Stemming from the old standard fruit of the month clubs, the newest trend is the gift of giving wine of the month. Like any gift of wine, this wine club is a more than welcome gift that says something a little different than a fruit basket. Perhaps you’re looking for a gift that has a slightly different message from that implied by fruit; when you’re looking for elegant and understated, wine is always a solid choice.

A wine of the month gift club enhances a gift of wine by making it year-round. It is infinitely more exciting than a case of 12 of the same vintage, the wine of the month gift club features 12 unique vintages, each one carefully selected for the season in which it is sent.

Easy and Elegant

Perhaps the best thing about choosing this type of gift is that you don’t have to worry about buying the bottle yourself, wrapping it and presenting it to the recipient. Sending someone a subscription to a wine of the month club means that that person’s day will be made, not once, but twelve times during the next year when an unsuspected bottle of wine shows up on their doorstep.

All you have to do is make the initial choice of cost and delivery and leave the difficult task of choosing the actual bottles up to the specialists employed by the wine of the month gift club. You can rest assured that these specialists will choose appropriate bottles for the price range you’ve chosen as well as the season in which the bottle is being sent.

For example, in the heart of winter, a robust red wine might be sent in anticipation of it being paired with a rich, heavy meal. In contrast, July’s wine will probably be a light white bottle to match grilled seafood or summer vegetarian dishes. The experts’ choices will be good ones, not necessarily the choices that you yourself would make, but always good ones, and the best part is that you will not have to go through the process of making the choices yourself.

Wine of the month gifts are selected and paid for once in the year, but keep on giving all year long. Many people appreciate this kind of gift because it keeps arriving all year long. A gift like wine of the month or a magazine subscription or theater subscription can be enjoyed all year long and is an especially good choice to ensure that people who are far away from you keep thinking about you throughout the year.

Nestler

You can try for years and home made wine will never taste as good as a real wine from a Mediterranean country, or more recently the wines of the Southern hemisphere. OK, occasionally there is an exception, but the abundance of chemicals used in making wine at home frequently taints it.

My grandfather who was otherwise a pretty sane chap and fountain of knowledge, having spent a lot of time in India, started making his own wine when he retired. My first taste of homemade wine was when I was about 7 when I was allowed a few sips of his “vintage” blackberry wine. Even at that tender age I could tell that it was immensely alcoholic but tasted awful. He belonged to a wine making “Circle” who used to give out wine making tips to other keen winemakers. Because all the members used the same chemicals they did not notice them at their ‘tastings’. Anyone used to real wine would rather have a G&T or a Scotch.

I must admit that later in life I dabbled in winemaking myself. I should have known better, I know, but living in the English countryside with often more produce than I needed I decided to do something with the gluts of apples, pears and other fruits in the garden, as well as picking blackberries and elderberries from the local hedgerows.

I invested in a load of gear, bottles, books, corks, demi-johns and tried to make wine without chemicals, having remembered the times I had been forced to try various friends’ unpalatable brews, “Oh you must try my carrot wine, it tastes just like Frascati”. (It was more like battery acid and bore no resemblance to that fine wine).

So I read loads of books, most of which told me to use lots of chemicals without which one could not make wine, and gave it a go. A few gallons of apple vinegar (which was great for cooking), several gallons of funny tasting water and a year or two later I finally made a small batch of very drinkable elderberry wine using a port yeast. It was rather like a half-decent chianti. So having invested in all the equipment, spent many, many hours picking fruit, washing it, bottling-up, siphoning-off and all the other numerous tasks necessary in home-made wine making, I ended up with some very good vinegar (around 10 years worth) and 7 bottles of drinkable wine.

Nowadays I’m very happy to go to the local shop and get a decent bottle of the real thing. One of the main problems with homemade wine is its unknown strength. Yes I know there are various gadgets for measuring that sort of thing, but that is rather throwing good money after bad, and if it doesn’t really taste very nice anyway why bother?

Sitting here with a glass of chilled Frascati and a smoked salmon sandwich I really wish I had taken the two most important wine making tips before I even started. It would have saved me a lot of aggravation.

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Andre Pazik

Once again we have advent of the summer season in Western New York and Ontario and while some home winemakers limit their endeavors to the grape, others, including myself, anxiously await the arrival of the fresh fruit. Once dismissed out of hand by some as inferior and often quaintly referred to as “country” wines, fruit wines are enjoying a surge in popularity never seen before, embraced by amateur and professional vintners alike.

And why shouldn’t they? Our region has the good fortune to possess a burgeoning agribusiness in fruit other than grapes and, as many fruit farmers have discovered (as indicated by the surge in farm winery licenses), wine returns a much more appealing margin than fruit alone. For those who are still on the fence about the virtues of fruit wine, may I suggest that you take a day to tour some of the local wine trails and try them.

For me, a family outing to the local fruit farms, especially a “U-Pick,” was always gleefully anticipated as a summertime ritual. The delicious baked goods and the jellies and jams made from the fruit could be enjoyed into the cold winter months. That is, of course, if they lasted that long.

We still make and love all these things, but taking the extra time and expense to produce wine from the strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, and other fruits adds another dimension that will challenge and hone your skills. This is because, unlike grapes (especially those varieties which one may regularly vint year after year), fruits, berries, and other feedstock used to make these wines have less predictable characteristics in their pH, acid, and sugar. Therefore, careful testing and attention to making the proper adjustments is important to producing a good fruit wine.

There is an abundance of websites that have good basic fruit wine recipes, and even recipes to make wine from vegetables and herbs. Simply plug ‘fruit wine recipes’ into a search engine.

Now for another reason why home winemakers should have a second look at fruit wines. Today, people are more health-conscious than ever. Almost every day for the past decade, starting with “The French Paradox,” we’ve been bombarded with one clinical study after another that touts the health benefits of drinking red wine in moderation.

Well, surprise! The same health-promoting compounds found in Pinot Noir are found abundantly in fruits and berries. The polyphenol pigments that impart color to the fruit are known collectively as anthocyanins, a family of powerful antioxidants. The compound found in Pinot Noir called resveratrol is produced in greater amounts in this varietal as an antifungal because the skin of the grape is thin and susceptible to splitting. Resveratrol has been studied for its ability to block cell inflammation and oxidative stress related to arthritis and other degenerative diseases, as well as cancer treatment and prevention. *

Blackberries, mulberries, and especially blueberries are rich in powerful antioxidants like resveratrol. Blueberries also contain phytosterol and pterostilbene, which have recently been shown to be useful in lowering bad (LDL) cholesterol, preventing heart disease, and protecting the body against certain cancers.

None of these beneficial compounds are lost in the winemaking process, so why not raise a glass of fruit wine and drink to your health?

*Joseph, J.A., Shukitt-Hale B., Denisova, N.A. Bielinski D., Martin, A., McEwen, J.J., and Bickford, P.C. “Reversal of Age-Related Declines in the Neuronal Signal Transduction, Cognitive, and Motor Behavioral Deficits with Blueberry, Spinach, or Strawberry Dietary Supplementation,” Journal of Neuroscience, September 15, 1999, Vol. 19, No. 18. pp. 8114-8121.

About the Author:

Andre Pazik, Executive Vice President & CTO, is a former teacher with a passion for fine food and wine. During his successful careers in criminal justice and education, Andre’s interest in winemaking continue to grow. His experiments in monitoring fermentation led to the invention of the BubbleFlo™ system. www.bubbleflow.com Winemaking Tips from Ande Pazik of www.bubbleflo.com E-mail Contact: dkceo@bubbleflo.com Read more articles by: Andre Pazik

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