Horror Stories (Vin Poo-Poo)

Let's see.... -my husband refers to my first "very young" dandelion batch of wine as tasting like battery acid -and a friend of mine swore she had hayfever symptoms after drinking a glass of my second dandelion batch, which aged a bit better, but still ewwwww.... -my watermelon wine tasted nothing like a watermelon, nor did it taste good ;o( -a batch of watermelon wine had started fermenting again; after 3 out of the 5 bottles popped in the basement (of course all on different days), I put the last 2 bottles in the fridge - when I opened one a few days later, it exploded like Champaign all over my kitchen -I figured out that I'm not really crazy about the wines I made out of citrus fruits...there's just a taste to it that I'm not crazy about, now I have all these bottles leftover -my oregano wine could peel paint, but it is very good as a cooking wine I know for a fact there are some better stories out there.... Darlene

Oh yeah. Stories.

How about the batch of Pinot Grigio I was taking over my dads in a 6 gallon lidded pail, sitting on my back set? When it flipped over because people in Pittsburgh are known to drive in an unpredictable manner I now had 3 gallons. My interior got to drink 3 gallons. I can tell you from experience Nissan Sentra's do not appreciate a young Pinot Grigio... I tore out the entire interior and hosed it out several times to get most of it out.

Or the raspberry wine that tasted closer to Vicks 44? That got blended with mead, sweetened, blended with several others until the initial batch of 5 gallons ended up 17. It was no longer Vicks 44 and is a testament to the 'sugar covers a multitude of winemaking sins' credo.

And yes, I have more...

Joe

Dar V wrote:

This is fun, and while my stories pale in comparison (I'm sure I'm no better, just less exeperienced), this'll at least get this post to the top where more can join in.

My story is a Merlot I made from concentrate that was, um, improperly de-concentrated. OK, it was greatly diluted. But I was young, didn't know better, hey, lets keep going. Then I oaked it. When you tasted it, you reached for the tweezers to pull the splinters out of your tongue. Luckily, I had a cousin who liked woody wine (or wine-flavored toothpicks - never have gotten that cleared up).

A story on someone else (who I can't name, as I only know this story second hand from someone who was there but didn't know the name either) was at a local wine-judging. During the judging, there was a call to the chief judge to know what to do about scoring a wine when "a lump of algae came out of the bottle when pouring into the glass".

Rob

I'm still new at winemaking, but my worst story to date is when I tried my first 'non-kit' attempt. I used Welch's Concord frozen, made up a gallon on a website recipe.

Totally unaware of measuring (or tasting, boy, I've learned a lot in 18 months!), I did the recipe and bottled. I let it sit for a few months and gave a bottle to my new brother-in-law (who loves dry reds and lives several states away), even prior to ME tasting it. He tried it a few days later, he never mentioned it to me, in fact has never asked for any of my other wines (approaching 500 bottles soon).

It turned out the must never fermented, and I'd bottled grape juice!

I was too embarrassed to ever mention it to him, either. blush.

I'm sure watermelon wine will come up in this conversation a lot- I only tried making it once, and couldn't stand the smell after the second day of fermentation. I followed through with it anyway, and gave a bottle of it to a fellow who kept complaining that my wine was always too sweet. He admitted that it was dry enough, but I assume that he (like me whenever I checked to see if it had improved with age) poured most of it down the sink.

When I just started making wines, I discussed the art with my mother (who started her first batch shortly before I was born, which my sister claims explains a lot about me). We pulled out a number of her bottles of wine, including a 20-year old bottle labelled "Rowanberry Wine". Absolutely beautiful- nice, slightly orange colour, perfectly clear, nicely balanced...until it hit the back of the throat, and the berries could be tasted. I could not get the taste of mountain ash (a berry that I never thought was edible) out of my mouth for hours, despite tasting numerous other wines that night.