124 so far

Wine kits that is. I'm in the middle of the 124th now, and just started the next one. The kits say they make 30 bottles, but that's pretty rare. I normally get 29 bottles, and maybe a half bottle for a taster or to cook with. Many of them are surprisingly good right out of the carboy. 

A bit of arithmetic and that comes to about 3712 bottles have ended up on our wine racks. There are just over 300 bottles downstairs now, meaning we have drunk or given away 3400 bottles. That's since June 2002, or about 7900 days. Thus a bottle every couple or three days, depending on exactly how many we've given away. Our financial advisor and her team are the main recipient of the give away. 

The cost for making wine was about 3 to 4 dollars a bottle when I started and now it's about $5. We buy the expensive kits but get a deal because the place we buy passes on the savings of an inexpensive location. That's about $13,000 wine expense over 21 years, or about $650 a year. I'd say that was pretty good, given that the price of even cheap wine in the liquor store makes me wince, and don't get me started on the prices in a restaurant. I was looking at one menu where the glass of wine was more expensive than some of the entrees. And people wonder why we don't go out to dinner much.

There's been some years I've made as many as 7 kits, but that kept me going into August. I'm only going to do 3 this year, and will still have to shuffle around some bottles to make room.

Just yesterday I was talking to a buddy who asked if I wanted his equipment, since they don't drink much wine anymore, and he's mainly into beer now. We don't drink as much wine as we used to either. A bottle a week is the typical consumption these days. Meaning the current stock would last nearly 8 years. Hmmmm.

Here's what it looks like this morning. I'll do the next step for the blend in the carboy, then it will sit for 6 weeks. The Pinot Gris was just started yesterday, and the yeast is happily doing its thing. For non-winemakers the green strip with the cord running to it is a heater to keep the wine at just the right temperature during fermentation.

These are the two kits on the go now, and there's one more coming in March. The store is in Red Deer so I'm going to take a scenic route and hope to capture some nice photos. One of my readers has come along in the past, and is welcome again. He knows who he is.

When I have a label left over it goes up on the wall, though I only started that after I'd been doing wine for a decade or so. I like to put one label in the book where I track the making of, and if necessary I'll carefully peel off the label and that goes on the wall. 

Some, of course, don't peel off nice. There's a dark green label that says Eminence Tempranillo. You probably can't read it, but it's the one up and to the left of the Riesling LE2014 label. That one is just brutal to remove; even the Goo Be Gone stuff barely takes the glue off. The blue one right beneath it is no better. The rule used to be that the easier they went on, the harder they were to get off. Now they are mostly peel and stick, and they unpeel off the glass quite nicely. Mostly.

The red tape, you ask? There are cuts in the vapour barrier, and the tape seals them up. There's lots of places that needed doing as I sealed up around the joists. I found all kinds of stuff that I'd forgotten we had.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Yukon

Film (new)

Film (old)

I'm not sure when this photo was taken. The occasion was an SCA corset making sweatshop, I mean workshop. I know who the two women on the right are, although I haven't seen either in many years, and no idea who the person on the left is. This is well before the reno that took out the wall where the cards are hanging and opened up the space quite a bit. The (then empty) basement was full of sewing machines and extra lights with about a mile of extension cord to power everything. It's a wonder we didn't blow a circuit breaker. 

You'll note the two board games, Empire Builder and Eurorails. I don't even know if you can buy them any more, but they're a fabulous board game for a small group. Once everybody clues in it goes pretty quick, as long as you keep track of what you're doing. There are any number of fun stories associated with playing the games with friends, but the one with Linda's mom was epic. The winner is the first to accumulate a certain amount of money. Normally when someone wins, another person would have won when it got to be their turn, and someone else would be just about to win in a turn or two. Linda's mom whipped our butts. First time playing the game she got an amazing run of luck to get the best contracts with the minimum amount of rail building. She won and nobody else had even half the winning amount of money. 

The big picture on the wall to the right is still there. I bought when we didn't have much money, and still like it now. The blue carpeting is long gone and I don't miss it a bit. Slate and hardwood is the way to go. The chair with the red cushion is still in daily use now with different cushions, but the love seat thingies are outside furniture when needed, which they haven't been needed for some time. Anyone want to come get them and the cushions?