• 2-1/2 lbs clover honey (you can use any honey)
• 1/2 oz ginger root, peeled and sliced crosswise
• juice of one large orange
• water to 1 gal
• 1 Campden tablet
• 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
• 1 sachet Lalvin 71B-1122 (or Red Star Pasteur Champagne) wine yeast

Heat 1 quart water to perhaps 120 degrees F. and stir in the honey. Cover and remove from heat. Meanwhile, brought a separate 2 cups water with the ginger root slices to a gentle boil. When ginger slices begin to turn translucent carefully strain water into honey-water, discarding the root or saving for a mild tea. In primary, combine two quarts cold water, orange juice, yeast nutrient and energizer, and combined honey- and ginger-waters. Bring volume up to one gallon, cover and allow to cool to about 80 degrees F. Pitch activated yeast and recover primary. After 2 days stir daily until s.g. drops to 1.010 (mine did this on day 9), then transfer to secondary and attach airlock. Ferment 30 days and rack, add a finely ground and dissolved Campden tablet, top up and reattach airlock. Wait 60 days and rack again, then repeat after additional 60 days. After third 60-day period, inspect bottom of secondary for sediment. It should be clean, in which case you can bottle the mead, but if a very light dusting is visible rack once again and bottle after a few days. Bottle age at least 3 months and serve chilled. [Author's own recipe]

For some reason I was distracted when I pitched the yeast and did not take a starting specific gravity reading so I didn't know how much alcohol this mead had. Because it fermented dry (0.998), I used a vinometer and measured about 10.5% alcohol. At bottling time, this mead tasted marvelous. An ounce or so I chilled tasted even better.

A mead enthusiast wrote me to object to my definition of show mead. Well, my definition came from popular books on mead, but that doesn't mean the definition hasn't evolved - especially in the world of competitions, where it counts. He wrote, "The definition of a show mead according to current BJCP style guidelines (and many mead makers in general) is one composed of honey, yeast and water without other additives. Adding nutrients, acids, oak, or other additives produces what is generally called a 'traditional mead.' A show mead can be made with a single varietal honey or a blend of more than one type." I am grateful for the correction.

The writer continued, "As you can imagine, making a mead using no nutrient supplements can be quite challenging, but with proper yeast selection, honey choice, and management it can be done successfully (and consistently). I think reserving the term 'show mead' for those meads made with this minimalist approach is certainly warranted." I not only agree, but have already edited my glossary to reflect these points.

• WineBlog Archives Jan-Jun 2007, scroll down to January 17, 2007 for the Mandarin-Chocolate Wine recipe
• Hippocras, an historical discussion
• Ypocras or Hippocras, a pictorial discussion
• Traditional Mead, in "BJCP Style Guidelines," look under "Ingredients" of any style on this page; while this guide is outdated, this portion is identical with the 2008 Guidelines
• BJCP Style Guidelines, the 2008 edition; scroll to page 54 for "Traditional Mead"
• Types of Mead, good discussions, at the "Mead Made Complicated" website
• Show Mead, at the "Home Brewing Wiki"
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I just bottled a ginger mead that was so good that I didn't even cork the last bottle, but started at once to empty it. In fact, I am enjoying a glass right now. If I were to critique it, I would say it has a tad too much alcohol. It delivers a slight "thump" at the back of the throat as it goes down, but the finish is otherwise smooth and enjoyable and the ginger and honey meld well. I haven't thought about food pairings yet, but it goes well with blog writing.

I am honored that Joel Sommer, founder and guiding light of WinePress.us, included me among previews of a DVD WinePress will be releasing soon. Joel Sommer's "Introduction to Winemaking" is exactly what the title claims and is aimed at introducing and guiding the beginner through the essential techniques of making wine at home. He begins with the basic equipment and additives used by winemakers -- often a dazzling array of non-intuitive or technical names like racking cane, wine thief, hydrometer, and potassium metabisulfite -- and explains or demonstrates them so their roles become clear. He then guides the viewer through the various steps in making wine from commercial kits, from fresh or frozen fruit, and wraps it up with making wine from fresh Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. At every turn, Joel guides the viewer through the essential steps, explains how and why things are done, and opens the path to more advanced techniques. Thanks, Joel.

Speaking of WinePress.us, the first subject below is a rework of entries I made to a discussion on that forum. It occurred to me as I wrote my original comments that a greater discussion might be useful.

A writer noted he had made apple, almond, and banana wines, all of which required pouring boiling water over the base ingredients prior to pitching the yeast. He found all three were very stubborn to clear. He added amylase to the banana wine and SuperKleer to the apple wine with relatively good results. He then questioned the practice of adding boiling water to fruit bases because he had heard that this causes the fruit to "set."

I have a lot of recipes, both adapted and original, that call for pouring boiling water in the primary, mostly to dissolve the sugar but also to kill wild yeast, bacteria and fungi that ride in on the skins of the fruit used to make good wine from. When one pours boiling water over the fruit and sugar, you can usually get away without adding sulfites to the must until later, to preclude browning and oxidation, but prudence says to play it safe because Murphy's Law says it can always go wrong. Luc Volders even reminded me of 30 liters of dandelion must that went south when sulfites would have saved it. Play it safe even if logic says you don't have to.

Because boiling water is poured over cold (or at least room temperature) fruit, the water quickly cools down from boiling to just very hot (perhaps even scalding). It does not "cook" the fruit, but it sure does things to the skin and pulp that is exposed to the heat. It softens tough skin so the yeast can get into it and work on the pigments, tannins and other phenols beneficial to wine. It also assists is dissolving sugars and flavorings from any pulp directly exposed to the hot water.

