Today you won't surprise anyone with orange liqueurs. But homemade orange wine, made with your own hands and without adding various chemical additives and flavors, can become a true decoration of the festive table and conquer even the most sophisticated tastes.
Wine made from oranges can be called exotic, which not everyone will appreciate. Cheerful bright orange color, unusual fresh taste, tropical aroma and a lot of vitamins make orange wine not only an unusual alcoholic drink, but also add to it the properties of a seasonal antidepressant.
It is believed that the recipe for orange wine is borrowed from Africa. But, for example, in Spain, traditional wines with the addition of oranges have been prepared for hundreds of years. This is the world-famous cocktail wine "Sangria" and other similar recipes. There are many variations in the use of oranges in winemaking, but, of course, making wine from oranges at home is an interesting process and deserves attention and time spent.
This wine can be prepared in two ways: from fresh fruit or from orange juice. It is somewhat easier to cook from juice, but it is desirable that the juice is not store-bought, but, if possible, freshly squeezed. 1 liter of juice is poured into the prepared fermentation container and 400 grams of granulated sugar is added. The vessel is closed with a special lid for making homemade wines (you can buy it at a hardware store) or a stopper with a tube for venting gases.
Then everything is placed in a warm place for fermentation. The process continues for about three weeks until the end of gas formation. The resulting wine is filtered and fixed with 50 grams of vodka. It is kept for another week for the precipitation of the so-called tartar (crystalline sediment containing tartaric acid). Then the mass is filtered again and bottled. It is best to keep the finished product for a few more months until complete fermentation, but you can use it immediately, while the wine is still young.
Another option for making orange wine involves the use of fresh fruit. To do this, 13-15 pieces of unpeeled oranges are cut into quarters and placed in a prepared container. From above, the whole mass is poured with boiling water until it is completely covered and put under oppression for 9 days in a dark and warm place. After the expiration of the period, the mass that begins to ferment is well squeezed out, filtered and sugar is added to it at the rate of 350 grams per glass of the resulting liquid. Further, the cooking process is identical to the recipe for making wine from juice described above.
