Garlic Wine Recipe
Not all fermented products are made for sipping and leisurely enjoying over dinner or beside a fireplace in the company of good friends. Some fermented products make excellent cooking ingredients, so that the Chateau-Neuf-de-Pape is even more enjoyable while eating dinner with friends
Although I don’t like cooking on a daily basis, I do enjoy experimenting and pretending I’m a gourmet cook from time to time. So when I came across a very much “non-sipping” wine in the book entitled Making Wild Wines & Meads, I had to give it a try. It seems to me that this wine would make for a good salad dressing or marinade as the authors of Making Wild Wines & Meads suggest. Here’s my recipe based on the one in the book:
Garlic Wine
First, prepare a yeast starter:
1 1/2 cups of orange juice at room temperature
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1 teaspoon pectic enzyme
1 Packet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
Mix the juice, yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme. Pitch the yeast.
Wine Ingredients
10 large garlic bulbs * the book calls for 12, but I only had 10.
12 ounces frozen apple juice concentrate
3 tablespoons Realemon juice
1/4 teaspoon tannin
2 lbs. sugar*
Directions
Divide the garlic bulbs into two piles of five each. With one pile, separate and peel the skin from the cloves. Wrap the cloves in tinfoil, place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for two hours at 350 degrees F.
Separate and peel the remaining cloves of garlic and put in large pot.
Remove oven baked cloves from tinfoil and add them to the cloves in the pot.
Add 1/2 gallon of water to large pot, and boil for 45 minutes.
Pour the liquid into a primary fermentation vessel, straining the cloves.
Add the apple concentrate, Realemon juice and tannin.
Stir vigorously.
Top up the must to total liquid of one gallon.
* Record specific gravity. I personally want a specific gravity of at least 1.074 – although the recipe in the book calls for no sugar. Without sugar, I had a specific gravity of 1.030 which in my opinion is much too low unless I add preservatives later.
* Add sugar and stir. My final specific gravity with 2 lbs. of sugar was 1.080. Your results may differ.
Allow the must to cool to 90 degrees F. before pitching the yeast starter.
Rack in one week to a one gallon carboy, topping up if necessary. Allow to go through secondary fermentation.
After three weeks of starting wine, and thereafter once or twice a month for six months.
Bottle if desired. I plan on bottling into small 500 ml. (or smaller) bottles and giving as gifts to my gourmet cooking friends.
Making Wild Wines & Meads rightly says that this wine is NOT a sipping wine. Well… I suppose if your tastes are such, and you wanted to, you could sip it. More power to you if you enjoy doing so. However, if you want to be a real gourmet, why not consider this recipe for marinating meats or using as a base for a salad dressing? Post them here.
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