This brings me to the use of the word "set." The writer seems to use it as if it were a bad thing, but to experienced country wine makers "set" has a specific meaning that is not undesirable. Some pigments (mostly anthocyanins) are suspended in the juice and then the wine, while others are totally dissolved. Anyone who has made blackberry wine may have emptied a bottle and discovered the inside was coated with deposits of pigment -- anthocyanins -- that are no fun to remove. If you pour boiling water over the crushed blackberries the heat helps to change the anthocyanins so that more of them actually integrate into the must and become part of it. We say that the heat "sets" the fruit in that it "sets" the pigments so that more of them do not cling to the sides of the bottle but rather cling to the wine.

Does this heat "cook" the wine? What effect would it have on pectins in the fruit? First, water boils at 214 degrees F. (at sea level) and, if winemaking instructions involving boiling are followed, it is then removed from the heat and poured over the fruit. The much cooler fruit begin to absorb the heat from the water and reduces the temperature rapidly. Does it cook it?

If you've ever wanted to freeze a bushel of peaches you might do some reading and discover that people have been doing this for a long time. The best way to do it is to boil some water, drop a peach into it for 30 seconds, then remove it and under cold water scrape or pull the skin off the peach. The peach can then be cut into wedges, packed into containers and then frozen. Did the boiling water "cook" the peaches? Nyet! It simply cooked the skin and allowed it to detach from the peach easily.

What about pectin? At sea level, pectins begin to "set" or jell at 220 degrees F. and at 222 degrees F. they are all "set" (there are different pectins, so different temperatures come to play). If one removes the water when it comes to a boil (most instructions say something like, "Bring water to boil and pour over sugar and fruit in primary") it will never reach 220-222 degrees. Still, pectin may be there (most fruit have it) and prudence dictates that pectic enzyme be added at some point to negate it. Adding SuperKleer will clear an apple wine, but so will simple pectic enzyme.

To the originator of the thread I said bananas contain starch so adding amylase, a starch enzyme, is prudent. Bananas are actually 75% water, 23% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and 1% everything else. Only about 5% to 5.5% is starch, but it is starch locked in soft tissues and easily released by fruit breakdown and yeast activity. Pectins are found in trace amounts only. Thus, clarity problems with banana wines are almost always related to starches first and proteins second. Amylase neutralizes starch and dying yeast, excess tannins, bentonite, and Kieselsol all attract protein. With so little of the latter present, protein should not be a problem.

Almonds probably have a different problem, as their primary constituents are water, fat, crude protein, sugar, and ash (see Some chemical contents of selected almond (Prunus amygdalus Batsch) types). There is nothing in there that cannot be dealt with. If any oils (fats) managed to get micro-suspended in solution, they can be removed in several ways, but SuperKleer should do it. Certainly half-micron filtration will. But the SuperKleer will also remove protein, so that is probably your best bet.

I have made almond wines many times. They all cleared over time (I may have filtered one -- I don't really remember), but I bulk age most wines 9-15 months before bottleing. Most people don't, then get different results and wonder what went wrong. You don't compare an under-aged thing with an aged one. Sixteen-year old single-grain scotch cannot be compared to a 5- or 7- or even 12-year old.

The use of boiling water is not as cut and dried as I made it out to be. There are areas of controversy, but generally not over the statements I made regarding pyrophysiology. The biggest controversy is whether the heat destroys aroma and delicate flavor constituents in the must, especially in flower and certain fruit wines. I think the heat is fine. My opinion is empirically derived -- I make wonderful wines using this method. Others disagree based on some deductive belief that heat destroys.

The beauty of making wine for you own enjoyment is that it is okay to do it your way…as long as it works and as long as you don't misrepresent it to others. If cold maceration yields better aroma to you than hot, then by all means omit the heat.

I like to remind readers that with wine having been made for 8,000-10,000 years and under intense scientific scrutiny during the last 100-plus years, the things that work tend to be reflected in the thousands of recipes floating around while the things that don't are generally not mentioned. People don't write books about winemaking screw-ups.

On the other hand, there are bad books out there. I have a collection of winemaking books that encompass the epitome of bad winemaking practices. I have seen some of those recipes posted on popular forums, so they still circulate. Just because it is in print does not mean it is wise, worthy or true.

Study the methods and see if they make sense in light of what you know or what appears to be common practice. If something really sounds off-the-wall, it probably is. On the other hand, if it simply does something slightly different or in a different sequence than usual, it might (or might not) have merit. You will be better equipped to determine what is plausible and what is just way out there if you understand the underlying chemistry, physics or whatever science is at work. But if you have no interest in understanding the underlying sciences then just follow the best methods you can find, and if one appeals to you more than another then embrace it. Over time, successes and failures will dictate your choices.

Today I listened to a financial planner talk about instilling attitudes and habits in your children that translate into sound financial values. These are not at all overtly obvious, like "put some money into savings each payday," or "always let interest work for you" or other traditional advice. No, these lessons include:

Develop a sense of gratitude.

Children who are grateful for what they have are less likely to grow up chasing status symbols or keeping up appearances. This skill of comparing value and cost serves them well when investing as they compare the price of an investment to its intrinsic value.

Build strong relationships.

Children who build a community of friends and loved ones are less likely to spend an entire weekend in malls and restaurants simply to be near other people. Calling up friends is a low-cost form of social entertainment.

Prepare simple, nutritious meals.

Teach your kids to scan the pantry and refrigerator, decide on an entrée and side accompaniments, get out the cookbook, and make a meal. Even a second- grader can learn how to throw together a quick breakfast or lunch, which arms them with skills necessary to avoid one of the single-most deterrents to adequate regular savings -- eating out.

Develop a low-cost hobby.

Hobbies force people to stop rushing around, focus their attention and developed discipline, whether making something by hand or sitting patiently. It also encourages "Get It Right" and "Try It Again" attitudes.

