# "Old Italian red" wine recipe



## johnthemc

Hi everyone.
In my area, coal mine area of Pa, every holiday season there is alot of different
home brewers that put out "dago red" as it's been called forever.
Does anyone have an old recipe for this wine? I know if I can make this wine,
my elderly uncles and my two older brothers would love it!!
They really go out of their way to try to buy it and what was found last year ,
in my opion wasn't very good at all and the year before didn't taste like wine at all but welch's grape juice. I appreciate any info.
Johnthemc


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## BigBend

Dago red is a Peasant wine, Cheap, Easy, Packs a punch. I am currently making Dago Red. We just crusched 18 lugs of Zinfendel grapes from Napa Valley. Ours is ALL natural, no added chemicals or yeast, no sulfates, PURE 100% grape juice.
Chrush grapes (skins stems and all, using natures wild yeast) 
let ferment for about 12 dyas or so, tell SG is down below 1.0
Than rack into carboys and airlock.
Rack again in about 2 months
Bottle oround Easter time
Drink and enjoy
about 14% ABV
We also do a secondy "pressing" using the must a second time with added sugar and water....This is very good also.
I know this contary to what everybody is learning here, but this is OLD school.


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## Runningwolf

Funny you bring this up, I talked to several people about this same wine today. They use Concord and make it just like Big Bend said. No chemicals, no yeast. I think they added grain alcohol though. Not positive though as that could be an individual thing. 

Making wine without any chemicals and just going on wild yeast is a complete "crap shoot". It might turn out but it might all spoil. With that being said folks like Sirs (Eddie) has been doing it for quiet awhile with great success.

Cord is cheap enough that you could try it on a five gallon batch if you really wanted to. Keep us posted.


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## pete1325

Ditto that BigBend.....my last big batch (last year) was just that, a bunch of Pisano's in a garage, expresso in the morning, Adrea Bochelli, Sinatra and Martin on the stereo, cheese and last years wine for lunch just crushing and fermenting........none of those fancy additives, just let it cook. Best wine to date! Gonna do it again in a week or so.


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## Runningwolf

pete1325 said:


> Ditto that BigBend.....my last big batch (last year) was just that, a bunch of Pisano's in a garage, expresso in the morning, Adrea Bochelli, Sinatra and Martin on the stereo, cheese and last years wine for lunch just crushing and fermenting........none of those fancy additives, just let it cook. Best wine to date! Gonna do it again in a week or so.



I wanna come party with you guys!! What was for dinner?


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## Sirs

Runningwolf said:


> Funny you bring this up, I talked to several people about this same wine today. They use Concord and make it just like Big Bend said. No chemicals, no yeast. I think they added grain alcohol though. Not positive though as that could be an individual thing.
> 
> Making wine without any chemicals and just going on wild yeast is a complete "*crap shoot*". It might turn out but it might all spoil. With that being said folks like Sirs (Eddie) has been doing it for quiet awhile with great success.
> 
> Cord is cheap enough that you could try it on a five gallon batch if you really wanted to. Keep us posted.



I so disagree with it being a crapshoot Dan the only thing thats a crapshoot is when you don't properly clean all your equipment thats the only thing that'll make it a crapshoot if you have good fruit/grapes and plenty of sugar in the mix your gonna get fermentation. only reason someone has trouble with wild yeast fermentation is when they do stupid stuff to screw up their fermentation like adding a bunch of nutrient or try to adjust the acid to early stuff like that, and the other things you need to do with commercial yeast.

Wild yeast all you need is sugar and good fruit/grapes with NO additves

sorry if it got off topic but this is always a sore spot for me


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## Runningwolf

No need to appoligize and I stand corrected. I knew you were doing it right with success and was waiting for you to respond. I agree, sanitation cannot be stressed enough.

So how do you really feel? LOL


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## sevenal

*Peasant wine*

Jesus probably had that, drank that and shared that with others that appreciated it daily.
Sounds unpretentious and delicious.
Best of luck and enjoy your vintage.


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## BigBend

This is only my third year year making Old School Dago Red with NO additives. I also make make several other fruit wines using the chemicals method. Of all the wine I make, Dago Red is by far rated the best. I have friends BEGGING for the stuff. Second best is Skeeter Pee.


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## Rocky

BigBend said:


> This is only my third year year making Old School Dago Red with NO additives. I also make make several other fruit wines using the chemicals method. Of all the wine I make, Dago Red is by far rated the best. I have friends BEGGING for the stuff. Second best is Skeeter Pee.



This is what I would call "damned by faint praise!"


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## johnthemc

thanks to all,
I will let you know how I make out.
johnthemc


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## JohnT

I would recomend that you try making a port. Its sweet and really packs a punch!


