Wine-making and Winemonopoly

We have decided that, with the price of alcohol here, if we intend to have a glass of wine for anything but the most special of occaisions, we're going to have to make it ourselves. Now, Kes is actually a master vintner, having managed to put out a pretty-much-endless supply of wine in our house in St. John's. However, we were unfamiliar with any of the brands in Norway, and decided that the result would be us purchasing the cheapest brand available. In a pleasant correspondence, this lead us directly to the brand which was also advertising the shortest time-to-completion. Great!

(Yes, I know, warning bells are going off in everyone's head already, but let's see what happens...)

So, we bought a big ol' bucket and other associated requirements (thermometer, vapour lock, 4 kg of sugar, etc.), and headed home to give it a shot. Now, every kit we had used before involved us receiving grape juice as part of the package. This one, however, seemed to have some sort of pellets inside the biggest package in the box. We assumed that they were some sort of dehydrated pellets, or something. Nope. They were actual berries, dried. Some are grapes (yes, I know that makes them raisins, but they sure don't look like any raisins I've seen), which would be expected, but I could swear that some are blueberries and others are currants. Now, if the package said "fruktevin" (fruit wine), I wouldn't be surprised. ...but our box says "Rød Merlot" (Red Merlot). Since when does regular red wine such as Merlot use blueberries?

Oh well, we're about to find out. We've mixed the sugar and berries into some boiling water, and left the bucket in the bathroom to cool. We'll see whether we have anything worth drinking in the 7-10 days the box advertises. There are many more steps for us to take. I'll keep you updated.

The second part of the title of this post is taken from the name for the liquor stores here. They are operated by the government, and are called "Vinmonopolet" - literally, "Wine monopoly". At least they're honest! I bought some wine from them today. It was about $56 for a 3-litre box (we've become fans of box-wine, because it allows you to have a single glass without needing to finish the bottle, if that's what you feel like), and it was the second-cheapest in the store. I thought, since I really didn't recognize very many of the wines, that purchasing the second-cheapest one was a valid option. Apparently not. It's so bad that I'm not sure we'll be able to finish it.

Oh well, in 7-10 days we'll have something like 20 litres of wine made out of dried blueberries. Heaven help us.

Ashley