The Wine Knows

I've spent the past two days processing grapes and turning the resulting juice into jelly and sorbet.

My buddy Hank, who runs our backroom and ensures the integrity of all our wine judgings, took two Sangiovese vines off my hands four years ago and planted them in his backyard in Kennewick, Wash.

Let's just say they've done pretty well.

On Saturday, he brought over around 75 pounds of grapes (and just grapes, as he'd already stripped them off the stems), which were at about 24 brix. I took the grapes and extracted the juice by cooking them down on the stove a bit. Each batch produced about two liters of juice, and I did at least a dozen batches, so I quickly ran out of storage. Thankfully, Melissa suggested I put them into those gallon Ziploc storage bags. One kind leaked, and I had to double-bag, but when I went back to the store, I got a different kind that held the juice in quite well.

By 1 p.m. today, Hank and his wife, Nancy, came by and we started to make jelly. While all of this was going on, I tossed some Sangiovese juice and simple syrup into the ice cream maker and made a fabulous sorbet.

By 5 p.m., we were up to 64 jars of jelly and four batches of sorbet. And we used less than half the juice, which went into the freezer for another day.

And Hank and I figure that between us, we still have close to another 100 pounds of grapes left on the 11 vines we have in our respective yards (and this is after I processed nearly five gallons to give to our friend Ken, who is making a sparkling red wine with it).

I see why winemakers get cranky this time of year - this is hard work.