Upon hearing this last lesson I naturally though of winemaking as an excellent hobby. True, one can get caught up in buying kits and the latest and greatest winemaking gadget, but that's where a well-developed sense of gratitude acts as a balance. If you are genuinely grateful for the bounty you are blessed with, you won't need to get caught up in consumerism. I think this especially applies to foraged ingredients.

Some of my greatest wines were from foraged bases -- wild strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, huckleberries, blueberries, elderberries, mustang and other wild grapes, persimmons, plums, paw paws, dandelions, and on and on and on.... Going out into the country and collecting wild ingredients is part of the whole experience. Admittedly foraging doesn't fit everyone's lifestyle, location, circumstances, or desires but it is a lot of fun if it does and you manage to collect an ice chest of winemaking goodies while avoiding poison ivy, stinging nettles and chiggers.

It's something to think about.

• An Uninvited Guest, Luc Volders blog entry about his heartbreaking dandelion experience
• Bananas, Raw: Nutrition Facts, percentages are evident using the "small" serving size
• Clarity of Country Wines, original thread on WinePress.us
• History of Wine, see "Earliest History," on Wikipedia
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I found a bottle of 2005 tomato wine I didn't know I still had. I opened it with the fervent expectation I would dump it down the drain, so much so that I opened it in the sink! But, because you never know, I gave it a tentative sniff, then just tilted the bottle up and took a sip, ready to grab a glass and rinse. No need, It was terriffic -- much better than when it was just a year old. Had I known it was this good, I'd have saved it for the competition on the 18th.

Changing subjects, I use the word "fad" in my first subject title below. Maybe "fad" is the wrong word for some of you and I apologize if it is. "Compelling awareness" is far more accurate for some people I know, but "fad" still fits most. However, if your dietary supplement choices are guided by balanced, credible research and weighted decision-making, then by all means exclude yourself from the faddish majority. As for me, I'm somewhere in between the two extremes.

Several times in the past two months the subject of açai (pronounced ah-sah-ee) berry wine has come up, which is unusual, and that kindled a desire in me to write about it. I have in fact made two wines with açai juice, but as I sat down to write about it little nagging issues crept into my consciousness and could not be ignored. These had to do with where did this interest in açai come from? I think it arose from several quarters, but three have registered in my memory - appearance in markets, an avalanche of printed references, and Oprah reportedly said she loves it. I'm not sure if the appearance preceded the avalanche but that is how I noted it, and for the record I do not watch Oprah - I just see her mentioned in ads. The question, to me at least, then becomes, so what? Why should I buy this super-expensive juice, let alone consider making wine from it?

Marketing it as a "newly discovered wonder fruit" does not work with me. I have a built-in resistance to things I've never heard of before suddenly becoming the health supplement fad du jour. Gogi (a.k.a. goji), noni, wolfberries, xango, mangosteen, açai, and jaboticaba are all just fruit or berries from foreign lands that had limited export potential to the United States until their antioxidant values were hyped and marketed. We have fruit and berries here in the States with high antioxidant levels -- aronia, black raspberry, prune, bilberry, pomegranate, raisin, red raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry are all high in antioxidant value as measured by oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assay. Oh, but comparatively the foreign stuff has "super antioxidant" levels. That has to be better, right?

ORAC scores are just numbers. What is important is which phytochemicals that produce the scores are in the source and whether these compounds are metabolized extensively or absorbed effectively so that the antioxidants get used beneficially by our bodies. If you're marketing this stuff on the internet (and tens of thousands of people are), you're not interested in telling the whole story - just throwing out numbers you hope will drive up sales. I don't know for sure, but I think it probably works.

I'm sorry, but when it comes to health foods and dietary supplements I think the average American is a very poor shopper - some of you are excellent, I know, but I'm talking average. On average, we have no idea what antioxidants and free radicals are, just that they are good for you and the more the better. But that isn't necessarily true.

Let us suppose that you understand that effectively metabolized antioxidants scavenge free radicals and this is good for you, and that the United States Department of Agriculture recommends we consume 3,000 to 5,000 ORAC units of antioxidants daily to optimize our health and mitigate unhealthy risk factors. According to the USDA, just 0.7 ounces of açai berry or wolfberry will deliver 5,000 ORAC units, so just get this stuff, take a full ounce "just to be sure," and go out for a bacon-double-cheeseburger, right? Of course not, and it isn't just because you forgot to put avocado on that bacon-double-cheeseburger.

There are several rules of life you ought to memorize and follow. Three of them apply here. First, with rare exceptions, simple solutions to complex problems are always inadequate. Second, with even rarer exceptions, one size does not fit all. Third, also with rare exceptions, more than the optimum is wasteful.

Because all antioxidants and free radicals are not the same, we need to consume a variety of types of antioxidants to do the most good. Although açai and wolfberry may indeed be extremely high in antioxidants, we still need to eat garlic, spinach, yellow squash, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets, ground cloves (really high), vitamins C and E, cocoa powder, dark chocolate, red onions, avocado (just without the bacon-double-cheeseburger), and all those healthy foods many of us eased out of our diet once we were on our own.

Many berries get their high ORAC scores from anthocyanins in the pigments that produce the blue, purple and red colors, but anthocyanins are not terribly stable and a great deal of it does not get absorbed into our bodies. And, unfortunately, our bodies normally absorb only so many antioxidants, so exceeding that amount is simply wasteful. Knowing that amount may require consulting a dietician, but they are educated in these matters and most of us are not.

Açai juice has been appearing in more and more supermarkets in small, rather costly bottles, usually displayed with other refrigerated "super juices" adjacent to or near the produce department. It has become one of those juices you never heard of before but suddenly it is mentioned everywhere healthy diets or supplements are discussed. Third, everyone peddling this stuff as dietary supplements feels compelled to mention that Oprah loves it or some such meaningless attribution. Okay. She's a billionaire and can afford to fill her swimming pool with açai juice if the itch strikes her, but what about the rest of us? Does the stuff make such an outstanding wine that you should suffer the expense to try it?

