It's a Crock

Recently while diving into the freezer looking for something to cook for dinner, I rediscovered some apple juice down in the bottom of the freezer. Now, this was local Tehachapi apple juice that came from a friend's orchard. Last fall, we'd spent a morning in the bitter cold prepping apples for the press. It was a big affair with some folks coming in from miles around to help out.

Which was good since there was a lot of apples to press. And once they had the number of bottles that could be fit into their freezer, the rest went to those of us that had helped. And we made it home with a few gallons.

We drank some right away, but most went into the depths of the freezer. And at the beginning of this year I made a gallon of apple wine. Well, it was meant to be apple wine. I prefer wine that is a little sweet, so attempted to add some sweetness to to the wine. And did not take sufficient care to make sure that fermentation didn't restart.

Yeast busily at work turning apple juice into wine.

So when the bottles were stashed away in March the yeast became active again. I was in my closet (yes, the wine was storied in the closet) looking for something and noticed that in one of the bottles one of the cork was pushed halfway out. I picked it up and noticed that there were bubbles coming up in the wine. Well that meant we would be having apple champagne with dinner. But while I was cooking dinner, the wine uncorked itself loudly. It was later that evening that the cork was found in the living room.

A second bottle uncorked itself in the closet, startling both me and the dog. And of course making a bit of a mess. The remaining bottles are waiting for a special occasion when apple champagne might be appropriate. And oddly those don't come up as often as you might expect.

So why bring this up now? Well, the recently rediscovered apple juice is now being made into wine. It's started fermenting in the crock. And hopefully I learned something last time. No more champagne. But only time will tell.