Joy of Home Wine Making by Terry A. Garey Read Free Book Online Page B

but make other wines as well.
    Taste commercial wines; you can learn a lot from the commercial wineries. I would have never tried pineapple wine if I hadn’t found some from Maui in a wine store. Zinfandel is always in the back of my mind when I make blackberry or blueberry. I’m nottrying to duplicate it, I’m just keeping a few of the flavor notes in mind.
    Try to start a different wine each month. Make a heavy wine one month, and a lighter, drier wine the next. Keep track of your recipes. Your cellar will be much more interesting, and so will your tastes. Don’t toss “mistakes.” Keep them awhile to see if anything interesting happens.
    When you bottle, try to bottle several gallons at once. For one thing, it’s more efficient. For another thing, you learn what the wines taste like in comparison with each other as you bottle them. Write down your impressions. Just a few words in your wine log. “Stunk like old rotting leather,” “Made me dream of a balmy summer night,” “Didn’t die, but wanted to,” are more useful than “Pretty good,” “OK,” and “Could be worse,” but any notes are better than nothing.
    Invariably, there will be not quite enough for the rest of the bottle, and you will make your first steps in blending when you fill it up with the leftover Ring Tailed Wotsit. Don’t label it something cute like Mystery Wine, either. For all you know, dandelion-raspberry-mint might be pretty good. You might want to know later what it was, unlikely as it seems now.
    I bottled my first batch of potato and my first batch of mint at the same time. There wasn’t quite enough potato for the fifth bottle, but there was leftover mint. With great hilarity, I topped up the fifth bottle with mint. We laughed gaily at the madness of the moment. We also labeled it.
    Six months later an old friend was visiting. Proudly, I showed her my cellar. What would you like to try? I asked magnanimously.
    To my chagrin she wanted to try the potato-mint. It was quite nice. You could have knocked me over with a mint sprig.
     
    Common Causes of Failure (And Guidelines for Success):
     
Using the wrong yeast. Use only fresh wine yeasts. Never use bread or beer yeast.
Sloppy cleanliness and sanitation. Keep it clean, and keep it sanitary. It’s easy.
Old methods and recipes. It’s OK to get ideas from old recipes, but don’t copy the methods, or even the proportions! People were doing the best they could back then, but things have changed for the better in home winemaking. Don’t use Great Uncle Jake’s Elderberry Whoopee recipe with the beer yeast and the molasses scrapings set out in the sun in an open crock for umpteen days and expect it will come out OK.
Use only the best fruits and vegetables. A moldy berry isn’t going to taste any better in the bottle than it did before.
Keep the secondary fermenter topped up. More on this later, but space for oxygen is space for oxidation.
Keep the wine off the sediment. Rack at least once or twice during secondary fermentation—more, if you need to.
Keep records! You’ll be glad later!
Give the wine a chance. Time is our friend, remember? Don’t dump a batch unless it really has turned to vinegar, or you are now certain you hate it. Be patient!

    Good news and bad news: The level of water in the airlock is just fine, but the rubber gecko looks in dismay at the level of the wine in this jug. Lack of topping off, and leaving the wine on the huge sediment—visible at the bottom of the jug—is a good way to get an oxidized, off-tasting wine. You’ll be happy to know I put the jug out of its misery the next day by racking and topping off.

    FOLLOWING RECIPES
    Follow the recipe through for at least the first time you use it.
    Read the recipe all the way through before you try it. Mostly, the instructions are pretty much the same, but on some, there are variations. You don’t want any surprises halfway through. Make sure you understand what the recipe says.
    Assemble all the