Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series about home brewing and wine making.

Janet E. Montgomery and Dan P. Veilleux grow grapes at their vineyard in Vilas. Photo by Dan Veilleux

by EMILY MELTON
Lifestyles Editor

When art instructor Janet E. Montgomery and husband Dan P. Veilleux built their house in Vilas, they knew they wanted to make wine.

“One of our favorite things to do is to sit out on the porch and to look out at the mountains and drink wine and have cheese, and sometimes, when I’m really tired after I come home, if the weather’s OK, that’s what we do,” Montgomery said.

The pair built a wine cellar next to their house, and they keep the room cool with the water from their well.

After the first year of attempting to grow his own grapes, Veilleux discovered that birds were responsible for their disappearance, and the next year, approximately half were again lost, so the couple bought netting to wrap around the vines to ward off intruders. 

Because their grape vines were being preyed upon, Montgomery double-netted the vines and set up several traps, resulting in the capture of “three possums, five raccoons and a couple skunks,” Veilleux said.

Montgomery and Veilleux have since made wine with wild plums, cultivated plums, carrots and potatoes, beets, blackberries, blueberries, blueberries and cranberries, raspberries, mead, elderberries, cranberries and peaches.

“If it’ll ferment, I’ll make wine out of it; it’s as simple as that,” Veilleux said. “I want to try rose hips. Rose hips belong to the apple family, and after they flower, they have these little fruits on the ends, and I’d like to take a crack at it.”

When describing the process, Montgomery said many people think of the “I Love Lucy” episode in which Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz, Ball’s sidekick, are filmed at a vineyard in Italy, stomping on a pit of grapes.

Dan P. Veilleux (a) stomps grapes in preparation for their transformation into wine. Photo by Dan Veilleux

“When we made plum wine, we tried squeezing them through our hands and we tried beating them with spoons,” Montgomery said. “We tried everything and nothing worked, so we finally put them in a baby pool, and that works, but with the plum pits, it makes your feet hurt.”

After the grapes are cut from the vine, their skins are popped when stomped on, and the contents of the pool is then transferred to a separate container.

“You get all these crushed grapes and you put them in a vat and you put some potassium sulfite in it,” Veilleux said. “That produces sulfur dioxide gas – it kills most of the bacteria and wild yeast that are around the grapes. If you didn’t do that, the grapes would still ferment but…you wouldn’t know what you’re getting. You’d get all kinds of raw flavors and weird tasting wine.”

After letting the mixture sit for approximately 24 hours, the sulfur dioxide gas is emitted.

Then, yeast is added.

“These wine yeasts are very, very aggressive,” Veilleux said. “So, the first three, four or five days, or thereabouts, you actually keep the vat top open and all the grapes, skinned and whatnot, come to the top and form a big layer, and twice a day, you have to go down and you have to punch down the layer.”

Veilleux said the grape skins must be mixed down in the juice; otherwise, the bacterium from the wild yeast is likely to grow in the juice that is being fermented.

When the juice is approximately two-thirds fully fermented, the juice and skins are transferred to another container and sealed with an airlock.

“The important thing is that it doesn’t let air in,” Veilleux said. “If air gets in there, that’s how you produce vinegar. If you wanted to make vinegar, you’d keep on letting it mix with air.”

After the exclusion of air allows the yeast to produce alcohol and the yeast is eventually expended, sediment “slowly settles to the bottom” of the container and is siphoned into another container.

Then, the wine is ready to be bottled, corked and kept cool, Veilleux said.

Montgomery and Veilleux, both partial to dry, red wine, buy corks and use recycled bottles that are cleaned and reused each time they make wine.

They call their homemade vineyard and facilities “Indigo Ridge” and make approximately 15 gallons of wine per year.

They will continue growing grapes, making wine and enjoying their glasses from their porch, overlooking the scenery of Western North Carolina.

Photos by Dan Veilleux  |  Special to The Appalachian

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