This cooler than average spring is coming on the heels of a cooler than average winter in the Baltimore area of Maryland. This provides ideal temperature growing conditions for the potatoes I planted the first week of April. Assuming that I get a modest two pounds per hill, with the fifty hills of potatoes I should be able to harvest 100 pounds. That will give me a ten-fold increase in my initial investment in seed potatoes. Where else in this economy can you get a ten-fold increase in an investment in four months?

I began to wonder about wine. If one spends a modest $15 a week for wine, in four months the wine’s cost is $195. That will give you 13 bottles of wine. In the same time and with the same price, you can buy a high level wine kit and make 2 ½ cases of wine. This is better that a 50% increase on your four month wine investment.

If wine kits aren’t for you, there are other options. Many wineries, check in your area, have programs where you can make wine at the winery. Costs and quality vary widely. Kathy and I are going to make a barrel of California Sauvignon this fall at Vint Hill Craft Winery in Vint Hill, Virginia. We are hopeful that we can make a wine equivalent to a $60 or higher California Cab at half the cost. However this will take a couple of years. There are other wineries that you can produce smaller batches using carboys. If you enjoy white wines that are not oaked, you can make them in less than a year at a winery and just a few months using a wine kit.

Don’t be worried about making your own wine. Winemakers are the most giving and helpful people in any industry. If you ask ten winemakers for help, you will probably receive help from ten winemakers. Although their ideas may differ.

Just as you can save money by harvesting fruit and vegetables that you plant yourself, you can recession proof your wine by making it yourself.

If you enjoy wine but have shied away from making your own I recommend that you try the Winexpert Selection Spéciale Series. The Riesling Ice Wine Style won a gold medal and although costlier than other wine kits, the results are good. It took us about two months to make the wine. This is a bit longer than normal. The room where the wine fermented and clarified was in the lower 60’s. So after being bottled for only a week how did this wine fare at a dinner?

We had six people for dinner last night and I decided to pair the Riesling dessert wine with the appetizer, baked brie with walnuts and honey. The wine was sweeter than the brie and matched well. The brie cut some of the sweetness and helped to bring out the peach and apricot flavors in the wine. Everyone loved the wine, especially the “I don’t care for reds” wine drinkers. The red wine drinkers in the group enjoyed the Riesling dessert wine with the brie although switched to a Zin for dinner.

There are different price levels for wine kits. It seems like the old maxim “you get what you pay for” rings true for wine kits. Spend the extra money and buy the better kits. One of the differences in this kit and a lower cost kit was the added juice pack. Generally for clarifying the wine, you need to fill the carboy up to the neck. Lower cost kits instruct you to ad water to fill up to the neck, thus diluting the wine’s alcohol, sugar, and flavors. In a higher cost kit, you are given a juice pack to add. Although this will also reduce the alcohol it may increase the sugar and doesn’t dilute the flavors. In the case of the Riesling dessert wine, the 15% alcohol before the addition of the juice pack needed to be reduced a bit.

In addition to the wine, making wine from a kit is an education. Whenever directed to add an envelope such as potassium metabisulphite, research and find out what this does to the wine. You’ll learn a lot. Although making wine from a kit is not the same as making it at a winery, it is an enjoyable experience that you can also drink.

The wine sat silently in the carboy in a dark somewhat cool area. No fermentation bubbling was observed probably because there was little if any sugar left to ferment. On the 13^th day I took a reading of the specific gravity at 0.990. This was down 0.002 from the previous reading. Time to go onto to step three of the instructions.

We dissolved a package of metabisulphite and a package sorbate in a 1/2 cup of cool water. This was added to the wine in the carboy. We then had to vigorously stir the contents for two minutes. I watched a video on You-Tube showing the stirring by hand. I decided to buy a stirring attachment for my drill. After sanitizing the attachment, the wine in the carboy was stirred using the drill to power the stirrer. It worked fantastically. Next added to the carboy was a package of chitosan. Once again I used my drill stirrer to stir the wine for two minutes.

The carboy once again rests in a somewhat cool dark place while the wine clarifies. The directions state that this can take 14 days or longer.

So far the entire process was quite simple. Most of the time the wine just sits there doing its fermentation or clarifying or aging. The bug to start another batch has already bitten.