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Wine making with friends
WINFIELD — When Ruel and Deborah Armentrout have a few friends over for a glass of wine, there’s nothing small about it.
Throughout the next few weeks, they will bottle more than 4,400 bottles of wine. That’s 960 gallons of grape juice. And the Winfield couple, along with dozens of their closest friends, will enjoy every minute of the process that takes about a year from juice ordering to bottling.
The Armentrouts’ first foray into winemaking was 10 years ago, when another couple asked them to join in their hobby.
“Danny and Linda Raines asked us to make wine with them,” Deborah said, “Linda’s grandfather and dad made wine. We made around 10 cases each that first year.”
Now the group has expanded, with Deborah organizing and Ruel as the master winemaker. The friends — this year Deborah ordered juice for 32 couples or individuals — make a wide variety of wines, including beaujolais, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, chianti, riesling, merlot, pinot grigio, zinfandel, sangiovese and more.
“Everyone decides what type of wine they want to make and we order the juice from California,” Deborah said. “It comes in October in 50-gallon containers or 5-gallon buckets. It depends on what we order.”
The wine is then placed into glass jugs called carboys or into large metal vats. Various friends own the carboys (which cost about $50 each) and the vats (which run up to $800), which reside in an expanding space behind the Armentrouts’ home.
“Poor Ruel keeps losing more of his garage as we make our winemaking space bigger,” Deborah said.
The wine room has racks of bottles covering a large wall, all varieties from past years. Wine glasses hang from racks overhead. Ruel has tacked a tight row of corks along the ceiling as faux-crown molding.
“When you put the grape juice into the carboys and vats, it starts working,” Deborah continued.
Two to three weeks later, the Armentrouts “rack” the juice/wine, taking it out of the jugs and vats, cleaning the sediment out, and then putting it back into the containers. This process happens again around January or February, and it helps to condition the wine, improving the taste.
Deborah said in the early stages of fermentation, as the grapes begin to bubble, the noise in the steel vats “is like a freight train.”
The Armentrouts learned a chemistry lesson the first time they went into their winemaking room after they had filled the carboys and vats with the grape juice.
“I built this place pretty tight, to keep the temperature constant,” Ruel explained. “When we came in here, that juice had started to work, and we couldn’t catch our breath.” The fermentation process had used the oxygen in the room, and the Armentrouts quickly learned to open the door of the room to allow fresh air in before entering.
The bottling process happens over several weeks in August and September. It’s a party atmosphere as old friends gather to share stories, wine and food. Friends stay all afternoon, although bottling 24 bottles takes around a half an hour.
Everybody makes their best recipes to bring, so the food’s always good, Ruel and Deborah’s daughter, Deena, agreed.
Martha Brumfield, who along her husband, David, and many of their family members, has been making wine with the Armentrouts for years.
“There are no chemicals in the wine,” she said, “so it tastes fresher, with no aftertaste.”
Lynn Adkins agreed, saying she enjoys the process as much as the finished product. “It’s fun to make, and it tastes great.”