I have tried and have not yet been able to obtain açai berries here in Texas, although one gourmet store said they would try to get some (I fear the price and have not returned). I have had no problem finding the juice, which is also quite expensive but different brands differ greatly on that. I've done side-by-side label comparisons and it appears the ones claiming to be pure juice are just that and cost the most. I don't trust the less expensive ones that are "reconstituted from concentrate (filtered water, concentrate)" as they could easily over-dilute the concentrate by 20% and, not knowing what the full flavor is, I would never know. Anyway, I have made two rather expensive batches of açai wine.

The first batch was mixed with blueberry juice before fermentation and I think this was a mistake. The wine came out nice I think, but possessed a minor fault. The mistake was in combining the two juices before fermentation. I had no idea what the fermented açai should taste like and could not judge whether a slightly sharp fruitiness experienced along the back sides of the tongue was natural, an off-taste due to a minor winemaking fault or the result of the two juices possessing a minor incompatibility. I added sugar to the finished wine in an attempt to mask the annoying imperfection and in the process the wine became sweeter than either my wife or I care for. Other people liked it, but at $11 a bottle I really wanted something I liked.

My second batch was even more expensive as I used just açai juice and additives but did dilute it by half. However, my purpose was to do some blending trials and see what worked and what didn't. I drew off several 500 mL samples and blended these with Niagara, Concord, blackberry, pomegranate, cherry, and blueberry. Interestingly, I never found a blending ratio with pomegranate or cherry that I liked at ratios of 80/20, 60/40, 40/60, and 20/80. Blackberry came close to blending well, but lacked something I could not identify. Blueberry blended well, but as a minor (30%) component; heavier than that and I began to notice that sharpness I noted in the first batch. It blended well with both grapes and in various ratios, but I think the Niagara allowed the açai to shine better than did the Concord.

In retrospect, I wish I had had some apple wine to try blending, but I didn't. That might be a better choice than Niagara, as might rhubarb and possibly even banana. It also occurred to me that there are two muscadine wines that might blend well with açai -- Tara and Southern Home. Magnolia is a potential third and Nobel a fourth. It might also blend well with white mustang, but probably not the red -- the mustang flavor would surely overwhelm the açai.

As you can see, I would like to play with this berry some more, but I'll have to wait until the price comes down to where the rest of the economy resides. Açai juice is good, but I don't think its flavor (or its "super antioxidant" value) warrants the current price.

If someone wins the lottery and wants to try this, I would I would suggest you consider fermenting straight açai juice (you probably wouldn't want to dilute it if you won the lottery) and do blending trials as I did. That way if you get it wrong you are only getting a small sample wrong, and once you find the best ratio you can even correct the one(s) that went wrong.

Finally, I only blended dry wines. I well know the results could differ significantly if blending sweet wines, or a dry and a sweet, or two drys and a sweet, etc. The only compound blend I did was I added some Niagara to the açai -pomegranate in an attempt to rescue it, but I really needed more açai wine to explore that avenue adequately. I was shy because I drank the remaining 780 mL of açai wine. It was good, but not fantastic -- not as good as jaboticaba or aronia are as straight wines.

On a popular winemaking forum someone asked about flavoring extracts he saw on a winemaking supplier's website. I read the various replies and was surprised at how readily some of the respondents embraced a practice I consider to be on the line between what is and is not acceptable in winemaking. I then expressed that opinion and stirred up a controversy that is still drawing comments. There is much to discuss on this subject, and I wanted to revisit and flesh it out here.

I take pride in taking base ingredients and making wine from them. Well, not always. I've dumped a few batches I was not proud of. But when the flavor is not what I want, I work with it -- tweak it if I can -- before rushing to the drain. By tweak I mean any of several things.

• The desired tweak is adding a little of the unfermented juice of the base, if I have it; this is called adding a "sweet reserve" whether the juice is sweet or not (if not, I usually add a little sugar, as sugar usually does bring out flavor).
• If I don't have any unfermented juice, I might just try adding a little sugar. Often it just takes a little to rescue a "thin" flavor. By the same token, adding a little acid will also often rescue a wine -- add the dominant acid of the fruit or acid blend.
• I will add frozen concentrate if I have it (I have about 12 varieties in my chest freezer). This requires drawing off a sample and playing with it to find the optimum amount to add lest you add to much. Once you add too much to the whole batch, you've flawed it.
• If I do not have the same flavor to add (as a reserve or concentrate), then I add a flavor that will complement the base. Adding cranberry, grape, chokecherry, aronia, serviceberry or any number of things to a weak cherry will almost always work; it changes the wine, but rarely for the worse and usually for the better. Think about it and you will come up with many complements for other wines as well.
• You can also blend wines to rescue a weak wine, but do trials first lest you simply create a larger batch of weak wine. You have to have a strong blender or you are spinning your wheels, but even if you don't have one you can make one. The weak wine will wait.
• There are flavored fruit syrups - all kinds. These can be added to a must prior to fermentation and fermented with the base. They increase the flavor and add some fermentable sugars to the must - some add a significant amount, so add them before you add sugar so your specific gravity is correct. But be very careful with fruit syrups. Many contain sorbic acid or benzoic acid to prevent the syrups from fermenting, so obviously you do not want to add these to your must.

One thing you did not see in the list above is reaching for an artificial flavoring extract. Color me old fashioned, but I was taught to take pride in my work, work out any problems honorably, and don't "fudge" and pretend you didn't. Those flavorings may be fine for you, but to me they are artificial and don't belong in wines made from scratch. However, if you do use them, they should be listed on the label. When I say label, I am specifically speaking of the bottle tag or label used to list essential information for wines entered in competition. What you put on the label of bottles you drink or give away is your affair, but competitions have rules and all flavored ingredients are routinely required to be listed. That means you don't list yeast nutrient or Campden tablets, but do list oak essence ("oak" is usually sufficient), fruit syrups and candies added for flavor (Jolly Ranchers, mints, etc.).

