Home made Rice Wine

"Wine is bottled poetry" - R.L Stevenson

Ten years ago the only wine I had was the wine served at the Holy Eucharist that too if I made it to daily mass at church because on Sundays with the whole parish attending the mass, serving wine wasn't feasible for the church. I never fancied home made wines so despite growing up in a family that loved wine making, I kept away from this activity of wine making and tasting. It was in Italy that I was introduced to wine drinking as an art. At parties everyone got a bottle each and they ended up cooking with wine drinking wine instead of water and even splashing it all over as if it were mineral water. Wine is cheaper then water the joked and that's where I started enjoying wine. But making wine was something I got interested in after my hubby got inspired from my aunt whose a nun. She made wine every year for her convent folks and after we heard the procedure from her nothing could stop us from  making our first wine five years back. My mom who has been making wines for nearly three decades was offended that we never tried assisting her at home and we needed our aunt to inspire us. Nevertheless she joined us to make the grape wine five years back. Ever since we tasted our grape wine there has been no turning back. 

(For the link check out http://ooonuready.blogspot.in/2014/04/home-made-grape-wine.html) And then we experimented with rice, strawberries and recently mango- yep mangoes we are now moving over to banana, mint and I got no clue what would our next project would be. It thrills me to see my hubby all excited and dedicated at wine making. He has finally found his passion :) and stays dedicated to his new found love. This is quite an easy recipe it is not very sweet and tastes more like toddy. We plan using it for cooking because it reminds us of the vinegar made of toddy that mom used to get us from home. So here's another wine recipe from our kitchen.

Ingredients for Home made Rice Wine

Water- 4 1/2 liter boiled and cooled

Rice- 350 gm ( I used basmati)

Sugar- 1.5 kg

Lemon - 3

Raisins- 120 gm

Yeast- 1- 1/2 tbsp

Brandy- 50 ml

Directions

Dissolve yeast in tepid water. Clean and soak raisins in water and squeeze juice of the lemon. The recipe I 

used said you need not wash the rice - but if you use rice that comes from loose bin I suggest you do wash the rice, if its opened from a branded packet maybe you could forego this step. Add all the ingredients in a jar and keep stirring till the sugar dissolves. Keep stirring the wine once daily and ensure the ladle you use is new and not used for any other purpose. Store the jar in a warm place in your kitchen.

 After few days the raisins will puff up to the top.Squeeze the raisins and take the juices out and leave the raisins back into the wine.Keep stirring the wine once daily till 3 weeks. After 3 weeks strain the wine into a sterile vessel. Discard the raisins and rice. Add the brandy. Add the wine back to the jar and store till you are ready to transfer the wine to bottles.Use sterile bottles and transfer them using a funnel lined with filter paper or muslin cloth. Store the bottles in a location where they can be left untouched so that the sediments settle down.

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• Hope you will try this recipe. Since this wine does not require a seasonal fruit it should be easy to make. Stay tuned for the strawberry wine recipe it happens to be my favourite these days.