Boston - July 10, 2007

Spin the Bottle

Boston Winery Opens

Your monthly vino budget: $100.

Number of bottles you toss because they’re plonk: 3.

Number of times you’ve wondered (budget restriction aside) why you don’t just move to Napa and start bottling wines yourself: countless.

Stop number crunching and join the newly opened Boston Winery, a wine-making society that puts you in charge of the process (at least as much as you want to be).

Pick out your preferred grape, then go through it all from grape crushing and destemming to pressing and racking. In a year, you’ll get a minimum of 244 bottles of your blend; in the meantime, you have full access to the winery (set in a cool pre-Civil War foundry near the Neponset River) for private tastings and bottle sharing. There’s even an indoor boccie ball court to boot.

Be warned: The cost of the barrels and grapes could set you back anywhere from $2,200 to $6,000.

Is it less than you’d spend buying up a few acres of wine country? You can count on it.

Boston Winery, 26 Ericsson Street (617-265-9463 or bostonwinery.net). Sign up by July 31 for this year’s vintage.