A question was asked about Island Mist Premium Fruit Flavored Wine Kits, which use an "F-Pack" of fruit flavoring to create such wonders as Peach Apricot Chardonnay, Black Raspberry Merlot, Blackberry Cabernet, Green Apple Riesling, Blueberry Pinot Noir, etc. Island Mist claims the "F-Packs" contain "natural fruit flavoring and concentrate" which sounds natural to me, but the L.D. Carlson Fruit Flavors for Wine and Beer sold by local homebrew shops do not use natural fruit flavors and concentrate. Regardless of flavor, they are decidedly clear and colorless. The writer of that comment was not insinuating there was equivalency between the Island Mist "F-Pack" and the L.D. Carlson flavorings, but rather he equated natural flavored syrups to "F-Packs," something even I did that in my list up above.

Someone else commented on McCormick extracts, available in almost every supermarket in America. I went in the kitchen and looked at my wife's collection of extracts. We have a mix of three brands - McCormick, Watkins and Adams. Every single McCormick extract we have (we have seven) begins with the word "Imitation." Every single Watkins extract we have (we have six) contains the word "Artificial" on the front label. We only have two Adams extracts, and both claim to be a "blend of propylene glycol, water, alcohol, and oil of [almond or anise]." However, I know Adams also makes imitation fruit extracts

People, especially new winemakers, want their strawberry wine to taste like fresh strawberries, their blackberry wine to taste like fresh blackberries, and so on. I don't know why it takes time to learn this, but the process of fermentation changes the flavor profile of the base significantly. Grape wines do not taste like grape juice, so why would one expect a peach wine to taste like fresh peaches or a cherry wine to taste like fresh cherries? I think it is the disappointment of not tasting what one unrealistically expected to taste that leads people to doctor their wines with flavorings. Well, if you do that and don't say so, expect to be embarrassed. Any experienced winemaker will know the flavor is too fruity, more like fruit juice than wine. But they will often taste an off-flavor as well because extracts have a certain off-ness to them. It doesn't show in cookies or cake or jelly - maybe the oven or stovetop heat drives it off -- but it sure steps forward in wines.

My wife and I visited a number of area wineries while attending a Pierce-Arrow annual meet in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There were lots of fruit wines to sample, but we absolutely loved the cherry wines. They did not, of course, taste like fresh cherries, but they did taste like very good cherry wines. While in a tasting room, we heard a member of the winery staff tell a young lady, "You just haven't developed your wine buds yet, those taste buds that taste the fermented juice - the wine -- and still recognize the essential flavor of the unfermented juice."

I've thought about that comment many times. I'm not sure I totally accept what she said, but quite often I taste a wine and somewhere up in my brain a profound connection is made with some essential quality of commonality between the flavor of the wine and the flavor of the unfermented fruit. This isn't just recognition, but something deeper. Maybe it's my "wine buds," but more than likely it is something else, something cognitive. Whatever it is, I like it and don't want it ruined with artificial flavorings.

• Acai Berry Wine, the original thread at WinePress.us
• Does Anyone Use Fruit Extracts?, the original thread at WinePress.us
• Adams Extracts, 6 of their 17 extracts are narural
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Bottling a mead this morning sent me to the keyboard to discuss varietal meads. I wanted to provide the recipe I used, but also wanted to discuss making dry, semi-sweet and sweet varietal meads. The method does not vary, so I was able to do this in an abbreviated format. I hope it is as understandable to you as it is to me.

Then my day was interrupted by a nap, lunch and a trip over to the county fairgrounds to see how my entries did. I entered 5 wines, a jar of Cabernet Sauvignon Wine Jelly, a jar of Black Cherry, Orange and Walnut Marmalade, and a pint of pickled 'Moon and Stars' Watermelon Rind pieces. Everything entered won at least a first place, plus I picked up Grand Champion with the marmalade and a Lemon Wine and Reserve Grand Champion with a Strawberry Wine. On the way home, I decided to share the Lemon Wine recipe. So today's entry contains four recipes, an unusual occurrence.

I woke up at 4:43, too early to think about breakfast, and so I bottled a varietal mead. Varietals are traditional or show meads, made with honey and water and prudent additives, but no additional flavorings. The difference between a common, generic show mead and a varietal is the latter is made with a single-source or varietal honey and assumes the source's name. My mead was made with mesquite honey originating from the Uvalde, Texas area and therefore is a mesquite mead, but there are many varieties available.

My first varietal mead was orange blossom, then clover, columbine, sage, and wildflower. I went through a long period without making any mead at all, but at a shop on a day-trip my wife and I tasted a number of Texas honeys and I bought several. Our favorite was the lightly colored huajillo, a native thorned brush of the Legume family with mimosa-like flowers, but we also bought some mesquite, bluebonnet and huisache. I only made mead with the huajillo, as the other honeys were bought in insufficient quantities for this purpose.

I have bought a number of honeys since then in 25-pound cans from Homebrew Adventures and other sources. Among my favorites for mead were raspberry, tupelo, blueberry, firewood, and heather. But a couple of years ago at a county fair I met a honey producer who had lost most of his bees due to the honey bee die-off and was liquidating his inventory and retiring. As the fair was closing up, I met with him and got a good deal on 15 pounds of mesquite honey, which I used to make the third mead below.

These recipes are, I believe, the best for varietal meads. Different honeys, however, may require adjustments. The method is the same for each recipe and each makes one gallon. For more, do the math.

