If you have an Instant Pot, and you don’t feel like going to the wine store, set aside 48 hours (and another full week), some grape juice, and some packing tape, and get to it.
An intrepid food blogger named David Murphy figured out that America’s favorite Canadian appliance can be used to make “wine.” According to Munchies, Murphy saw a meme on Facebook (this one, sorry) and instead of laughing and quietly closing the tab, he took it as a challenge. Invoking the sentient beast’s “yogurt” function, he cobbled together a recipe that involves grape juice, sugar, packing tape, and yeast, and started testing.
Apparently, after 48 hours and 8 days of quiet rest in a dark, cool place, the substance that emerged from the Instant Pot was wine-adjacent.
What’s left is a wine that tastes a bit like a Merlot, in Murphy’s view. “The grapes in the juice became alive and transformed into something more palatable,” Murphy explained to MUNCHIES. “You can smell dark cherries and raw chocolate on the nose, and you can taste more complex flavors than what you started with.”
Murphy hopes that his efforts will kickstart a small revolution within other home cooks who may be find the urge, just as he had, to make their own wine. He admits it’s not the best wine you can hypothetically buy; it’s more of “an extremely pleasant table wine” that he reckons may cost in the ballpark of eight to 12 dollars.
Though I am admittedly wine-stupid and willing to drink pretty much anything if it has an ice cube in it, I’m loath to entertain the idea of wine made in a pot that also makes beans, yogurt, creme bruleé, rice, and pain au chocolat (maybe). Instant Pot wine probably won’t take off, but it smacks of the kind of strange food pretension that hovers around people who still light a candle at their Wyle Dufresne WD~50 altar every weekend before taking another crack at their uni-cinnamon-caramel foam. Don’t be pedantic and make the wine in the Instant Pot; make a pot roast in your Instant Pot and go buy some wine.
What this discovery really opens up is a wide and wooly world of exploration: If wine works in the pressure cooker, what’s next? Beer? Laundry detergent? Moisturizer? Cat food? Human bodies? Use an Instant Pot if you got one for Christmas and cling to your Crock Pot if you’re not afraid of death. Make the beans! Make the rice! Fuck up a post roast, braise some meat. Pulled pork! Turkey neck! Pain au chocolat! Taxes! Laundry! Cat food! Just not wine. Please. Thanks.