Making Orange Wine

Travis & I have started our first batch of wine for the year. Orange Wine. We're using a recipe out of an old wine book, so we hope it turns out good! Here's our setup:

The worst part about making wine is the mess it makes!!

Chopping raisins in the food processor.

Squeezing oranges.

We ended up with 3.25 quarts of orange juice.

I zested about 6 oranges to add to the must (the mix of ingredients that will ferment).

We weighed out 9 lbs of sugar to dissolve in 3 gallons of water.

The must: Orange juice, water/sugar syrup, 3 lbs raisins, orange zest, 6 sliced oranges, Campden tablets to kill all of the bad bacteria growing in the must, yeast nutrient, and, 24 hours later, yeast. This will ferment for 14 days and then we'll rack the wine (take out all of the solids, so only the liquid remains) and put it into a 5 gallon glass carboy (or jug). It will take 2-3 months before it will be ready to taste and possibly bottle. I just ordered more wine supplies, so hopefully we'll be ready to juice grapefruits this weekend!

And...just for good measure, I'll put in a picture of Elizabeth I took recently! She's standing up between our recliners. She's really moving around the room holding onto all of the furniture. She just hasn't figured out how to sit down without plopping on her booty!