Making Homemade Blackberry Wine

PAGE TWO


If you have stumbled upon this page without viewing the first page of our blackberry wine making process, you may want to scroll to the bottom of this page and hit the "Back" button, or just click here:  Making Homemade Blackberry Wine - Page One .  That way you won't feel like you are missing the first half of the story.

Blackberry Wine Making - 2005

Stirring

After the primary fermentation, we are ready for the first racking on August 3rd.
 Still stirring

Here Michael stirs the liquid before the initial racking.
Racking

On October 9th, we performed the second and third rackings of our blackberry wine.

Straining

There was so much blackberry pulp that we resorted to some manual straining of the liquid near the bottom of the bucket during the second racking process.

Carboy


Carboys

Carboys # 1 and #2 after the second racking.
Racking

Later in October: This is the final racking before we will be bottling the wine.

Carboy #2

Notice how the wine has deepened in color?

Making blackberry wine

See the sediment in the bottom of the carboy?  We have to be careful when we rack the wine not to disturb that sediment.  We don't want it in the bottles.
 Racking the wine into the bucket

During this final racking, we added 1/4 teaspoon of potassium meta-bisulfate to each bucket/carboy.  Potassium meta-bisulfate is a very strong inhibitor that we were using to kill all of the yeast..
bucket of blackberry wine

Vesper helping with the winemaking

Vesper helps her daddy with our homemade blackberry wine.

Michael and Vesper making blackberry wine

Michael and Vesper
 Carboy #1 and Carboy #2 - blackberry wine

The blackberry wine is ready for bottling.
Boxes of wine bottles

Here are some of the bottles that we have already racked and corked.  We kept them separated according to the bucket from which the blackberry wine came.

Racking the blackberry wine into the bottles

Racking the blackberry wine into the wine bottles.

Final racking


Last racking for the blackberry wine
Boxes of blackberry wine bottles

Empty bag of trefinos (corks)

Here are the empty trefino bags (extremely high quality aggrogate cork).

Sealing the bottles with wax


Melting the sealing wax

In this photo we are melting the bottle sealing wax that we will be using to seal the bottles of wine.  It's best to cover the work area with aluminum foil when melting wax.
Sealing wax for the blackberry wine bottles

Labeling the bottles

Vesper designed the labels for our "Fun Berry Bongo Juice" blackberry wine.

Labeling the blackberry wine


Wine labels designed by Vesper Stevens
Once again we were pleased with the results of our efforts.  While we initially felt that the previous year's homemade cherry wine had turned out a little tastier than the homemade blackberry wine, we found that this wine aged very nicely.  It just got better and better over time!
Xochiquetzal Wines - By Michael and Deena

Join us again next year as we make Homemade Strawberry Wine (Click Here)!