Craft - Volume 3 - One-Week Wine (DIY: Ferment It) (Page 102)

FERMENT IT: ONE-WEEK WINE
FERMENT IT
One-Week Wine
Make wine anywhere — even on a bike trip.
BY ALASTAIR BLAND
In June 2006, I biked through Greece for seven weeks. The
summer brings hot, arid conditions there, yet feral roadside
fruit trees grow by the millions, particularly figs, cherries, and
mulberries. The berries made for excellent road fare, but it oc-
curred to me that mulberries also could make allowable wine.
Greeks, however, like Californians, are a bit hung up on the whole
grape craze, and the only way I was going to taste mulberry wine
was to make it myself. So I crushed the berries by hand, collected
the juice in my 1-quart bottle, and added bread yeast to turn the
fructose into our good friend, alcohol. I snugly lodged the bottle in
a travel pannier on my bike while the juice fermented, and in four
tries my results were consistent and potent: full-bodied, no-joke
wine within one week — no corkscrew needed.