• 2-2.5 lbs quality varietal honey
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1-3/8 tsp citric acid
• 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
• Water to make up 1 gal (about 3 liters
• 1 sachet Montrachet yeast

Boil the honey in half the water, stirring occasionally until the honey is dissolved. Reduce heat to simmer for 30 minutes, skimming all scum off top as it forms. Stir in citric acid, yeast energizer and yeast nutrient. Cover primary and set aside until it assumes room temperature. Add activated yeast as a starter solution and recover the primary to keep dust and insects out. Stir daily until fermentation ends - about 2 weeks. Transfer mead to secondary and attach airlock. Retain in secondary for 60 days from transfer date. Rack to a sanitized secondary, top up and reattach airlock. Set aside undisturbed for 60 days and rack again. If brilliantly clear, wait 30 days to see if light dusting develops on bottom. If so, wait additional 30 days and rack, top up and reattach airlock for another 30 days. If not brilliantly clear, wait full 60 days and rack, top up and reattach airlock. Then follow previous instructions when mead is brilliantly clear. Sulfite with one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, bottle and set aside to age one year minimum. [Author's own recipe]

• 2.5 - 3 lbs quality varietal honey
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1-1/2 tsp citric acid
• 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
• Water to make up 1 gal (about 3 liters
• 1 sachet Montrachet yeast

Method: Same as for Varietal Mead, Dry. [Author's own recipe]

• 3 - 3-3/4 lbs quality varietal honey
• 1-1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1-5/8 tsp citric acid
• 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
• Water to make up 1 gal (about 3 liters)
• 1 sachet Montrachet yeast

Method: Same as for Varietal Mead, Dry. [Author's own recipe]

Lemon wine surprises people. They expect an alcoholic lemonade and instead get a full-bodied wine with thirst-quenching, lemony taste. It is best as an off-dry wine, but I have made it semi-sweet for competitions and it just claimed Grand Champion. Easy to make, it does require bulk and bottle aging to come into its own.

There are basically six medium-sized, tart, juicy, commercial 'real' lemons most of us are familiar with. 'Eureka' originated in California and forms an open, spreading tree, with virtually thornless branches and twigs and is the most widely available variety. 'Lisbon' originated in Australia and is characterized by a rather dense tree having numerous upright, thorny branches. Most lemons in the supermarket will be one or the other of these two varieties. But you might also fine 'Armstrong' or 'Femminello Ovale,' both of which grow on thornless trees, or 'Genoa' (very thorny) or 'Villa Franca' (moderately thorny). All are very tart. Rarely encountered in the U.S., 'Dorshapo' is a true lemon from Brazil that closely resembles 'Eureka' in fruit and tree characteristics, but is a sweet lemon of very low acidity.

Then there are hybrids. The 'Meyer' has almost completely been replaced with the 'Improved Meyer,' which is mildly tart, thin-skinned, yellow-orange skin and flesh, medium-sized fruit highly prized for eating. 'Monachello' is similarly sized and mildly tart, but not very juicy. 'Rough' and 'Sungold' are moderately tart and medium sized; 'Rough' has a rough-textured skin and 'Sungold' has yellow skin with greenish stripes. 'Perrine' is a lemon-lime hybrid with some lime flavor. 'Ponderosa' is a very tart, juicy, very thick-skinned lemon of grapefruit size. 'Millsweet' is another lemon-lime hybrid of medium size, with yellow-orange, bumpy skin and pale yellow, low-acid interior with few seeds.

I used two specific lemon varieties - 'Implroved Meyer' and 'Millsweet' - you may or may not be able to acquire. Both were gifts from friends who have trees and I used four fruit of each type. You will note above that these possess mildly tart and low acid character, which muted the intensity of the flavor. Do not expect the same results if you cannot obtain one or the other of these varieties (both would be hoping for too much), but if you cannot obtain lemons with mild or moderate tartness, then use only six lemons and two sweet, juicy 'Valencia' oranges.

• 4 'Improved Meyer' lemons, juice, plus zest from two
• 4 'Millsweet' lemons, juice only
• 11.5 oz. can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 2 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 2 finely crushed Campden tablets
• 1/2 tsp. potassium sorbate
• 200 mL Finest Call Premium Triple Sec Syrup
• Water to make up 1 gal (about 3 liters)
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 sachet Montrachet yeast

Boil water and dissolve sugar in it. Grate the zest from 2 lemons into primary. Juice all lemons and add juice to primary. Add grape juice to primary and add sugar water. Cover primary and set aside to cool to room temperature. Add yeast nutrient and one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. After 12 hours, add yeast. Ferment until specific gravity drops to 1.010 (6-8 days). Rack into secondary, top up if required and fit airlock. In 6 weeks, rack, add potassium sorbate and second finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, top up and refit airlock. Age 6 months, checking water in airlock periodically. Add Triple Sec Syrup, refit airlock and wait two weeks. Rack into bottles and age additional 6 months before tasting. [Author's own recipe]

• Honey Locator, National Honey Board's search engine, by country, state, supplier, floral type, etc.
• Four Winds Citrus Variety List, scroll down to Lemons
• Lemon Wines, three other recipes on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I spent the last six nights watching Ken Burns' magnificent 12-hour series, "The National Parks," on my PBS channel. I am so glad I did. Not only did I learn much of the incredible history of the parks, I was utterly overwhelmed by the shear beauty of the ideas expressed, the poetic prose used to express them, the music that assisted so very well in the telling, and of course the breathtaking photography.

I was fortunate enough to have visited many of the western parks with my family as a youngster and on my own as the Army moved me to Texas, California, Washington, Virginia, and Colorado - all richly blessed with their own caches of unrivalled beauty.

