This is the main kuwaiti cottage industry and similiar scenes are enacted in hundreds of kitchens all over the state. Of course if you have enough 'wasta' you do not need to do this as you can bring in spirit through the customs without any problem. Wine like this made from bottled grape juice, sugar, added water, and yeast takes about a week to ferment in a large bucket because of the temperature. The picture shows the wine being filtered from one bucket to another. In a similar process it is transferred from the new bucket to bottles. Flash, illegally distilled spirit is available and also 'eth'(-anol) which is spirit diverted from hospitals /industrial uses etc. This needs to be mixed with a roughly equal amount of water. A few juniper berries give an authentic gin flavour. My wife for a time shared a flat with a lady who preferred the taste to real gin and was one of the the few people who became known for smuggling liquor out of Kuwait. Of course one advantage of the method is that one can set one's own standards when it comes to strength. The shysters who supply our supermarkets have now got the standard down to below 38% for their normal cheap gin - which is quite expensive for a product which is over 60% water.