_38_ year old orange wine anyone? ! ?

One of two tastes:

I sure hope I am wrong.

Ray

Blueberries?

J. Brazer

I can't stand the suspense! What did it taste like? I'm still waiting for the poster, who had the 20-30 year old bottle of dandelion wine, to tell us how that tasted. Darlene

"Shaun Rimmer" pushed briefly to the front of the queue on Wed, 17 Sep 2003 12:42:38 +0100, and nailed this to the shed door:

^ Well, I just found out we have this, one whole gallon! Seems quite some time ^ ago, my 'now' wife was given some brewing eqpt by a family friend. In this ^ 'lot', there were several 1 imp. gal glass demijohns, one of which was full, ^ and labelled 'Orange Wine, 1965'. The friend suggested my wife throw it out ^ as it was 'old', but she kept ahold of it. ^ ^ Kath (my wife) mentioned it last night, and we decided to try a glass each ^ with our meal - guess what it tasted like? Go on, you know you want to ^ ',;~}~

Heheheheh - nope!

Answer on it's way ',;~}~

Shaun aRe

Ooooo, well Ray, you're the closest so far, so here goes with the answer!

It was sweet-ish, and yes, tasted a lot like sherry, but not bad/cheap/rough stuff - it was a pale orange/golden-brown colour, no orange flavour, but smoooooth, like a good pale cream sherry or pale-tawny port! It was absolutely gorgeous, and certinly couldn't be described as having 'little character'. Seems the demijohn being totally filled, and well sealed, and it having spent all it's time in darkness, hadn't done any bad to it at all. It'll make a nice aperitif I reckon, or a nice Christmas morning warmer. I must admit to being pleasantly surprised indeed!

',;~}~

Cheers!

Shaun aRe

I also have a wine from 1965. It was made from sweetened apple cider. Not only has it survived, but it is a great dessert wine. It has become a sherry, but had enough sugar to preserve it. I was visiting an elderly couple who were friends of my mother. They asked me if I wanted glass carboys for my wine making. Of course I did. I went down in their basement and found about 20 3gal. carboys which were originally Ephrata Water Co. bottles. 6 of them were still full and capped. I took them outside and hosed them down. Boy were they dirty. I figured the full ones were full of bad wine but took one just to check. When I looked at the wine thief and saw the liquid was clear, that was exciting. Of course I went back and got the rest of it. Tim

I made some Dewberry/Banana wine back in 95. My wife picked the wild dewberries. Then I let the airlock dry out for an extended period of time. When I realized it I was so aggravated with myself that I just left it and tried to ignore it. Last year I needed the bottle so one day when she was not home I decided to pour it out. I did not want her to see me do it. I would get no more dewberries. Got it to the sink and decided I really needed to see how bad it was. -- Interesting. Put it back and had her taste it when she got home. Her instant response was, "That's Sherry!" That did it. I sweetened it a bit. Fortified it up to 17%, added some oak and it has sat for another 6 months. I need to bottle it now.

Wine is very very forgiving. Give it time and it just seems to turn out.

Ray

bad/cheap/rough

Ahh, not too bad at all then eh?!?

Oh, Kath racked off her now clear beetroot wine yesterday, and after the jug was topped up from the small bottle (we'd fermented a bit more for top-up) of same, we sampled the remainder........very uhhmm, 'strange'. I was spitting bright cerise for over an hour! Still, time mike make it go from 'strange........nice colour!' to 'Ooo, interesting, nice colour!' - we'll see, heheheheh.......

Cheers!

Shaun aRe