The Coastal Red wine kit from Winexpert produces an excellent wine at a reasonable cost. Retailing at under $70, it yields approximately 30 750ML bottles, which works out to less than $2.50 per bottle. The finished product is a wine that would retail at several times that amount. The Coastal Red is very similar to a French burgundy. While it can be consumed shortly after bottling, some of its more subtle overtones come out only after several months. I would suggest letting it age at least six months to get the full benefit of the fruity flavors that develop over time.I have been making wine from kits for more than six years now, and I almost always make a kit put out by Winexpert. I do this because the instructions are easy to follow and explicit. Also, making the wine is a breeze. Generally speaking, the total time I spend from the initial mixing to bottling is somewhere between three and four hours (and this includes sanitizing the equipment and cleanup). The process takes somewhere between six and eight weeks (depending on the wine) until the wine is ready to bottle. So, once you purchase a kit it won't be all that long before you'll be enjoying excellent homemade wine.
This Coastal Red was the first kit I tried. I have done more than a few since then, many are still in the aging process, some are coming into their full flavor and those bottles seem to be getting emptied quickly. Which is why I have bought a few more kits and have those fermenting right now.
Most of these kits need at least 6 months of aging to really bring out the flavor and character. One year is even better. So basically you need to start a kit and then a few weeks later start another, etc. Do this so you have a few different kits bottled up and aging. Then before you know it 6 months has passed and you can start drinking the wine you made. If you like a really young wine, you can start drinking this after about a month in the bottle. But have patience, it gets even better.
One thing I have noticed is you really need to address the CO2 levels before you bottle this wine. Actually any kit wine. It needs to be vigorously stirred for about 2 minutes to release the CO2. Test it, then stir again if needed. I found I needed to stir it a number of times before it was perfect. Then I read an article about stirring it at the right temperature. 75 degrees is where you want to be. My homemade fermentation chamber is kept at 72 degrees. So I had to up the temp to 75 a day before I want to degas and found it degases much better. I have since stopped stirring to degas and now I use my brake bleeder to pull a vacuum on the carboy. That works much better! Not necessary, but if you have one, use it.
You only need to address the CO2 levels if you plan on bottling it per the instructions. The kits instructions have you bottling it within 6 weeks. If you decide to go the old school route, you can leave the wine in the carboy for 6 months, taste it, if its ready bottle it then. If not, give it a couple more months. By leaving it in the carboy for all those extra months the wine will naturally degas itself. But in today's society we like to rush, so we manually degas the wine, then bottle it and let it age. If it ages in the carboy then nature gets to degas it for us. I know I was in a rush to get the first couple of kits bottled. Now I just leave them in the carboy until it tastes the way I like it.
These kits are great because you can and should experiment with them. Want more body? Top it off to 5 or 5.5 gallons instead of 6. Like an oakey flavor? Add white oak blocks to the carboy while aging. Want even more kick? Add some sugar in the proper amounts to ferment to a higher alcohol level. This kit fermented to 14% for me, so that worked out just right in my opinion.
While I currently have a few kits going, I definitely see more in my future. I like the taste and it is truly cost effective. This kit makes 30 bottles of wine, so including the cost of the bottle that means you are spending about $3.50 a bottle. Then since you will reuse that bottle, the next batch will only cost you about $2.25 a bottle. Not too shabby.
After you do one or two of these kits, you will want to change things up. This kit makes 6 gallons of wine. After the primary fermentation was done, I split it up into two 3 gallon carboys. Added oak to one, left the other un-oaked. I am now aging them side by side and I can really taste the difference between the bottles. Its good without oak, but the other batch tastes really good too. Its almost like two different wines.
The next step is to start making homemade wines. I currently have some carrot wine fermenting. A blueberry-pomegranate. And a strawberry wine. Then I started to read more and decided I needed to make mead. So I have a few gallons of mead fermenting at the moment. There are plenty of books that detail the steps and also a number of winemaking forums so you can easily find the information you need.
Good luck.
