Let's Get Real
LIVE 6:30 - 7pm EST
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
We Dig Plants Introduction: Wine! (15:00)
Tags:
Hearst Ranch, Groundworks INC, Mario DeVito, the origin of wine, Georgian Wine, ancient wine used wild grapes, the earliest domestication of grapes was 3200 BC, wine cultivation was also in ancient Egypt in 3300 BC, no one knows when wine was first introduced in ancient Greece, the Minoans had wine, modern Greek wine is believed to be very similiar to its ancient counterpart, wine was a huge part of the Roman diet, the Appalaichian system, a bottle of Roman wine was discovered in the 1800s in a sarcophogus in Germany and it was a preserved bottle from 327 BC, olive oil was a common way of preserving wine and more effective than a cork plug, the peasants drank mostly ale, wine was flavored and watered down sometimes, Spanish explorers brought grapes to the Americas for ceremonies, the native grape of Eurasian region was bred with our Native American grape species and created a hybrid resistant to insects, Mario has been making grapes for several years, Mario blends CA grapes and ancient techniques for preservation, best time to plant is March, planting to be able to replant, your prune in October, best land for grapes are hilly dry soil thats loamy and gravely and a little rocky, only manure no chemical fertilizer, Mario has many opinions on the pruning of the vines, leaving shutes and cutting or tying the rest, you can't always cut in January or Febuary, but in CA you cut in the winter, you don't want the sap to start running when you prune, the difference between growing table grapes and wine grapes, protecting grapes with shade, grapes are very prone to diseases, any time it rains or is humid or foggy the next day you have to spray the grapes,Home Wine Making (15:00)
Tags:
home wine making, grape crusher, machine to seperate the grapes from the stem, manual or electric, you take a thermometer to measure the juice and sugar, squeeze a grape to taste how much sugar is in it, Mario blends a bouquet of grape varieties, the grapes should ferment naturally and within a couple of days, the grapes rise and the juice goes down, you continue to measure with the thermometer, the sugar level goes down and the alcohol level goes up, between zero and five percent you remove the juice and put it in a barrel or demijohn, you take all the grape skin and put it into the presser, the fermentation creates pressure, put water in the airvalve so if it bubbles nothing goes in, the worst enemy for wine is air, you filter that wine with an electric pump, using one inch of vegetable oil to prevent air escaping, a young wine you can drink in May or April, Mario bottle himself with cork and has a machine to keep bottles 55 degrees, this wine has no sulfites or preservatives so it will go sour at the wrong temperature, Â ,To comment on this episode click here. There are currently Comments
