Back-Yard Trees Produce Crop of Home Vintners
About this time last year, a tree in Lou Roth’s back yard was oozing with ripe figs and the grass below was splattered with rotten ones. Roth didn’t want any more of his harvest to go to waste, so he decided to make fig wine.
“I just took some figs, beat them with a spoon, stuck them in a bottle with sugar and yeast and then waited for two months,” said Roth, a software engineer from Mar Vista. “It tasted awful--like vinegar. People made faces when I gave it to them. I was very unsophisticated at the time.”
Roth’s fig tree is oozing again, but this time Roth is prepared. He went to the Home Beer and Winemaking Shop in Woodland Hills, bought $100 worth of wine-making supplies and got a fig wine recipe from shop owner John Daume. Then he plucked hundreds of figs from his tree, mixed them with a few ingredients and let them ferment in a trash barrel in his living room. A week later, he discarded the skins and transferred the juice to a glass bottle, which is sitting in his garage. In two months, Roth’s wine should be ready to drink.
“It smells like it’s going really well this time,” Roth said. “I’m definitely on my way. Next year, I would like to see if I could do a real wine, like a red grape wine.”
Daume, who owns the only beer and wine-making supply shop in the San Fernando Valley, says he gets many new customers this time of year.
‘Improve Techniques’
“They’ve got all this fruit, and they’ve made all the jam they can, so they try making a little wine,” he said. “Then they go into grapes and improve their techniques with a little knowledge. If they do it right, they should end up with fine wine, as good or better than what you can buy commercially.”
Daume owns a small winery in Camarillo and sells about 2,000 cases a year to liquor stores and restaurants.
More than half a million people produce their own wine, according to the Home Wine and Beer Trade Assn., and about 1,000 shops sell the necessary supplies. Federal law allows individuals to make up to 100 gallons of wine a year, or 200 gallons per two-adult household, provided the wine isn’t offered for sale.
Grapes are the most popular wine-making material, but anything that will flavor water can be used, including peaches, apricots, plums, raspberries and blackberries. Grape season runs from the end of August to the beginning of October.
Home wine making was very popular in the 1970s, according to Jobson Publishing Corp., a New York-based company that publishes beverage trade magazines. But the fad tailed off in the early 1980s when wine prices dropped due to a surplus of grapes.
A good wine could be purchased for about $5 a bottle, about half of what a similar bottle cost before. A bottle of homemade grape wine costs about $3.50 to make, so wine makers aren’t saving much. “That dissuaded people from doing it themselves,” said Bob Keane, a Jobson editor.
Most home wine makers don’t need monetary incentive. They do it for the challenge, the creativity and the control.
‘Like to Be Picky’
“I like to be very picky about my wine,” said John Serembe of Pacoima. “This way, I can get exactly what I like.”
Serembe was one of about 30 people who gathered at Daume’s winery in late September to pick up shipments of zinfandel grapes. Daume ordered eight tons of grapes from a Paso Robles vineyard, enabling his customers to buy quality grapes that they otherwise could not get. “Most growers don’t want to be bothered with small quantities,” he said.
The deep purple grapes arrived in crates, which were forklifted to the top of a crushing machine. The grapes were dumped down a wide chute into a trough, where the stems were removed and the skins pierced. The resulting pulp, called must, was pumped through a tube into plastic trash barrels.
The customers then hauled their barrels home to begin a process similar to the one that Roth is using to make fig wine. The first step is fermentation, which takes place in the barrel. Yeast is added to the must to convert the sugar in the grapes to alcohol. (Fruit wines generally require table sugar, but grape wine does not.) Carbon dioxide is released in the process, causing bubbles to form at the top.
Wine Ages
After a week, the juice is separated from the grape skins and transferred to a container with a narrow neck, where the wine will age. A plastic stopper allows carbon dioxide to escape but prevents bacteria from reaching the wine.
The aging process can last months or years, depending on the type of wine. Fruit wines are aged from three to four months, while grape wines sit about a year. White wines are ready faster than red ones. The wine is periodically siphoned to other containers to help separate it from the yeast sediment.
“The first year you get antsy and want to drink it right away,” said Jim Murchison of Agoura. “But then you learn to wait.” Murchison, who has 20 cases of wine stored in a shower, says he keeps his wine for three years before drinking it.
A few pieces of equipment can make the wine-making process more precise and prevent disasters such as Roth’s. Most important, Daume says, is an acid testing kit, which costs about $6. Wines low in acid content are more susceptible to bacterial growth and spoilage during storage, whereas high acid concentrations can inhibit fermentation. So a quick pH test can tell a wine maker when to add acid or when to decrease it by diluting the must with water.
Hydrometer Helpful
Another helpful piece of equipment is a hydrometer, a thin glass tube that measures sugar content. It also costs about $6. Enough sugar must be present to provide a minimum alcohol content of 9% so the wine will keep. Also, there is a maximum amount of sugar that the yeast can handle. Above this, fermentation will stop before all the sugar is used up, resulting in wine that is too sweet.
“When you get familiar with all the process, you start appreciating all the differences among wines,” Serembe said.
Red and white wines can be made from the same grapes, but through slightly different processes. The color of wine comes from the skin of the grapes--not the juice, which is clear. The longer the juice ferments with the skins, the darker the wine will be. Most of the people who picked up grapes in Camarillo planned to make red wine, but a few used the grapes to make white zinfandel. To prevent coloring, they separated the juice from the skins immediately.
Some of those who came to Camarillo will enter their wines in competitions held twice a year at Daume’s shop. Many are members of the Cellarmasters, a club that meets once a month at his shop to taste wines and learn more about making them.
More Patience
Daume says wine makers have more patience than home beer makers, who can drink their brew in only three or four weeks. “For them, time doesn’t seem to be as important as doing something creative,” he said.
That’s the main appeal for Jeff Reiner, a Los Angeles film maker. “It’s very romantic,” he said. “You’re an artist, a craftsman. When you live in an urban place, this takes you into the country. Wine goes back to the Bible. It’s very traditional.”
A lot of the fun comes from packaging the final product. Roth failed to make drinkable fig wine last year, but he says he enjoyed creating labels on his Macintosh computer and choosing a name for his wine--”Figoli.” “I tried to make it sound Italian,” he said. “But it didn’t help.”
David Kelley, who lives in Moorpark, has chosen “The Land Barons of Moorpark” as his brand name. He says his wife will letter the labels in calligraphy. “It’s really nice at the holidays when you have your own wine and your own label,” he said. “It’s a nice touch.”