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## johnthemc

Big Bend,
There isn't any sugar to be added?
What kind of alcohol content will it have?
johnthemc


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## BigBend

Take a SG reading (hydrometer) after your first crush the grapes. It well give you a potential alcohol, if it goes to dry. Our reading showed a potential alcohol at about 14%. That's just about perfect in my book. This varys from year to year duee to the sugar content of the grapes. The sweeter the grapes the higher the sugar value and the higher the alcohol.


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## johnthemc

Thank You.
I will let you know how I make out!
johnthemc


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## joeswine

*dago red*

their's and old Italian store and goes like this,during Prohibition Italians were making wine in bath tubes as quickly as they could for sales to there neighborers and others,one time a customer ask the maker after tasting his product and almost chocking on it when was this made and the old Italian in his new broken American language said"aday a go"now say that quickly.


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## Deezil

Runningwolf said:


> Making wine without any chemicals and just going on wild yeast is a complete "crap shoot". It might turn out but it might all spoil. With that being said folks like Sirs (Eddie) has been doing it for quiet awhile with great success.



It really does come down to sanitation. I'm kinda in the middle, where i like using wild yeasts but tend to feed them a bit of yeast nutrient & energizer. Those two chemicals and pectic enzyme are about all i use. 

I clean everything with water so hot it would burn your skin, and use k-meta for sanitizing, but honestly i havent added it to a carboy in probably over a year.. Not a school of thought i'd recommend for beginners but.. It's possible.


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## jswordy

w00t! We've revived a thread from 2011!


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## hannabarn

Thank You. I think!!!!
Barney


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## bzac

Isn't Dago a racist term for an Italian ? How many other racist words are allowed on the forum? Is there a list?

I don't know about the rest of you , but I've spent 12 years learning how not to make wine like my uncles. Why would you want to go backwards when home winemaking has gotten to a level where anyone can make professional quality wine?


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## joeswine

*Clarity*

 I don't think as an Italian American ,that the term dago red is derogatory to Italians ,for those of us who understood what it was meant to be deemed, it wasn't derogatory at all that sort of slanted to the broken English my first-generation Italian-Americans try to understand and speak,. So when I hear that term it doesn't bother me or anybody I know , whose from Italy, cause any good winemaker knows some of the best wines in the world come from Italy., on the other hand you can go anywhere in this country and use that term and everybody will know what you're talking about ,so it's a win-win all the depends on your perspective.........., respectfully


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## bzac

From the dictionary_

dago

noun pl. dagos or dagoes
Slang a person, often dark-skinned, of Spanish, Portuguese, or, now esp., Italian descent: *a term of hostility and contempt*_*
*

I will point out that the use of this word has caused a lot of problems on other wine forums with some members leaving because of it.
I fail to see anything win win about racist and derogatory language about any ethnic group.

Do you have a pet name for Kosher wine?


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## FTC Wines

I drank "dago red" years ago in NJ, it was pretty rough! I like the " A DAY AGO" explanation, it fit what I was drinking! Roy


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## jswordy

bzac said:


> Isn't Dago a racist term for an Italian ? How many other racist words are allowed on the forum? Is there a list?
> 
> I don't know about the rest of you , but I've spent 12 years learning how not to make wine like my uncles. Why would you want to go backwards when home winemaking has gotten to a level where anyone can make professional quality wine?


 
My grandfather and grandmother were Italian immigrants and lived in an area of town populated with a lot of Italian families. If my grandfather called his wine Dago Red, which he did, that's good enough for me. Of course, as I wrote elsewhere on this forum, he had a sense of humor about himself that is so sadly lacking in the world today. He could laugh at himself, which we as a society in general have forgotten how to do. The Dago jokes he and my grandmother, plus my mother, told - and today are still told by my living aunts and uncles, probably could not be put in the jokes thread here for fear of offending someone who is likely not even Italian.

Now on the subject of making wine, in the first place finding out about the artisanal way it was done is not going backwards, it is finding out about the roots of the practice. For example, if you look it up there is a huge movement in the Middle East to make wine in the artisanal way, even using formerly abandoned wineries carved into caves. They simply cannot make enough to satisfy the growing demand for it.

Secondly, it would delight me to no end to be able to make wine in the fashion my grandfather made it, simply because I would have revived something lost in our family since his passing way back in 1969. Third, the exploration of finding out how he did it has opened up levels of communication with my uncles and revived memories that had long lain dormant in them. These to me are all good things.

On your last query about home winemaking and "professional quality wine," I am making my own precisely to buck that whole scene. That's why I have never used a kit, and why I enjoy making wines from what is at hand locally. That's why I am not an equipment hound, spending what I consider elaborate sums to do what a $3 device will do. Now believe me, I understand there are people on here who pursue the hobby for vastly different reasons than mine. I'm accepting of that even when they are not accepting of me.


