What was your first wine????

Battery acid?! What's the purpose of that?

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Certainly not a crime, but not the best yeast for wine. It has a decidedly bready flavor and does not always achieve the alcohol level necessary for wine. But I have seen many old recipes which say to spread the yeast on toast and float it on the wine, just as described below. I'm sure it makes a palatable wine and back a few years ago, there were no other options besides relying on natural yeasts.

--Greg

Now I'm surprised you admitted to using baker's yeast. A lot of people on

Hi Greg - new here, but I'll chip-in anyway ',;~}~

Made my first wine when I was about 16(?), along with a friend (at his house, because his parents were that laid back..). It was a rose kit. Tasted pretty bad, but it did everything we wanted it to at that age....heheheh.......

My first 'proper' (if you will) wine, was a mixed (?) fruit wine, that turned out reasonable, but the 1 gal. didn't last too long. Next I made the first version of what I'm making now - a seasonal mixed *fruit and flower wine, which turned out beautiful, so beautiful (a lot more flowery than this one, a bit too much so) that friends and neighbours rapidly helped it do a vanishing act. (about 10 or so years ago).

It's been a while since I made one, but the woman I just married was into winemaking too and encouraged me. It helped that her father has berry fruits growing on his allotment and has little use for them ',;~}~

*(if you've never made one of these, I can _highly_ recommend it - slightly unusual but very, very good!)

Shaun aRe

1970. Age 15. At summer camp with two buddies. We "liberated" a gallon of Welches grape juice and some sugar from the cafeteria, escaped to the local town to buy some yeast. Put the whole lot in a gallon jug with a balloon on top and hid it under one of the bunks. Of course it was not too long before the counsellor found it. There was a big pow wow, the result of which was to tell us that if we were smart enough to make it we were smart enough to drink it. Just keep it quiet and keep it in the cabin. A remarkably civilized approach to the situation. To our juvenile palates it tasted like ambrosia. All I can think now is WHAT was I thinking? ;)

Greg, my grandfather made wine when I was a kid. I used to "help" with small chores I now realize were designed to keep me out of his hair (and the must). That, however, had nothing to do with making wine on my own.

I began by accident. I had tasted a homemade plum liquor in Europe and decided I could (and would) make some. I had no real knowledge of how to make liquor, but thought that sweetening some water and soaking some fresh plums in it would extract the flavor, the sugar would preserve it, and later, when the flavor was intense enough, I would add some brandy or something. Instead, it started fermenting and I left it alone to do its thing. Meanwhile, I visited the library and discovered how to make liquors properly. After several months, I returned to the wine and strained the fruit from it. I tried clarifying it through a coffee filter, but that didn't work and again I went to the library. C.J.J. Berry's "First Steps in Winemaking" introduced me to the actual processes involved and I made another plum wine the right way (well, at least the "Berry" way). Both batches turned out sweet -- the first because I used way too much sugar for a wine and the second because I didn't realize at the time that British gallons were larger than American ones and I didn't adjust the sugar accordingly. So, wanting to get it "right," I made a third batch. By then I had acquired some real wine yeast, was tweaking the acid and mixing my own nutrients and, well, I was hooked.

I thought those first batches were great, but I doubt that they actually were. Still, there is a fondness in my memories of them....

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

My first wine was little sips from the bottle of Mogen David that my grandparents kept for Sunday and Holidays.

My first whine? Can't remember, been a lot of them.

-- Ed snipped-for-privacy@snet.net

Blackberry, classic.

Western Ireland, hedgerow rubbish... Drank it young, sometimes even with fiz and sugar and got me hooked on the own-production.

Next one in series was parsnip while following an old recipe calling for bread yeast, spread on a slice of toasted bread and floating on the must of overcooked parsnip. Boy it took a time to clear, but it was very nice!!

Rene.