Rebecca Dumas
Customizing Wine to Your Taste
If you’ve ever craved a specific wine and been unable to find it, why not simply make it? Peachland Wine Shoppe provides this opportunity. It’s the perfect place for both beginners and experienced at-home winemakers to customize the taste of their wine.
What is U-Brew Wine?
Sourced from distributors throughout the world (think of some of the best wine regions: Italy, France, California and New Zealand), Peachland Wine Shoppe offers specialized kits containing the juice of a particular grape. There are four different tiers to choose from, and each varies in quality and time needed for fermentation.
The Process
Ela Randelovic, microbiologist and owner of Peachland Wine Shoppe, is the perfect guide to walk you through the process. First-timers and experts alike will be inspired by Ela’s expertise and passion when it comes to all things wine—from the tasting profiles down to the intricacies of the chemical compounds. What kind of wine you want to make is your first decision. From there, you begin the process by adding yeast. Depending on your tier of wine, the overall process will take four to seven weeks. Ela is supportive and allows participants to engage in the process as much as they wish. Even though she has a degree in microbiology and continues to conduct wine experiments, she explains the process in a way that is easy to understand. After talking with Ela, anyone with the slightest curiosity will be enticed to produce their own wine.
Misconceptions About U-Brew Wine
There are a few misconceptions people commonly have about U-Brew wine.
“One of the biggest ones,” Ela Randelovic remarked, “is that people think the initial grape juice is just grape juice like you’d buy from the grocery store. It’s not.”
Instead, this specially sourced product comes from worldwide vineyards and can be personalized to an individual’s unique taste. The range of modification varies, and one can create wines with different levels of sweetness and oakiness.
Fruit and dessert wines are also available to ferment, as are port and ciders. Quality is another major misconception when it comes to brewing your own wine. In fact, the quality is superb and is often even higher than some wines from liquor stores, with significantly fewer sulphites. Each brew consists of 30 bottles (half batches are also available), which brings the price to $5.50 to $8.20 per bottle of wine.
By brewing your own, you leave not only with newfound knowledge and expertise, but with your own unique and personalized wine. Cheers to this!