Blackberry Wine

Challenge no. 9 is to make and bottle my own wine. After doing a lot of research on making my own wine at a winery vs. making my own wine at home, I've decided to go with the latter. Making your own wine at a winery STARTS in the thousands of dollars. It would probably be fantastic, but I can't take that expensive chance.

So, homemade wine. Since obtaining the type of grapes required to make a traditional wine would mean waiting until late summer and then having them delivered, I am going to attempt to make blackberry wine.

The ingredients are more readily available, and if I really wanted to, I could pick my own berries. This decision is partly influenced by some incredible blackberry wine I tasted at Applewood Orchards and Winery in the fall (it's available for purchase here if you're interested).

 
In terms of ingredients, it's simple: blackberries, sugar, water and yeast. The equipment will be the biggest purchase, but it seems that any brewing store will have exactly what I need.

I found instructions here, but this is one of the many set of instructions I found. There are books I could buy on the subject, but I'm going to just give this one a go and see what happens. If it's an epic fail, then I'll just try again. If it turns out delicious, I won't have to do any Christmas shopping this year.

Cheers!