Yes, you are producing wine containing methanol and yes, commercial wines
> contain methanol. But, methanol is not produced from sugar by the yeast.
> Methanol is produced when pectin in the fruit is hydrolyzed by
> methylesterase pectin enzymes. Although methanol is toxic, the quantities
> of methanol produced in wine are very small (about 100 mg/l). A 150# person
> would have to drink about 200 liters of wine at one time for the methanol to
> be toxic. See Margalit, "Concepts in Wine Chemistry," page 21.
>
> The legal limit on methanol in commercial wine is 1000 mg/l. That is 10
> times amount normally found in wine, so you can see that methanol in wine is
> a non issue.
It's even less of an issue than that because the body preferentially metabolizes ethanol over methanol, so the latter tends to be excreted unprocessed. For that reason, ethanol is sometimes used as an "antidote" for methanol poisoning.
Tom S