The series stirred many memories and awakened within a yearning to return to familiar valleys, vistas and heights, and then go on to see the many national treasures I have missed. You don't know what this country is until you have seen the awe-inspiring wonders our predecessors were wise enough to preserve for us and the generations yet unborn. That each and every step of this preservation was bitterly fought by selfish interests makes the whole that much more astounding. That anyone could stand on the floor of Yosemite Valley or on the rim of the Grand Canyon or in the reflection of the Grand Tetons and not naturally think of preserving them unspoiled is beyond my comprehension. I sincerely hope it is beyond yours, too.

And now, let's talk about wine.

A wonderful couple in Tennessee who has been so generous to me by sharing their wines, recipes and secrets have sent me a number of wines and meads made from mixed berries and fruit. While drinking one of these, I became inspired and rummaged through my freezer for hidden treasures. I found a few worthy ingredients and one I questioned but used anyway. I am truly glad I did.

I found some Kiowa blackberries, a gift from a fellow who traded them for a white mustang rooted cutting. They would form the backbone of my wine. I then dug out some freezer-burned mission figs, some chokecherries a friend brought me from San Juan, Colorado, about a cup and a half of blueberries I didn't know we still had (or they would have gone into pancakes long ago), and an unrecognizable mass I had to thaw to identify as oriental persimmons. As I weighed and contemplated my finds, my eyes kept returning to those pathetic looking mission figs. I almost didn't use them, but they made the total weigh 4 pounds 5 ounces - 69 ounces - and the number seduced me. The figs were in.

I bottled the wine tonight. Do not question magical numbers. They are magical for a reason. I drank the 3-1/2 ounces left over from the bottling and I am so glad I used the figs. I could not specifically taste them, but I am certain they counter-balanced the chokecherries and contributed significantly to the heavy fruitiness. I added the grape concentrate as an afterthought when I needed to top up. That, too, worked out well, so I am writing it up as I did it. Neither you nor I will ever have the ingredients required to duplicate this wine, so use it as a guide and be your own chef.

Long ago I made a decision to write for the beginner as well as the advanced winemaker. The beginner uses teaspoons, cups, pints, pounds, ounces, et cetera, and their fractions. The advanced winemaker uses grams, kilograms, milliliters and liters. The primary difference between the two genres of measure is precision, and when measuring non-base ingredients (chemicals, enzymes, etc.) to be added to wine, you really do want to be precise. Asked what instrument I would recommend a winemaker obtain after a hydrometer, without hesitation I say an accurate, reliable gram scale.

The gram was originally defined as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of a metre, and at the temperature of melting ice." Today it is easier to think of it simply as one one-thousandth of a kilogram.

As long as we are discussing precision, we should also talk about correctness. Just as one can be precise by using exact measures, so too can one be correct by using accepted conventions. Together, precision and correctness leave nothing to interpretation. There is a difference between gravity and specific gravity. Do not say one and mean the other. There is also a correctness in abbreviations for measures. I have seen people abbreviate gram/grams as gr, gm, grm, gms, and grms, but correctly it is simply g whether singular or plural. It should always be separated from the numeric value by a space, so 17 g is correct and 17g is incorrect. When recording sub-decimal numbers, they should be preceded by a number or a zero, so 0.44 g is correct and .44 g is incorrect. The same rule applies to specific gravity; 0.994 is correct, but .994 is incorrect.

Incidentally, gr means grain, which is 64.7989 milligrams (mg), so if you write "add 1.5 gr" but mean "add 1.5 g", your instruction is to add 97.198 mg when you actually mean 1500 mg.

Here are some useful conversions from "spoons" to grams:

Chemical	¼ Tsp	1 Tsp	1 Tblsp
Acid blend, powder Ascorbic acid, powder Bentonite, agglomerated Calcium carbonate, powder Citric acid, powder Diammonium phosphate, powder Fermaid Yeast Nutrient, powder Fumaric acid, powder Gelatin, powder Grape tannin, powder Isinglass, powder Malic acid, powder Oak-Mor, special and premium Oak-Mor, toasted Polyclar V, powder Polyclar VT, powder Potassium bicabonate, powder Potassium bitartrate, powder Potassium caseinate, powder Potassium metabisulfite, powder Potassium sorbate, prilled Sparkolloid, powder Tartaric acid, powder Yeast hulls, powder Yeastex 61, powder	1.2 grams 0.9 grams 0.8 grams 0.5 grams 1.1 grams 1.2 grams 1.0 grams 1.3 grams 0.8 grams 0.6 grams - 1.1 grams - - - - 0.7 grams 0.8 grams 0.7 grams 1.4 grams 0.6 grams - 1.3 grams 0.6 grams 0.8 grams	5.1 grams 4.6 grams 3.4 grams 2.6 grams 4.9 grams 4.9 grams 4.6 grams 5.3 grams 3.2 grams 2.8 grams 2.4 grams 4.5 grams 1.2 grams 1.4 grams 1.3 grams 1.2 grams 3.3 grams 3.8 grams 3.0 grams 6.2 grams 2.5 grams 1.0 grams 5.0 grams 2.8 grams 3.3 grams	14.4 grams 13.8 grams 11.1 grams 06.7 grams 14.4 grams 14.7 grams 14.7 grams 16.0 grams 09.6 grams 07.8 grams 07.2 grams 13.2 grams 03.6 grams 04.2 grams 04.3 grams 03.9 grams 10.6 grams 10.2 grams 09.0 grams 20.0 grams 03.6 grams 07.5 grams 15.2 grams 08.7 grams 09.6 grams

You can actually get by with a gram scale that only measures down to a tenth of a gram - I used a small balance scale for years that did just that and now use a digital scale that does the same - but there are specific additives that require measurement to the hundredth of a gram to achieve accuracy. For example, if you use potassium benzoate instead of potassium sorbate to stabilize your wine before sweetening, the correct dose is 0.44 g per US gallon, not 0.4 or 0.5. Such scales are available in a wide variety of prices. As with most products, you get the quality you pay for.

