From our batch of blueberry wine we made 7 bottles of blueberry port. Actually, only the Portuguese may call their wine port, for the rest of us we may call it fortified wine. Hundreds of years ago the British noticed that their wine being shipped from Portugal went bad but they discovered that by adding brandy or some other strong spirit kept the wine stable and tasty. Hence the discovery of Port Wine.
Well, since I'm not a commercial winery I'll call my fermented wine port, I don't think the Portuguese would mind. Making good port takes skill and time, but we home winemakers learn some tricks that can speed up the process and turn out some very commendable wine and ports.
In a nutshell what I did was take a good homemade blueberry wine and added wine grape concentrate, liquid oak extract and french brandy in just the right proportions to create a very smooth blueberry port.
Mixing this stuff and tasting it is where the fun comes in. My wife and I have a great time experimenting with the formulas. The trick is to keep good records of the proportions so when we find a great formula we know just how we got there!
Now that the blueberry port is bottled we're letting it rest and age a bit further. The longer it rests and ages the more developed and complex the flavours become. The obvious temptation is to pop a cork sooner than later. This is the home winemakers dilemma.
This is the place to read about the enjoyment of winemaking. We make our own wine at home and enjoy the fruits of our labours. We also buy wine and compare ours to the store bought ones. This forum will cover many aspects of winemaking and also wine buying and food paring. Please come back often for updates.
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