Q1: Today you wanted to tell us that we can make our own wine from grapes, right here in Montreal…

Making your own wine is part of the tradition of many families, and has become an addictive hobby for others. The best part of this hobby is that you get to enjoy drinking the results, and you can stock up on perfect and incredibly inexpensive ($2-$3 a bottle!) gifts for holidays or for an anytime house gift.

Q2: Did you ever make your own wine?

Once, while I lived in Greece, I was taken to their annual wine-making festival. After you paid an admittance at the gate of a park, you were given a crude hand-made ceramic mug. This was a lush park, not unlike Mont Royal, and as you strolled through the thick trees and pathways, you eventually would come upon large square cement shallow basins (like huge baby pools) where each grape grower had dumped his stock, and people would be stomping around in the basin mashing the grapes with their feet.

You were encouraged to stomp along with the others, and were given free samples of wine at each stop. If you didn’t like that particular one, you just poured it out into the woods and trundled on to the next one you could find. The U.S. Navy sailors I was with just adored this outing – the mucking around was great fun and it was also a really cheap way to get drunk. I never realized at the time that I was participating in culinary history.

Q3: Well I don’t think many of us are going to crush grapes with our feet, so getting back to Montreal, how do you do it here?

Grapes come into town from now until mid-November from California, Ontario and Europe. You can buy them at the public markets or at Bacchus, the first store mentioned below. It is possible to make a fast young wine in as little as forty days, but waiting ninety days til Christmas would yield a much finer tasting wine.

If you want to skip the first process of grape crushing, then during the rest of the year you can buy the grape in concentrates, and go from there. All of the stores will offer you any guidance you need in order to come up with a fine wine. Cheers!

The reason for the huge space that the store Bacchus Le Seigneur du Vin takes up is revealed now, in September. At this time, crates full of grapes are ordered for customers, and all the machinery you could need to crush them in order to make your wine for the year can be rented here and done on the spot.

There are daily deliveries of grapes, about twenty-five varieties in all. You must order a minimum of six cases (approximately $26 a case) in order to use the crushing service, which costs $25 for 6-10 cases and $2.50 per case above that.

The rest of the year you can buy your fresh Village Vintner juice concentrates (about 24 reds or whites), bottles, labels, corks, rubber stoppers and even 54L containers.

Location: 1820 Dollard Ave, Lasalle
corner: at Newman Blvd..
Phone: 514- 366-8000
Hours:  now to about end of October: Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5  p.m.,
(rest of year) Tuesday to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Q4: What about other shops that might be able to help us with this delicious project?

For under $100 to start with, at, you can ferment your own wine (for $2 – $3 a bottle) in about 4 weeks’ time. If you have no room at home, you can make and bottle your own wine at the premises of PurVin-Paul Bourget for $3 – $ 4 per bottle. Helpful advice is given by this 37-year-old business, along with the glass aging jars, hydrometers, bottles, gallon jugs, corks, and labels needed to make Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay. From Italy, California, France, Australia, Chile and Spain there are about 75 vineyard quality varieties of wine juices.

Location: 1265 O’brien Blvd, Ville St-Laurent
corner: at Rochon St.
Phone: 514-747-3533
Hours: Tues-Fri 9-6, Sat 9-5
www.purvincanada.com

Mosti Mondiale 2000 has been located in a busy wine-making community for the past 14 years and is well equipped. You can buy or rent equipment – press, crushers. Then you would need  new or re-cycled bottles, labels, barley, malt, hops and concentrates by Sterile or fresh juice. There are lots of beer possibilities: Irish, Australian, Mexican, Scottish, Dutch and ales too, with beer kits starting at $10.

Location: 5187 Jean-Talon est,  St-Leonard
corner: Viau
Phone: 514-728-6831
Hours:  Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9-5 (Sept-Nov Sun 9-5)

I grew up amongst gypsies. Most of you are now imagining Hollywood wagon trains in Europe with dark bushy-haired, colorfully dressed nomadic people moving from town to town, perhaps even one day shy of the law. You’d be wrong.

(I did know that kind – I lived in Greece, and gypsies roamed the little fishing village there. They even stole my valuable American blue jeans off my clothesline – which wasn’t easy, since my line was on the roof of a three-story building.)

The percentage of you who were right know that “gypsy” is the nickname for chorus dancers in Broadway shows. The nickname started because they, too, move from place to place, or from show to show. My Dad was a stagehand on Broadway, and whenever I visited him at work, the dancers were always around practicing routines, hanging out in the audience or roaming backstage stretching and such.

Back then, dancers didn’t have special dancing clothes. Sure, there were leotards, but after that they looked like – well, gypsies – in their artistic, colorful put-together rehearsal outfits. Nowadays they enjoy the pleasures of cutting edge textiles made just for arduous athletic activity.

These fabrics are lightweight, dry quickly, wick away perspiration and even “control” body temperature – be it hot or cold. The textiles are so thin that you can use them for layering and not feel like a kid going out to play in the snow. The stores below sell these yummy clothes, and also the absolute basic necessity of dancers – proper dancing shoes.

Rossetti, 3923 St. Denis St at Roy St. Phone: (514) 842-7337. Hours: Monday to Wednesday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. With the same owner, Mrs. Rossetti, since 1951, this has been a specialty shop catering to the ballet needs of women, men and children. There are Capezio, Bloch, Mondor, Mirella and Body Wrapper tutus, leotards and unitards. Point shoes can be deconstructed and made-to-fit perfectly. Others with itchy dancing feet – flamenco, salsa, tango and tap – can glide right over here for their personalized fitting. If you need made-to-measure theatrical or period shoes, this is your store.

Danz Etc., 920 Jean Talon St. East at St. Hubert St. Phone: (514) 271-6512. Hours: Monday to Wednesday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. One of the oldest (41 years) and biggest dance supply houses in town, you can find it all here, whether it’s for ballet, flamenco, ballroom, hip hop, highland, yoga, aerobics or whatever. There’s shoes, bodywear, tights, leotards, point shoes in names you know: Danskin, Mirilla, Capezio, Mondar, Bloch, Sancha, Angelo Luzio, Bodywrappers, Harmony, etc. The staff has background in dance and are good at fitting. If you’re lucky, you might bump into a dancer from Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet Jazz or Ecole National de Ballet. Other location: Movimento, 4307 boul. St-Jean (514-696-1212).

Boutique de Danse Wendy, 295A St. Jean Blvd., Plaza Pointe Claire at Autoroute 20. Phone: (514) 695-0285. Hours: Monday to Wednesday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday noon to 4 p.m. For West Islanders or anyone else, here’s a convenient location to buy your dance shoes, be it for ballroom, jazz, ballet, tap, gymnastics, Irish or Scottish dancing. Figure skating, ballet and aerobic clothing by So Danca, Danskin, Mondor, Leo’s, Motion Wear and Gilda Marx.