May 31st Vintage

'It's a young wine'.
Bare with me here, I will get to the point.
I got a phone call on Saturday to tell me our wine was ready and yesterday we went to bottle it.
This is our way of, as Skookumjoe would say, sticking it to the man.
There are a lot of taxes in Canada, GST(government sales tax), PST(provincial sales tax) and liquor tax among the few that get added on.
Rewind to 8-9 weeks ago....(do that ripply wiggly fade out thing....)
So one day on the long walk to the LCBO, which are the government run shops where Canadians buy alcohol, I passed a place on Danforth that looked interesting.
I went in and had a chat with Helmut and the deal is, you buy a juice or concentrate (juice is better) and he will do the whole fermentation process and then about 8-9 weeks later your wine is ready.
Because you buy juice there is no liquor tax to pay.
Fast forward to yesterday.
We brought our 30 (ish) clean empty bottles and set about the bottling process.
First we had to sterilse the bottles. Now that means something different to a scientist than to a wine maker so there was no autoclaving or radiation involved just some sulphur-containing solution. Then lots of rinsing of the bottles and on to the vaccum pump. The hydralic press for the corks was fun as was the electric heat coil for the shrinking of the sleeves.




here it is, we just had a taste in the shop, and it's pretty good, we might be able to wait a couple more days to try a full bottle, but I don't guarantee it.
It's a Merlot and, yes I have seen 'Sideways'.