Wine of the Mill

Budding winemakers at Plush Mills heard from Wallingford vintner Tom Kecskemethy.

Last fall, I decided to start a wine club at Plush Mills, where I live. I talked to management and they were very enthusiastic. They agreed to buy us nice wine glasses and supply cheese and crackers and other palate-cleansers and to help set up tables with flowers so we could meet in a nice setting. I put out a letter to the residents and I got 10 people who were willing to give it a try and we held our first meeting. It went well. We have had a meeting every month where we compared wines; we asked wine experts to come talk to us; we went to local wine shops and wineries to learn from them. We learned a lot about wine.

Then we decided to make our own wine! We didn’t really know how to do that, but we heard that one of our members, Joan Clelan, had a son-in-law who regularly makes wine and beer in his basement. A quick trip to Tom Kecskemethy’s basement in Wallingford and we were on our way! Tom suggested that if we bought a wine kit that he would recommend, he would come to Plush Mills and help us make wine.

So we bought the kit and last Thursday, Tom helped us start to make our bottles of “Old Vines Zinfandel” that we have named “Vin du Moulin” or “Wine of the Mill.” In about six weeks we will start to bottle our wine. Until then it is bubbling away in my back bathroom. The exhaust fan does a pretty good job of getting rid of the CO2 that the yeast pulls out of the juice, turning it into 27 bottles of wine. Hopefully. Time will tell…