[Editor's note: This is the second post in a six part series by Christopher Null detailing his experiences producing his very own homemade vino with the aid of a high tech gadget called the WinePod.]
By Christopher Null
Continued from Winebloggin’ Episode I
Not surprisingly, it turns out a crazy amount of tech is required to make wine, and though the WinePod itself is a large, four-foot-tall monster (compared here next to a 5-year old), it is nothing compared to the mountain of additional boxes that come with it, stacked four-high on a wooden pallet.
I help the driver unload the truck. All the secondary gear gets stowed in the garage. We wheel the WinePod into a little alley we have next to our house. Because winemaking gives off CO2 (and lots of it), it has to be made either in a room with lots of ventilation or outside. Can you imagine the headlines if I accidentally asphyxiated my family…with wine?
I go through the boxes and can tell immediately that the "dump grapes in and push start" dream I’ve been having is nowhere close to reality. This is the most insane chemistry set you’ve ever seen. Pipettes, siphons, thermometers, hydrometers. Beakers, carboys, pumps and stoppers. A box full of cultures, acid, yeast, SO2, and powdered tannins. There’s even a bag of glass marbles. It’s all well organized but totally overwhelming, so I occupy myself with installing the WineCoach software on my laptop and making sure the WinePod actually powers up. It does.
Baby steps. I read through the manuals (there are four of them, and no pictures at all) and realize the best way to approach this is to go slow and steady, one day at a time. Most of this stuff isn’t needed until much later in the process. Right now I just need to prepare for the arrival of the grapes and get the WinePod ready.
The first step, as with anything you might prepare for human consumption, is to wash up. Sanitization is big with WinePod. Every other page of the manual has you cleaning something. But the WinePod weighs 120 pounds and holds 15 gallons of liquid. Cleaning the thing is a 15-step process (per the manual) which requires two people and several hours. I can’t sleep worrying about all the cleaning I have to do.
Fortunately, I have Greg Snell, CEO of WinePod’s parent company ProVina, helping me along. He says the WinePod is already sanitized and I don’t really have to clean anything until after it’s touched grapes and before it’s used again. And really: Clean doesn’t mean sterile; this isn’t open heart surgery. I clean most of the stuff in advance anyway, paranoid that germs are going to ruin the wine.
I
t isn’t long before it’s time to really get going: The grapes arrive, three hefty five-gallon buckets (kind of like those big, industrial-grade paint buckets) that have to thaw before we actually start adding ingredients and begin fermenting.
Thaw? That’s right: The WinePod is calibrated and designed to use grapes that the company provides, and those grapes are provided frozen. It sounds a little counterintuitive: Freezing a wine is a great way to ruin it, so wouldn’t freezing the grapes be just as bad? I am assured repeatedly it will all turn out fine, and really there is no other way to go about it: Grape harvest is in the late fall. I am trying to start a batch of wine in July. It’s either this or grab something seedless from Safeway. Mmmmmm.
At the encouragement of WinePod management, I’m using Cabernet grapes for this batch. The company has fruit and specific instructions for both Pinot Noir and Syrah varietals, but I’m told that for a first run, Cab is the simplest and likely to give me the best results. I don’t argue, and happily haul the 150 pounds of Rancho Sarco Cabernet into the house.
The grapes have to thaw inside, which means my kitchen is now dominated by damp, plastic-wrapped buckets, much to the unending curiosity of my children and our cat. In two days it all goes into the WinePod, and that’s when the fun begins.
[to be continued]
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