Wine Making 101

It is getting to be that time of year where everyone is preparing foods for the winter. They are picking/buying their peppers and starting to make avjar; pickling veggies, making russian salad; picking grapes, and making wine.  Irena's dad one day had the idea that he wanted to make wine this year.  Irena said that the last time her family made wine was 10 years ago, so I saw it as a little treat for me. When I heard what he wanted to do I jumped at the chance to help. Irena laughed and said "of course you can help us drink the wine" but when I corrected her and said "no, can I help make it?" she was surprised. Every time I ask if I can help do something that I think is "cultural" I get the look (you must be nuts) because what I see as fun and interesting they see as a chore and hard work. Irena's family now understands my "strange" American ways of wanting to "do things" and they were nice enough to teach me how its done.

 Irena's dad went out and bought 150kg of grapes, which is around 300lbs. In the past, they use to squish the  grapes in a large trash can with a stick and their hands. Doing it that way would have taken them around 5 hours to squish all those grapes. (No, they do not do it the "I Love Lucy" way)  Irena's dad borrowed a machine from a friend that looks like a big meat grinder and it squishes the grapes for you.

My job was to take the grapes out of the cartons, fill a smaller bucket about half way full and then dump the grapes into the machine.

 There they go!!!
Then Irena's dad was in charge of working the machine. He was turning the crank; and if necessary, push the grapes down so they all get squished.

I was surprised to find out that you use every bit of the grape to make wine. I had always thought that all you need was the juice and was expecting a machine to separate the juice from the skin, seed, and steams.  But no, everything goes into the machine, gets all squished and then everything is used to make wine.

They had a bucket below to catch the squished grapes.

A close-up shot of the grapes. You can see the juice, the seeds, the skins, and the steams.
Then it was Irena's job to come over and get the bucket and then empty it in the big barrel.

They had a funnel on top so it would not splash and get grape juice everywhere.  It took the three of us a little over 1.5 hours to go through 300lbs of grapes and to fill up the barrel.

You don't want the barrel all the way filled up because when it starts to ferment it will bubble and you need to leave some space.  For the next 10 days, it will be juice or "sok", as they call it.  Then after about 2 weeks, it will start to ferment and get sour.  I was surprised to hear that you do not have to add anything to it to turn it into wine. It does it all buy itself. Then in about a month it will turn into wine. After that, they will have to seal the barrel air-tight so that the fermenting process stops and it stays wine.  When they did the math they figured that the 300lbs of grapes, not sure how much it cost but it was relatively cheap, will make around 70L of wine, averaging at around 50 cents a liter, and then afterwards if they decide to make rakija, brandy, out of the leftovers it will make around 10L, about 25 cents a liter (pretty cheap for alcohol right?). This is a Macedonian "skill" that might stay with me when I return home!!!