Vino...

I am not a wine drinker, it usually burns and I'm a wimp.

I'll take a cold beer any day.

I've never made alcohol in my basement - intentionally. There is a niche market of folks that do make their own wine and or beer. This weekend I got my first look at what a basement winery looks like. It's very sophisticated and involves 30 gallon trash cans, heavy duty trash bags, and a particle board stick with a foot on it. Not exactly Sonoma, but it produces a wine that will put hair on baby's chest.
If I didn't know better, I swore I had swallowed straight Georgia shine. Yes, I have drank Georgia shine because we had a mason jar in our freezer in college.

As you can see the smashed grapes and wine making
ingredients are put into a lined trash can. 

The smashed grapes and other ingredients like water, yeast, acids, sugar and some other stuff are dumped into a container. In this instance it was a big lined trash can.

Then you let it sit and work its magic. As the yeast and stuff works it rises a little bit like bread, and a crust is formed on the top. That's why you have to stir it up.

The board is what we used. It's basically particle board and on the bottom is a foot like stomper that pushes the crusty stuff down and then it will repeat the process again before stirring the next day. You keep doing this so that the ingredients will do what they're supposed to do. I'm no chemist, so I'm going to take the guys word for it.

"It looks like roast beef!"

All I can tell you is that the smell is pretty pungent, and the particle board stomper is a lot harder to work than one would think. It's like churning frozen butter. At least, that's what it looked like - I was too busy laughing to actually partake in a turn at the stomper.

Once the wine was stirred the other trash bag hat went back on the top, kind of like a lid, and the yeast went back to work. Once the wine ferments long enough it will be strained out and put into bottles for everyone to enjoy.