Home Winemaking Made Simple

Growing up in New England with its abundance of Cortlands and Macintoshes every fall, I spent some time, as did my Yankee forebears, experimenting with ways to make hard cider. But it was not until I went to Iowa that I learned the country method of home winemaking.

Rural southeastern Iowa, which surrounds the University of Iowa where I went to graduate school, is a land of small farms, corn fields, vegetable gardens, root cellars, fruit trees and, yes, rhubarb patches. Rhubarb, or “pie plant” as my grandmother used to call it, is usually thought of as good for pie filling and not much else. But for the farmers in this rural area, many of whom are of German descent, the best use of rhubarb is for making piestengel (“stengel” is the German word for “stalk”), a somewhat tart white wine with a slightly pinkish tint. Probably brought over from the Old Country, their recipe for making rhubarb wine relies on natural fermentation and is simplicity itself. Being a poor student with a taste for good wine but no money, I was happy to discover that making an acceptable wine does not require buying a lot of fancy equipment from home winemaking stores. For example, rather than adding commercial cultured yeasts, yeast nutrients, anti-oxidants and other ingredients, the natural or wild yeast on the fruit is allowed to do the fermentation work. The yeast breaks the sugar in the juice down into alcohol and CO2. The CO2 is given off as a byproduct, producing a bubbling or boiling effect (the word “ferment” comes from the Latin fermentāre “to cause to rise or boil”). When the yeast has converted all of the sugar to alcohol, it dies and falls to the bottom as sediment. The remaining alcohol content by volume (abv) is about 10%. Here is the “home winemaking made simple” recipe for making piestengel:

• When it is fully grown (late May or early June), harvest the rhubarb by cutting the stalks close to the ground. Cut off the broad leaves and throw them in the compost heap (the leaves contain oxalic acid and are toxic, although not dangerously so).
• Cut the stalks into one-inch pieces, place in a large plastic bucket, and mash thoroughly with a 2x4 (do not use pressure-treated lumber). Measure the quantity of the mashed stalks and juice in quarts or gallons, add an equal amount of boiling water, cover, and let stand for a day.
• Using cheese cloth, strain the mash into another container and measure the remaining juice. Add two pounds of sugar for each gallon of juice, stir thoroughly with a wooden spoon (metal should not be used) and let stand for another day.
• Strain the juice through the cheese cloth again and pour into clean gallon plastic milk jugs. Screw the caps on the jugs but not tightly or they may explode when the fermentation process begins. A five-gallon glass carboy fitted with an air lock can also be used.
• Leave for approximately eight weeks at which point the bubbling of the CO2 should have ceased and most of the sediment fallen to the bottom of the jugs. If bubbles remain after eight weeks, allow to stand until all fermentation activity has ended.
• The wine may be consumed at the end of the fermentation process but it may still have a somewhat cloudy appearance. “Racking” the wine will help to clarify it. Racking simply means siphoning off the wine into another container and leaving the sediment in the first container. The second container is placed at a level lower than the first container and one end of a length of plastic tubing is placed just below the surface of the wine in the higher container. The flow is begun by sucking on the other end of the tube and placing it in the clean container. As the clean container fills, the end of the tube in the first container is gradually lowered to stay just below the surface of the wine. Care must be taken not to lower the end of the tube too close to the sediment in the bottom. Successive racking of the wine over time will produce an ever clearer wine.

The nice thing about this home winemaking recipe is its adaptability; almost any kind of fruit you have on hand in quantity can be used (blackberries, elderberries, wild cherries, crab apples). In Iowa, I was fortunate enough to have not only a large rhubarb patch but also a grape arbor in the back yard so naturally I made both piestengel and a very potable Concord grape wine. But surprisingly, the very best wine I made in Iowa—a deep, rich, fragrant brew—came from the fruit of a large mulberry tree that also happened to grow in this very abundant back yard of mine. Several people have told me that I should try making strawberry wine and I am sure it would be excellent; however, unless you have a big strawberry patch, buying enough fruit to make even a small quantity of wine would not be cost effective. On the other hand, my sister once sent me two crates of oranges from Florida and since my wife and I could not eat them fast enough, I converted most of them into a very respectable orange wine.

So, if you enjoy good wine and like doing things the natural way with your own home-grown ingredients, give “home winemaking made simple” a try. It’s easy, it’s fun, and the final product is definitely worth the effort.