Grow Your Own Magazine

I know you can produce wine for your own consumption but can you set it up as a cottage industry or co-operative? That would be interesting, many of us produce wine - those in the south actually share the same soil as the champagne/chardonnay vineyards of france. Whereas in the north we have a different clime and soil structure - would be nice to see the return to small produce and regional drink. We've had the real ale drive, what about the real liquor and winde drive? Blackcurrant, peapod, pea, parsnip anyone?

Andrewo

Does anyone know anything about wine as a cottage industry? See above

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

Customs & Excise is the trouble Andrew

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ntg

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark.
A large group of professionals built the Titanic

http://grief-encounters.blogspot.com/

Why are Customs and Excise trouble ? Never been anything but nice to me - they paid my mortgage for thirteen years, but wouldn't let me out of London, so eventually told them to bog off and moved up here. I'll make some enquiries with some of my old colleagues and see what the score is regarding cottage indutry wine production.
Rat

Cheers rat. Because of my back I find it hard to work 9 to 5 now and want to do something that I will enjoy on a small scale and a few micro breweries have popped up round here, doing real ale, and I wouldn't mind doing real wine!

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

My OH runs a local magazine and she has been given a bottle of local commercially produced Rhubarb Wine - it doesn'tgive you an alcohol strength reading - it just says

"This wine is made from natural ingredients. There are no chemicals used, (time / storage is the basis for clearing the wine) PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT IT HAS A MUCH HIGHER ALCOHOL CONTENT THAN BOUGHT WINE, SO TREAT ACCORDINGLY. Ingredients ; Rhubarb stalks, tannin (tea) sugar, yeast"

Like the sound of the alcohol warning, but can anyone explain the use of tannin ? Didn't know it featured in winemaking.

Rat

I was told tannin is the skin of the grape, do they use tea as well?

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

According to my Husbands wine making book tannin is added to give the wine a better flavour and is normally strong tea but grape skins are also used.

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[

Cold tea is a regular ingredient on a lot of homemade wine. Oranges and Lemons are another favourite.
Jax

Andrewo
Ref setting up in business. Talked to my mate in H.M Customs & Excise - I refuse to link it with Inland Revenue - and he says your best bet is to contact their National Advice Service, tel - 0845 010 9000 - and explain your idea.
There is a public notice - Notice 162 "Cider and Wine Production" which may help you in your quest, so you could ask about that.
If you wanna produce schnapps, It will be classed as a spirit, and so will fall into a different category from wine and will therefore have a different set of rules and regs as well as a different public notice - mate wasn't sure of the notice number.
This should get you started anyway.
Good luck - you are about to enter the world of red tape !
Rat

Cheers sewer rat, will let you all know

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

Tannin is required when brewing with some fruits which do not have natural tannin. Grapes do have tannin so no need for tea with grape juice. If you sell alcohol that you have made you will have to pay duty, they even make you pay duty on free samples you give away as tasters. You will not have a problem with trading standards as they do not class wine as a foodstuff.

My God the red tape and they were useless, they didn't know - so I went to a farmers market and ended up talking to a wine maker from over in Huddersfield, nice chap, does vegan wines. He has to have 4 licenses and an extra one if he attends a market without a license. Will look into it.

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

I would have thought most wines were Vegan? I never put animals in mine anyway

There is always red tape Andrew. I know all the things my folks had to do to comply with C&E & the local council etc. I would think very hard as it will cost you more than the product!

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ntg

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark.
A large group of professionals built the Titanic

http://grief-encounters.blogspot.com/

Andrewo, there will be many who tell you not to do something and there will be many difficulties but it sounds like you are no stranger to problems. The 'red tape' will take time but you will come to understand it. You will enjoy wine making and selling, there is no better feelling than producing something and getting good feedback from your customers.
Look into the quantity of juice you can produce from what area of land. I made 2 gallons of wine from one vine but it took a lot of pruning, tying and devotion. In a vinyard/garden you are lucky if you get 2 bottles per vine.
What area do you have to grow on??, it does not have to be grapes but they do have the correct balance of ingredients so you rarely need to add much except maybe sugar if the juice is low. Sugar equals alchohol when brewing. Wine can be made from most things so what would you use???

Do it , some of the private systems I have seen on the web for brewing beer at home are amazing, temperature controlled and pumpted around. Modified for wine they would be remarkable. The consequenses of doing it without the proper duty being paid do not bear thinking about.

Andrewo
Just seen your reply from end of March - sorry that my ex employers were worse than useless - but that's part of why they're my ex- employers - not prepared to make the effort to retain qualified or experienced staff when new raw meat is cheaper and less likely to question change - glad I quit before they merged with Inland Revenue - that was one change toooooooo many

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Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday 17th September

Andrew, You can go on courses run by the council on how to start up a business. This will show you your survival income, the minimum income you need to live on. You can then look at whether it is posssible to start up a brewery. The courses are free and generally last two days, as they are free they are well worth the money. Do some sums of ingreadeants versus products, and good fortune to you.

I've heard of rats floating in scrumpy vats....bet they died happy though!