Did you ever start something and had no idea what you were doing? Well today I decided to start making wine using a wine kit my wife gave to me.  I’m going to attempt to make a Cabernet Sauvignon wine using juice and a bunch of packets containing various chemicals and oak by a company called Vintners Reserve. According to the directions, just follow directions and everything will turn out all right.

My first task was to sanitize everything. Of course, the supplied video used a different product than the one I had. But the directions on the jar of easy Clean were simple, just mix and wash surfaces. No rinsing was required. However the back label gave a WARNING statement to basically avoid contact with the human body so not rinsing was not something I was comfortable with. Besides the video said to rinse. So I rinsed.

Those were the before you start directions. Next came the Part One directions. The first thing was to pour a half-gallon of hot water into the bottom of the primary fermenter, a big white bucket. That was easy. Next I was instructed to empty the contents of packet one into the water and stir vigorously. Yuk! The packet was bentonite and the mixture looked like very watery cement. The directions did not mention why to add bentonite and if you read about it on the Internet you’ll race back to the directions and see if you misread the directions. Apparently bentonite is used to clarify wine after fermentation. So I’m not sure why I added it first.

The next step was to add the juice and enough water to reach the six-gallon mark. This task was simple enough. Then you withdraw a sample of the juice, place it in a tube, drop the hydrometer into the tube, give it a spin and take a reading. The specific gravity was 1.068. That isn’t a high reading for potential alcohol, somewhere between nine and ten percent.

Finally you add a packet of oak dust and stir it under the juice. Except the oak dust floats on the surface and doesn’t want to go under the liquid. So after apparently getting the dust wet, yeast was added. The last step was to put on the lid. However there is a tiny hole in the lid and nowhere in the directions did it say to plug the hole with the supplied econolock. So I viewed the video and they did not say to do this either, but they showed a primary fermentation bucket with the econolock installed in the lid so I installed it.

Oh well, Part One is over and I have no idea if anything is going to work.