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## bzac

I belive some African Americans Use the "N" word when refering to each other, but that doesn't make it an appropriate word for a forum, neither is yours.

On the winemaking I refer to the style of red you are refering to as "immigrant style" or as a refernce to my Uncle Tony Chiarello , "Uncle Tony" wine.

This wine is characterised by the use of cheap readily available CV grapes , native yeast ferments and the non use of additions or corrections such as cultured yeast and MLB , so2 , tartaric acid etc. Sometimes aged in an old microbialy suspect barrel .

The problems often characterised with this style of winemaking is that the wild yeast often can't handle the high (higher still in the last 5 years) Brix levels of CV grapes , which often sit between 25 and 29 brix . when the wild yeast dies when the alcohol level hits 14% the wine is often left cloudy , a bit sweet and unstable.
the typical high PH of this wine also contributes to stability and short life span issues. And the barrel often adds a bit of VA.

With 5 Italian Uncles and an army of cousins I've been to many family gatherings and sampled this brew.

I started out going in with them on grape buys but taking the path of using cultured yeast , balancing the acids, using fermaid and so2. The basics of modern winemaking.

one year I brought a couple cases of my wine to a wedding , my cousins all drank my wines but not their dads.
the old boys all tried my wines and admitted they were good. And even appologised for the hard time they gave me. (teasing me for making wine from a book) 

the next season one of my uncles came to see me and asked how his wine could be more like mine. Your wine is like the store , he said.
Figuring I'd start him off slow , I gave him some ec1118, yeast food and a premeasured dose of so2 for his barrels. he swore me to secrecy that I didn't tell the others.

that year he made his best wine ever.

the next year I taught him to balance the acids and percarbonate/ citric acid treated and inoculated his barrels with vp41. Again he swore me to secrecy.

his wine was even better.

The next year two more uncles came to see me and swore me to not tell the others. 

They are all in their 50s and 60s and making their best wines ever still using mixed blacks and zinfandel (I've never been able to convince them to buy better grapes) . but they are stable, balanced and clean. as every wine should be.

It did help win them over that the books I used were written by Pambianachi and Spaziani . They all have their own copies now.

the only upgrade they publicly admit I helped with is when I gave them an used crusher stemmer to replace their crusher only one when it died.
Z


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## joeswine

*Rising above*

If, you came from were I came from ,South Philadelphia, from the heart Italian neighborhood (soild) Delaware Avenue to Broad Street ,to City Hall, nothing but Italians, and going to school in the area mixed with other nationalities you would have been called every name under the sun and have given the reply back ,if not more. That was in my youth now, 64 a businessman and Ive moved beyond those things, and I thought this form was way above that . Also,, I'm not stupid nor ignorant. I let the petty stuff go a long time ago, the elders of my time . When they heard those words with have given you a look, and remember you for another time.. That was then,. I learned long ago you can fight ignorance ,with ignorance.
 Respectfully


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## bzac

fine , if this is a forum where bigotted slurs are tollerated , I can do the adult thing and chose not to participate in such conversations.

bye.


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## g8keeper

what is we are talking about here anyways??....we are talking about a style, and a process of making wine, that even the makers have called it for quite some time now....if those individuals don't find it offensive, then why would someone else???....perhaps the word "dago" was used as a slur, but in this case it is not meant to be....i happen to be of polish american decent...do i get offended when someone refers to me as a "polock"....no....why???....because i am proud of my heritage...i would only find it offensive IF someone used a NEGATIVE adjective in front of it, say "dumb"....quite often among "friends", what would sometimes be considered as a slur, is actually a term of endearment, and it doesn't matter if someone isn't of the same ethnicity....and aren't we supposed to, for the most part around here, be friends???...hell, i have friends that maybe of italian decent, and they call me a polock....so be it...i call them a dago back, and guess what???...we all LAUGH about it....like i said, amongst friends, it's a term of endearment....and in this case, it's a type of wine and style of making it....is it necessarily everydody's way of making it???...perhaps not, but it is by no means a reason to degrade it....we all make what we enjoy....one man's drink might be another man's swill and vice versa, but as long as everyone is happy with what they make, well that's all that counts...


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## g8keeper

now....in the immotral words of rodney king...."can't we all just get along???".....now i guess it's just a matter of time before i sent to the corner....lol...


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## robie

Ok, Ok! Maybe the reference which has been used here is non-offensive to some. However, since you can all read that it is offensive others, when don't we all act like adults and show some respect.

I am not going to delete the thread, but please, use wording that is non-offensive. If you can't find another reason, do it out of respect. We are somewhat a big family here, so let's act like it.

Anymore posts using the offending word will be deleted.

Come on, guys and gals!


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