I'll drink to that

Over the last 10 months, my husband and I have been making wine.

We did this legally. There's no need to insert a moonshine or Tennessee (my home state) joke here.

We made 30 bottles of Riesling and 30 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. The Riesling is for me - I'm a fan of white wine and I love sweet wine, but I'll share with my husband, who favors red.

We took the wine-making class at The Grape Escape in South Brunswick, in central New Jersey. It was a four-session process that started last March. In the first session, we had the option to stomp the grapes, but decided to run them through a machine that squeezed the juice into one container and spit the seeds and stems in another. I'm not sure how many people would want to drink wine that I stomped - no matter how cute my feet are.

In the second session, which happens about a week later, we extracted the wine from the "musts" or skins and poured the wine into oak barrels. We also sweetened some of the whites with regular white sugar that you have at home, which was a surprise. I thought we would have used a special sugar.

During the third session, we racked the wine and removed the "lees" or sediment. And the last session, which was Saturday for the Riesling, was bottling and labeling the wine. We bottle the Cab at the end of this month.

My husband and I designed our labels - "Haute Vineyards" with a wine cave in the background for the Riesling. "Drink with Style" is at the bottom of the label. And "Lazy Sundays" with a wine glass on fire for the Cabernet Sauvignon. "Just drink it because we made it" is at the bottom of my husband's label.

We can't drink the Riesling for at least three months and it must stay upright during that time. And we can't drink the Cabernet for about six months.

We enjoy a nice glass of wine and went on a wine-tasting tour in Cape Town, South Africa, when were there in October for our third anniversary. We learned the proper way to swirl the glass, sniff the wine and identify the fruits used to make the spirits. It was fun and we've toyed with the idea of starting a wine club. In the meantime, we'll have 60 bottles of wine to drink. Thank goodness, wine makes a good gift!