What was your first wine????

(3 years ago)

Okay, I started with a rhubarb wine (because I had too much in my garden) and didn't know a thing about what I was doing. I then found Terry Garey's "The joy of home winemaking", and realized I really didn't know what I was doing. So, I continued the rhubarb wine, but started reading Terry Garey's book. I started at the beginner level, and then moved on to the intermediate level. Then, I found Jack's site and Lum's site. About a year ago, I found this site. I make mostly fruit wines (working on perfecting the ones I do make), but I'm branching out to herb wines and vegea wines. I'm also looking for different ways to enhance the wines I make. I do 1 gallon batches and have about 10 going right now. I'm working on trying to let them age. Darlene

I started my first fruit wine in June. Mango. It just finished fermenting and needs to be racked off. Tastes very good at this point and VERY dry. Now to let it age.......

Sean

Had a beer machine too. Liekd the beer cant find kits in town anymore...oh well.

you don't need the kits to make beer in those machines, just reduce the size of any beer recipe... Louise:o)

anymore...oh

I started winemaking last spring, My first was dandelion wine, because I'd always been curious about it. The finished product exceeds all my expectations.

I ready Terry Garey's 'Joy of Home Winemaking', searched like crazy on Google, then relied heavily on Jack Keller's site, and this newsgroup.

Good luck with you new hobby!

Hi Darlene,

Great question. I also started with Rhubarb as my first wine. I had been reading many of the web sites for a while before I started. I followed Jack's recipe. The wine turned out really well like a nice white grape wine in flavor. Since then I have made some 15 different kinds of wine. Interestingly, in the beginning I was really anal about measuring TA and pH, etc. Lately I have not bothered and just added what my intuition tells me to based on taste. My wines are improving. I also tend to make mostly larger 5 or 6 gallon batches at a time. I made some 1 gallon batches and ran out far too quickly. I also bulk age my wines at least one year now - mostly because I have lots and I'm not so impatient. With my busy schedule, I tend to let the wines just sit by themselves. A little neglect is a good thing, I think.

Oh, I made a sweet Thai Basil wine that is really delicious and unusual.

--Greg

After doing a kit or two, my first from scratch wine was a nice Pumpkin. It turned out fairly well. Now most of my wines are fruit wines with a few good kits only occasionally, in fact I am out to pick some wild blueberries this afternoon. (northern Manitoba, Canada)

I started home winemaking primarily for financial reasons. I simply did not have the cash to buy a few bottles of wine every week.

Jake

For me it started with a sip of raspberry mead at a medieval festival. I couldn't find the stuff commercially anywhere. My father used to make beer so I had plenty of exposure to the home fermenting culture. I decided to whip up a batch of raspberry mead. It turned out way too sweet and concentrated. I eventually moved into wines, by way of a small Portuguese store in the neighbourhood, where California juice was available. The wines turned out much better than the mead, and I haven't looked back... I'm doing a barrel's worth of Baco Noir this fall. I might also start a demijohn of sauv. blanc or chardonnay. I'm seriously considering going to school for oenology & viticulture!

Ironically, I tried the raspberry mead at the festival again, and I just wasn't as impressed with it. I did make a rather nice blackberry mead though, I think I'm done with my mead phase.

My first ever wine was a Beaujolais kit about 12 years ago. If I drank it today, I would probably say it tasted more like a wine cooler than a wine, but back then, I was mightily impressed with my efforts.

Grapes started a few years later with an absolutely dreadful Alicante. A buddy passed by a little Portuguese grocer and saw a bunch of boxes of grapes sitting out on the street. So we figured, what the heck, rented their crusher and press, picked up a few lugs of cheap alicante, and embarked on an adventure into the largely unknown. The result had kind of a hydrogen sulfide stink to it, but we drank it anyway.

I started because it just seemed like an interesting hobby. I'm more into beer than wine these days. At least now, I don't have to wait a year or more to see if I failed. ;-) But I'll still make a batch of wine from grapes once a year.

Brian

I made a batch of Apple wine back in the late 70's when Paul Lehmann pushed me into it. I fermented on the chopped up apples and then squeezed it through a pillow case to go into secondary. I go a lot of must through the pillow case and a week later it was hanging on the sides of the carboy and falling off in clumps. Looked like it had mange. My brother gave me a good horse laugh over it. Then, when it had aged 6 mo's or so he tasted it and started making more wine than I was making. I have no idea how many different wines I have made since then.

Ray

First batch was around '82 with grapes from NY. I was really just a kid (20 or so) and hooked up with a group of guys that made wine. In hind sight, it wasn't very good wine but it was fun.

I took a bunch of years off to work on my career and have a family and came back to it about 4 years ago. I also brew beer and make mead.

Andy

made my first gallon way back in 58. Beetroot. Didn't realise how good it could be until my father in law opened the bottle I gave him a year later. Looked like Tawny Port, went well with cold turkey and ham. Been making wine ever since. Winemanden.

How much has it saved you sar far?

WOW since 1958? So you didn't have any commercial yeast right?

Actually it's quite good. It doesn't taste strong like adding some green or hot peppers to something to eat tend to do.. It's got a taste of it's own like almost every other kind of wine has it's distinct flavor. I think it's one of my less bitter of all of them. I don't think bitter is the word I'm looking for, but it's the sharpness you get after it rolls off your tongue. (Whatever that taste or sense is)

My first wine was Crabapple. There were two young trees near where I worked in Aylesbury UK. One was an even pink coloured apple and the other looked like a John Downie. I bought or was given (not sure), the book "The Pan Book of Wine Making" by B C A Turner. I used the recipe for Crabapple in that.

I made two gallons from a mix of each Crabapple type and used different dried yeasts with each gallon. The wines had very different tastes. I have read that apples take on the characteristic flavours of the yeast used, very readily.

The family seemed to like them, but I believe that at the time their tastes were not very well developed to wines in general, or they were more than just polite!

According to my records this I started in 1971. Seems a hell of a long time back now!