Upon request of some people over on my Tumblr, I’ve decided to write a series on incorporating winemaking into your Kitchen Witch/Cottage Witch practice.
My intention with this first post is to cover the basics: what is winemaking and how do I use it in my process, why winemaking, and the pros and cons of making wine. I hope that you enjoy it.
My background in winemaking
A little bit over ten years ago, my partner and I decided to get married and because we’re Extra(TM), we wanted to have a Scottish medieval ceremony/reception. My coven mate Dora’s Uncle had been experimenting with making mead so she worked with him to make us a Honeymoon Mead to give out as wedding favors. It was, hands down, the best mead I’ve ever drunk and our love of homebrewing was born.
In the decade since, we have experimented with mead, cyser (mead plus cider – a favorite), many other combinations of fruit and mead, strawberry wine, and even on two occasions grape wines (we tried and failed to make a pyment which is a grape mead and we made a fairly successful Peach Riesling). We’ve dry hopped and infused our concoctions after the fact as well as added in flavoring in the primary and secondary fermentation process.
We’ve failed a lot. More often than we succeeded. But each failure taught us about our yeast colonies and what they need to make alcohol.
As such, I do not consider myself an expert but I have a good deal of experience under my belt. But I’m the forever student – I enjoy learning, growing, and deepening my understanding of turning water (and honey and fruit) into wine.
What is Wine Making?
Besides alchemy? Winemaking is Science that you can do in your own kitchen – with a few tools and some knowledge you can turn the bountiful harvest into a boozy treat that can be enjoyed for years to come. There is something inherently magical about the transformation of fruit to alcohol – plus, your friend and family will be so impressed with your new gift-giving skills!
At its most basic, winemaking is just giving yeast some food (sugar) and an anaerobic place to live and ferment. There is obviously a lot more to it than that, but also…not.
Did you know that honey ferments naturally in the beehive? There are many people who say that mead is not a human invention – it is a discovery that our ancient ancestors made and used to their advantage.
There is more to making a successful wine than combining a source of sugar and a source of water – you need yeast, for one thing. Though some people like to use wild yeasts, I like to use a cultivated yeast for better control over the final flavor of your wine. You also, depending on your starting ingredients need nutrients to support your healthy yeast colony, a source of acid, and other ingredients to change/support the flavors.
Why Use Wine Making in your Kitchen Witch Practice?
Did you miss the point where I talked about alchemy? 🙂
Winemaking, like witchcraft, is a transformation process. Mirroring your magic to what you are trying to do is called sympathy – a simple example of this is planting a seed to grow your intention. Well, when you make a yeast colony you grow MANY organisms in support of your intentions. And in the end, you get to drink your magic.
Do you need more incentive than that?
In my practice, I make wines and meads based on ingredients that grow in my natural environment (Southern New England) and so it is a way for me to connect with my native plants (and bees) on a deeper level. I am primarily a green witch and so bees are a huge part of my practice as it is, working with honey only deepens my connection to them.
The Pros of Winemaking
- Wine. You get to drink wine. Wine is good – the wine you made yourself, that you get to share with your loved ones, is even better.
- You create a deepening connection with the spirits of the plants that you are working with.
- Your ancestors probably made wine and by doing the same, you can forge a deeper connection with them.
- Wine makes a great offering to most spirits/ancestors/deities. You can very easily make and dedicate a wine project to a particular spirit that you work with. Or make strawberry wine for your grandma who loved strawberries, etc.
The Cons of Winemaking
- Wine is poison. (This could be a pro depending on your perspective) You can die from drinking too much. You can also be susceptible to alcohol addiction/abuse.
- Winemaking is expensive if you are going to do it right. Since you want the freshest and highest quality ingredients, you will need to pay top dollar for them. You need tools specific for winemaking that you likely do not already have in your house. (This can somewhat be avoided by making wine on the small scale but not entirely)
- You are going to fuck it up. See above about how expensive it is and then realize that (especially in the beginning when you don’t have all of the fancy tools), you are going to waste all of those expensive ingredients on a final product that isn’t drinkable. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
In conclusion
Winemaking is a beautiful way to connect with the bountiful harvest of the season and turn it into a magic potion that you can enjoy for years to come. It can be daunting at first but with a bit of patience and skill, you can truly become an alchemist.
In future articles on winemaking, I’ll get into the items that I think are essential for the winemaking process, some extras that help a lot, and a couple of different methods for basic winemaking. If you want, I can also share a few tried and true recipes and a few stories about our winemaking failures (because you learn the most from what you do wrong).