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I received an email the other day from Mervyn who asked:

Hi Scottie,

I had sent you an email regarding a wine we use to have in India called Otty (I am not sure of the spelling) It was prepared with red chillies . It had a pungent taste like ginger wine. I would like to try out this wine. Could you help me ?

- Mervyn

I personally have never heard of Otty nor made a wine made from red chillies so had to do some hunting and here is what I found at: www.about-wine.net/chili-wine-recipe.htm.

If you’ve ever made wine from chillies let me know how it turned out!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

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Chili Wine Recipe

• 8-10 ripe (red) chillies
• 1 lb golden raisins, chopped or minced
• 2 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp acid blend
• 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme (Pectinase)
• Water to one gallon
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Pasteur Champagne Yeast

Make sure you wear rubber gloves, wash Chilli peppers and cut off stems.

Put peppers in blender or food chopper with 1-2 cups water and chop coarsely. Chop or mince raisins.

Put raisins in nylon straining bag and, over primary, pour chopped Chilli peppers in with raisins. Tie bag and leave in primary.

Add remaining ingredients except for pectinase and yeast.

Stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover primary and set aside 12-24 hours.

Add pectinase, cover and set aside another 12-24 hours. Add yeast and recover primary. Stir daily for 4-5 days.

Wear rubber gloves, squeeze nylon bag.

Transfer liquid to secondary and fit airlock. Ferment to absolute dryness (roughly S.P.G 990).

Rack into clean secondary and refit airlock. Rack twice more, 30 days apart.

Wait final 30 days and rack into bottles.

(I prefer to make a sugar syrup and measure the amount i need in liquid volume)
You can also substitute this yeast for Lalvin E-1118 which i found will just about ferment a gumboot.. LOL

Good luck and let us know how you go.