Oak, tannin and what else?

Well, I've taken a couple of moderately good but not spectacular shiraz kits, and added a handful of cracked pepper corns to one and 250 g frozen strawberries to the other, and got two interesting variations on a theme. Both better than the kit as is, IMHO. I've taken a 4 wk pinot noir kit which I thought was a bit thin as manufactured and put it into 19 litres instead of 23, added 30 g of light toast American oak and a sliced banana and got a good solid red, but I don't think you could still call it pinot noir. On the other hand, I've added 50 ml of health food store melon extract to 23 litres of a rather poor chardonnay and ended up dumping most of the result down the drain. We learn by our mistakes. Is this the sort of information you're after?

Leslie Gadallah