reasons for winemaking

Leon, you're a hoot! Some folks have palates in their tongues and like to swish and sniff. If you just want the buzz, hey, go for it. smile. Personally, I like to share my wine. Giving someone a "wow, that's good" reaction makes me smile inside. I don't plan on submitting to contests for prizes. If I can make a better bottle of wine than I can buy, and it's cheaper. wow. how cool. I have money left over for gas for my car. smile.

Hello, No offence taken...winemaking at home can be as easy or as difficult as one wants to make it - it is up to you, the individual winemaker. We all start at one point, and some of us move on, some of us don't. I've always thought we're pretty good at accepting anyone who wants to make wine, at whatever level. I make fruit, veggie, herb, and frozen juice wines. I really don't have an interest in making a grape wine, nor do I take much interest in the chemistry side of things. However, I do appreciate those who do have the interest, the background, and the desire to learn from others (I read a lot of the posts). Welcome. Darlene

I would be the first to say all of the hardware I use to test wines has only a minimal effect on making wine better. Mine were about as good when I only had a hydrometer as they are now but were made from pre-balanced juice. Maybe I just fell into a good thing though...Your senses are the best tools you have as a winemaker. The tools and testing just make it easier for me to verify what I taste or smell and what I want to do next, if anything. It's easy to make a bad wine from good materials but impossible to make a great wine from bad materials.

Most of the testing just helps me not ruin a good thing; most wines make themselves anyway. The other thing that happened at least with me is I got a lot pickier about what I like and dislike in a wine over time. I don't know how that happened actually. I travel a lot and started noticing there were things I didn't care for in a glass of wine I had spent $7 for and that mine had tasted something like that at one point but I did something to change it; mine cost around $0.50 a glass even factoring in the equipment. Sometimes a little change makes a bigger difference than I would have expected, it's part of the art.

Joe

I spent a few years living/working in south west france and during one of these years i followed and participated in the process from pruning the vine to picking grapes, then they went into this large round wooden press and the juice ran out down a concrete trough into a large concrete pit where the juice stayed for a while. Later the juice was run off into oak barrels these having been swilled out with water and then a sulphur taper was lit and left to burn a while in the barrel. After the appropriate time of fermenting in the barrel the bottles were swilled with water and lined up to be filled from the barrels. Then the bottles were corked with dry corks without any sulphite soaking etc, using an old floor corker. This was a small scale operation for the use of the family living there and of course i enjoyed this wine everyday. My point is that at no time during this process was any particular care taken about cleanliness etc and the end result was excellent. I am off to open a bottle now, at 50 pence a bottle it is well worth the effort. Hic!

Probably not the whole purpose, and I suppose you should define "wasted". I tend to think of "wasted" as falling-down sloppy drunk, and this is certainly not my purpose in drinking alcohol.

I find a good meal preceded by the cold bite of an ice-cold vodka martini to be a great joy. And the same good meal in concert with a fine wine can only enhance the sensual taste experience.

I recently discovered that a glass of good port with a rich chocolate dessert does amazing things to the inside of my mouth. Try it sometime. It has to be experienced to be believed. Again, it has to be a very good port.

While the above combination of food and alcohol doesn't leave me "wasted" I have been know to be very happy leaving some restaurants and the confines of my own kitchen and dining room.

Now that I have begun making my own wine I have found that the wine I make is far superior to any that I usually buy. I'm just not rich enough to buy $30-40 bottles of wine to get the same experience I find that I can now make for around $4-5 per bottle.

This wine making is a good thing.

Leon, leon, leon...you remind me of myself 40 years ago. When in college we would buy a six-pack of good beer. After that was gone it didn't matter what was in the bottle. The main mission was to get high and have a good time...at least until the next morning.

Fast forward to 2006. Now days I'm retired, have a nice vineyard, make wine and beer as a hobby. And yes, I spend "wads of dosh" doing these things. But, I only drink the good stuff now days.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

leon wrote ">I read a lot of the posts here and everyone seems to get involved in the

Funny old world innit, i retired a few years ago and now spend my time making cheap kit wines and also fruit and veg wines from my garden produce, and then enjoy drinking them. When i reach the bottom of the bottle i am happy and that is all that really matters to me. You drink your goodstuff, but i also drink my goodstuff, hic, maybe too often or maybe not enough, hic, time for another. Enjoy.

I do both Leon....nothing wrong with either if you ask me. I make my cheapest plonky quaffing wine from frozen concentrate, and the rest, the more "crafty" stuff from herbs and fruit from my garden. Actually I like to drink the plnok whilst admiring the crafty stuff :)

sean

Yep i do the same, the quick kit wines give me my day to day supply and the rest i make up as i go along. I get a nice wine from hibiscus sabdariffa flowers (grown in my garden) mixed with elderberry and sloe ( gathered locally ),although hibiscus on its own is very nice.

See you all got it all wrong.

For the most part I like making good wine and making it cheap cheap cheap.

For instance with a little elbow grease I make 6 gallons of pretty good mulberry wine for the price of sugar and a can or two of grape concentrate.

but i do not get trashed on it. what a waste of good wine.

le> I read a lot of the posts here and everyone seems to get involved in the

Don't see how drinking wine is wasting it, what else can you do with wine but drink it. It's alcohol and alcohol gets you drunk, cannot think of any other reason for wine, unless you like lining all the bottles up and looking at them with the light shining through and enjoying the colours Me, i drink wine and i make it as cheaply as possible, and i enjoy the feeling after drinking it. After all once the bottle is open you have to drink it because it don't really keep long once the air gets to it, then by the time you reach the bottom of the bottle you feel so good you just have to open another, and with your friends smiling and saying go on open another, what can a poor boy do Enjoy.

Go to an AA meeting?

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Oh how we larfed. Where's the damn corkscrew, hic. Sorry did you say AA meeting, why would i want to go to a motoring association meeting, don't drive, too drunk, hic.

Leon,

The motoring association you refer to is abbreviated AAA. But I'm not surprised you're seeing extra letters, with your attitude towards drinking to excess. Seriously, if your goal is to get drunk you can buy cheap booze much more cheaply than you can make it.

Cheers, Ken

Nope i was refering to:

There is no cheap booze around here, and anyway that is not what i like. Cheap homemade wine is what does it for me, tastes good, smells good, and a lot of bottles for a little outlay. Incidentally, i am not advocating drinking to excess, just until the legs wobble and the grin is fixed from ear to ear. Wine is for enjoying and it is up to the drinker to decide their own personal limititation. Life is too short to take it seriously. Enjoy. hic.

On 7/21/2006 3:50 PM, leon wrote: [snipped]

Your past posts contradict the above statement:

It reads a lot as though you are indeed advocating drinking to excess. Not trying (terribly hard) to belabor the point, just pointing out the discrepancy.

Cheers, Ken

God, you people are sooo picky, don't any of you have a sense of humour, hic.

Gentlemen, please...let us agree to disagree, or disagree to agree. Darlene ;o)

Leon,

I have a sense of humor. It's just that I find jokes about alcoholism about as funny as jokes about suicide. That is to say, not very funny at all. And please, I'm not presenting my opinions as being representative of any one else in this news group, so please don't apply any labels to others due to my posts.

Cheers, Ken