care of their grove, and all the olive oil goes into the Nudo adoption programme. Imagine having your own olive oil. There are a variety of trees that produce different tastes of olive oil.

You can also purchase olive oil that is made from hand picked olives straight from the grove.

Homemade red wine can be used as a marinade, before cooking; as a liquid to add flavor while you are cooking; or as a touch of extra flavor, to a finished dish. The objective to adding wine to your recipe is to fortify, enhance and accent the flavor and aroma of the food you are cooking.  Care should be taken in the amount of wine used, as with any seasoning used in cooking, too little is inconsequential and too much will be overpowering. Either result would be undesirable and possibly unpalatable. A bit of wine added to the ingredients will enhance the flavor of many of your recipes.

When you cook with wine, the harshness of the alcohol burns off. However, the amount of alcohol remaining varies with the length of cooking time. A study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking times. This was the result when alcohol was added to boiling liquid and removed from the heat – alcohol retained 85%. These are the lengths of cooking time and the percent of alcohol retained when simmered in a dish: 15 min. – 40% retained, 30 min. – 35% retained, 1 hour – 25% retained, 1.5 hours – 20% retained, 2 hours – 10% retained and 2.5 hours – 5% retained. Keep in mind the alcohol remaining could be of significant concern to recovering alcoholics, parents, and others who have ethical or religious reasons for avoiding alcohol.

The reduction (boiling down) of wine will intensify the flavor which includes the acidity and sweetness. So a fruity wine will concentrate those flavors and give a rather fruity flavor to the final dish. A sweet wine will provide sweetness to the final dish. Be cautious with the amount of wine you use, as its flavor may overpower your food.

Adding homemade red wine to a dish just before serving will not produce the best results.  To enhance the flavor of the dish, the wine should simmer with the food, or sauce.  If you add wine to the mix too late, it might add a harshness to the flavor of your dish. Time is needed for wine to render its flavor into your dish.  You should wait for 10 minutes or more to taste before adding more wine.

Keep this in mind that wine does not belong in every dish. If you prepare more than one wine based sauce for a meal, it could become monotonous. Only when wine’s contribution will enrich the finished dish should it be used in cooking.

Remember to:

•  simmer homemade wine with the food or sauce being cooked
• when wine cooks, it reduces and develops into an extract that flavors the recipe
• you will wind up with a harsh effect if you add the homemade wine to your dish too late.

All wines contain at least some small amount of sulphites. Although some wines have not had any sulphites added during the wine making process there will still be some amount of sulphites present. Yeast naturally produce sulphites during fermentation so there is only a rare wine which contains none. Campden – a sulphite used by homemade winemakers – is a natural compound that inhibits bacteria and acts as an antioxidant.  It prevents browning and keeps the wine tasting good.

When the sulphites in wine are heated, they are converted into sulfur dioxide which is a gas that dissipates into the air. This conversion process leaves behind a minute amount of salts that is so insignificant that they have no affect on the flavor.

If held for only one or two weeks, leftover table wine can be refrigerated and used for cooking.  If you have at least a half bottle on wine left over, pour it off into a clean half bottle, cork it, and store in the refrigerator. without air space at the top, the re-bottled wine will keep for up to one month.

I found this video called ‘Homemade Wine Glossary (What you need to know)‘ which is an alphabetical glossary of terminology associated with home winemaking. I thought the information would be helpful as it explains many of the terms used in winemaking.

Enjoy!