Nosh Lab : Home Wines and Passion Fruit Wine Recipe

I started to make 'Country Wine' in 2005 having tasted the labours of one of my friends who'd been making her own wine for quite a number of years! It was unlike anything I had ever tasted before and that spurred me on to find out how to go about making some of my own.

I bought a book and my first wine kit. (As back-up incase my own experiment turned into vinegar - me and my fear of failure!?) So the very first Nosh'lette vintage is a Cabernet Sauvignion 2005 (as depicted in above picture). After I'd got the gist of how to make wine (it really isn't all that difficult), I made my first 'from scratch' out of strawberries which produced a most unusual, subtle and pleasing wine. The nice thing about making your own wine is that it also makes a unique gift - and when you start giving away your own bottles of wine; people start giving you things to encourage your wine making habit. Pretty soon I found myself acquiring 7 demi johns, each producing 6 bottles of wine. Strangely though, the demand from friends and family outweighed the amount of wines we were producing. Trust Liam to bring in the industrial revolution and whilst I was out visiting with friends in London, he brought in the 5 gallon fermentation buckets! (Talk about kitchen gadgetry!)

Pic : Wine all over my kitchen counter tops.
You can just see the 5 gallon bucket on the floor looking deceptively small!

On one of my trips back to Singapore, I decided to take across a home brew kit just to see if making wine from tropical fruits was a viable idea. The wine making yeast thrives best in warm climes but dies in anything above 30 degrees C. Also it doesn't like sudden fluctuations in temperature. It's funny thinking back on it as the fermenting wine ended up living in a bucket of water in the coolest part of the house - The Kitchen bathroom!

This pic is of my wine making experiment in SG.
1) I used a plastic demi john but really any 2 litre water bottle with a screw top will do as long as you can keep it sterile. 2) A picture of your little wine making buddies - the yeast 3) The demi john is fitted with a fermentation lock - basically it's a bendy tube filled with water so carbon dioxide formed by the yeast can escape through the water but nothing from the atmosphere enters the bottle. Clever huh? 4) Fermentation is relatively fast in SG. and a clear wine was achieved in the space of a week and a half or so.

Of all the wines that I have made, the most interesting wine has been a pineapple and coconut wine - I say interesting I didn't say nice! We made it for a niece who hated wine and loved Malibu. The wine which I am most pleased with is my own passion fruit wine. The passion fruit itself has such an interesting smell, part floral, part citrus and part fruit...
Making it into wine produces a pale yellow/white wine that is crisp in flavour with a stunning nose! I thought I would share this as it is also a real cheat's approach to making wine; I am sure many foodies may be appalled at the idea, but it does work! I think in the end,more so when it comes to a home brew, the fun is less in the making and more in the drinking!

The Noshlette's Passion Fruit Wine Cheat!
To make 1 gallon of wine (6 X 75cl.)

Ingredients
4 litres passion fruit juice (yes, from a packet!)
1 litre white grape juice (also from a packet!)
300g fructose or brown sugar
1 pkt wine yeast (you can actually use bread yeast if wine yeast is unavailable)
1 tea bag steeped in 3tbsp hot water for 5 minutes* juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup raisins chopped

Mix all the above ingredients (except the yeast) in a fermenting bucket or gallon container that is completely clean and food safe. Make a fermentation starter by simply adding yeast to a small dish full of sugar water (tbsp sugar to 2 tbsp water) - when the yeast starts to bubble, the whole thing is added to the wine mix (also known as a must).
Leave for 1 week in a warm (12 - 30 deg.) dark place, stirring the must once every day to get rid of the build up of c02. If using a fermentation lock, simply swirl the whole container. At the end of the week, strain the must through a sieve into another clean gallon container and leave to clear. If campden tablets are available - use 1 crushed tablet to help in clearing. However this is not necessary, the wine will simply take a longer time to clear.

Wine is more or less drinkable when it is crystal clear (aprox. 30 days) - however for complex flavours to develop - let the wine mature atleast 6-10 months.

*Tea must be made from tea leaves and not herbal infusions as it is the tannin from tea that is desired