Re:Find Finds New Home

Once you start looking for ways to repurpose things, you can find opportunities everywhere. Take Alex and Monica Villicana, owners of Villicana Winery in Paso Robles. In 2011 Alex came up with the clever idea to take the bleed-off grapes early in the wine process — the saignée, which is often used to make rosé, or worse, just dumped — as the base for distilling spirits. And why not? Eastern Europe uses the potato because it’s cheap and plentiful, not for any intrinsic reasons.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Re:Find Turns Wine into Gin

Turns out you can crush a grape and get gin. There are a few steps involved, of course, so don't try this at home, but that's where Paso Robles' Villacana Winery and its distillery arm Re:Find step in. Forget about recycling, this is a project that's keyed to re-using a part of the winemaking process that often is just poured away.

Villicana originally just made wine, but Alex and Monica Villicana eventually realized what seemed like a waste product--the juice from the first light press and de-stemming of grapes--might be used for something. "A lot of boutique wineries will extract a percentage of that free run juice from red grapes," Monica explains, "as the color, flavor, and personality comes from the skins. At that point if we lower the percentage of juice going into fermentation, it actually concentrates our wines."

Want to read the rest then do so at the KCET Food Blog.