nooooo

My wife refuses to let me learn how to do it, claims I'll drink it like a fish

I like Mer lot and Ziff, Sangreia...

My grandma came from a long line of moonshiners.  She used to make what she referred to as wine, but I had my doubts.  She used blackberries, elderberries and something else along with pure grape juice.  People always said it was good after they drank it, but I suspect it was because they were toasted at that point

An uncle on my husbands side makes beer.  (We call him uncle beer).  He made a really nice honey wheat beer as a wedding present for us (we had a small reception, so a keg of it was enough).

I have no experience with it at all.  The craziest thing I make is a sweet squash soup that has italian sausage in it (everyone thinks it sounds nasty until they taste it.....)  I wish I knew how to make wine, though...it goes so nicely with cheese, and I *love* cheese!

My Grandma might

BTW I wasn't calling your grandma any names. Just typed it wrong.

I'm curious Chef Garry, how would one go about making wine and vodka for example?

Sounds Good

I just had to send like 12 bags of JackD wood smoker chips to my hubby, he's In Saudi, they make their own, kinda like EverClear....anyways the JD chips flavor the stuff and... waaaaaalaaaa JD on the rocks

Ever had mead? Its acutally pretty good.

Yeah my Uncle makes his own wine. He won first place 3 years in a row down here, beating out his own father.

It's actually almost wine season, and he's got 20 huge barrels ready. You know where I'll be .

Yes. Coming from a long line of country folk I have to admit to a bit of moonshining. Blackberry wine is a favorite. I've also quite a beer making apparatus in an old shed. However, all receipes are top secret. Sorry. >

A long long time ago I made my own wine the old fashioned way, right down to squeezing the grapes in a wine press. I would keep constant watch on the casks, periodically adding sugar to raise the alcohol level to where I liked it. I learned the process from my best friend's father who was an Italian immigrant and carried the recipe with him from the old country. It was a great hobby and very rewarding when the final product was ready for sampling. However, it was very time consuming. Eventually I stopped doing it as life started getting in the way.

I would recommend the hobby to anyone if they have the time and patience.


P.S.

There are a number of people here at WinCustomize who should be very adept at making wine. They do it almost daily......, oh no, sorry, that's spelled w-h-i-n-e.

I used to make wines, it's actually rather easy.

The trick is getting the right yeast for the type of wine you're making.

I made 5 gallons of Maderia once and it tasted rotten. Ended up putting it into gallon jugs and put it in my attic. I forgot about it for 4 years then found it when I was removing a closet wall. It was GOOD, found out that Mederia needs to be heated to blend the various ingredients and mellow the wine out.

Another good wine was banana, you need to boil the fruit to extract the glycerine and use the resulting mash as a base.

Still have all of the equipment to make the stuff, now if only I hadn't given up drinking...........