Leigh Erwin: Going Shopping

Shopping For Wine Making ItemsHi all!
I can’t believe I don’t have any wines currently going in my little winery room right now! I feel guilty admitting that, but hey, sometimes you realize all of a sudden that you just bottled your last wine and you completely forgot to order a new wine kit in time to get a new one going as soon as the old one was finished! Whoops!
I decided to take a little time to put together a list of wine making items I need or have been wanting to purchase from E C Kraus and share them all with you now:

Two new winemaking kits:
I’m not ready yet to make wine from my own fruit, as a lot of fruits don’t come into season here in Colorado for a little while still and I would prefer to use local produce rather than just buy a bunch of imported stuff from the grocery store.
I definitely need to make that Chardonnay that I completely screwed up several weeks ago. As a reminder, that was the Cellar Craft Sterling Collection Chardonnay California Reserve. I am determined to see this one through all the way to bottling and fingers crossed I don’t make any mistakes with that one again.
For the red, I decided to go for a dessert-style wine and make the Cellar Craft Specialty Collection Black Currant Dessert Wine (Porto Corinto Style). I love Port-style wines and would love to be able to make one myself. Since I just making a very light style red (the Nebbiolo), I thought it would be fun to go the complete opposite and make a heavier dessert Port-style wine this time around.

Random “bits and pieces” of equipment:
I really need to get in a better habit of writing things down the moment I think of them, but I think this is everything I’ve been wanting/needing.
A new bottle brush: Shop StrainersThe one I currently have was one I actually bought for day-to-day dishes and not actually for cleaning wine bottles. When I went to try and clean out one particularly dirty bottle the other day, I stuck the brush in the neck and it didn’t even go half way into the bottle. That bottle ended up being tossed into recycling and now I know I need to order a wine bottle brush and not a run-of-the-mill bottle brush.
A stainless steel strainer: If you remember from one of my previous entries, I needed a way to remove elderberries from my Nebbiolo wine so they wouldn’t get transferred into my clean carboy. A strainer would have come in handy here.
I definitely have other things that I would like but don’t necessarily need right now (don’t we all have those!), but I think this list will do nicely for now.
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leigh_erwin_bioMy name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad – and the ugly.

0 thoughts on “Leigh Erwin: Going Shopping

  1. Nice post. My solution. When the wine cellar is empty the quickest solution is to go to your local wine seller. No muss, no fuss, no waiting…Just call me a pragmatist!