• The National Parks, the PBS site about the series and the parks
• Measuring Additives in Winemaking, these and other measures, on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Due to recent rains, as I drove through sage country last Sunday I was greeted with a show of millions of purple flowers. Since my arrival at the wine competition could not be delayed, I drove past the showy display and promised to stop on the trip home, which I did. It took me about 25 minutes to pick two quarts of flowers. An hour later I was at home and prepared to make a wine.

Wild Texas purple sage brush and close-up of blooms after rains

Texas Sage (Leucophyllum frutescens) has several other names, with Texas Ranger and Silverleaf Sage being the two most common. After observing it in bloom, many people mistakenly call it Purple Sage. True Purple Sage has leaves with a purplish upper surface, which this does not have. I will combine the names and call it Texas Purple Sage for popularity's sake, not for strict correctness. I beg the botanists to forgive me.

Mixing bowl with two quarts of Texas purple sage blossoms

When I picked the flowers I purposely tried not to pick the leaves, knowing this was a futile effort. I actually did want some leaves in there for flavor, just not too many, and trying to avoid them turned out to be the right strategy. The ones I accidently picked with the blossoms turned out to be just about the right number. I measured the flowers and had slightly more than two quarts, not packed. Since I have never made this wine before and had no recipe to guide me, two quarts would do fine.

I received phone call last night from an old acquaintance in California who asked if I could help him make a pluot wine. Pluots, a complex hybrid crossing of plum and apricot, were an oddity just 15 years ago but now are widely grown and marketed, with fruit readily available from late May through October. Pluots are typically larger than plums and sweeter than either ancestor. They make an excellent wine, but first a word about pluots themselves.

Pluots should not be confused with plumcots (simple plum X apricot crosses) or apriums (3/4 apricot, 1/4 plum). Plumcots were developed by the legendary Luther Burbank over a century ago; they lack the intense sweetness and flavors of pluots. Apriums are about as sweet as pluots but have a completely different flavor profile. They, too, make a wonderful wine. Pluots range from being 60% to 75% plum, and everyone I know who has tasted pluot wine prefers it to plum wine any day.

Pluot varieties Dapple Dandy (l), Flavor Queen (c) and Raspberry Jewel (r)

Pluots vary in color, both outwardly and in the flesh. Their skin tends to be mottled, speckled, dappled or non-specific multicolored in a wide range of colors. Their flesh can vary from almost cream to green to yellow to orange to pink to red to purple to anywhere in between. Pluot varieties include (only a partial list):

• Crimson Sweet: Sweet flavor, medium-sized, Crimson skin with pinkish flesh. Available in June.
• Dapple Dandy: Large size with mottled pale green to yellow, red-spotted skin, red or pink juicy flesh. Available July through August and easily shipped (due to the firm nature of the flesh).
• Early Dapple: Good flavor, medium-sized, mottled green over red skin with pink flesh. Available mid June.
• Flavor Delight: Medium-sized, fuchsia-honey colored skin with pink flesh. Available in June.
• Flavor Fall: Large size, average flavor, Red skin with yellow flesh. Available the end of September and the first of October
• Flavor Grenade: Large size, oblong shape with red blush on green background, yellow juicy flesh. Available the end of July through August.
• Flavor Heart: very large, black with a heart shape, and yellow flesh.
• Flavor Jewel: Sweet flavor, heart shaped, red over yellow skin with yellow flesh.
• Flavor King: Fruit punch flavor, medium size, with burgundy skin and red super sweet juicy flesh. Available end of August first of September. Flesh of this is hard until fully ripe which takes time to complete.
• Flavor Prince: large round and purple, with red flesh.
• Flavor Queen: Medium to large size, very juicy flesh. Taste is very sweet and when fully ripe (golden yellow colour). Available the end of June to mid August.
• Flavor Rich: medium-sweet, large black round fruit with orange flesh.
• Flavor Royal: very sweet, medium-sized, dark purple with crimson flesh. Available end of May through first weeks of June.
• Flavor Supreme: medium or large, greenish purple skin, juicy red flesh.
• Flavorosa: very sweet , medium-sized, flat round dark-purple fruit with red flesh. Available end of May through first weeks of June.
• Raspberry Jewel: medium, dark red skin, brilliant red honey-sweet flesh.[6]
• Red Ray: medium, bright red with dense, sweet orange flesh
• Splash: Small to medium sized red-orange colored fruit, with very sweet orange flesh. Available mid July.
• Sweet Treat: Super sweet with hints of thompson grape flavor, green golden skin with yellow juicy flesh. Available end of June and first of July.
• Tropical Plumana: Tropical punch flavor, medium-sized, red over greenish yellow background with yellow flesh. Available middle of June.

Ripe pluots are firm, yet juicy within. Those that are slightly soft are at the tail-end of ripeness and those that are yielding to the touch are over-ripe. The latter might make excellent wine but I have only used them for jelly, and it was wonderful!

Pluot Wine

You could make this wine with a mixture of pluot varieties, but I would not. Each variety posses its own unique flavor and I have always tried to capture that as purely as I can. I have made this wine using Dapple Dandy, Flavor Queen and Red Ray varieties. I had to ask the grocer to check his paperwork to get the name of the third, but he did so willingly. The first two are easily recognizable after you've studied the fruit a while.

• 6 lbs pluots
• 1 lb 6 oz finely granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
• 3/4 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1/8 tsp tannin
• 1 tsp nutrient
• Red Star Montrachet yeast

Put water on to boil. Wash the fruit, cut in halves to remove the seeds, then chop fruit and put in nylon straining bag in primary. Pour boiling water over fruit. Add the sugar and stir well to dissolve. Cover and allow to cool to 70 degrees F. Add acid blend, pectic enzyme, tannin, and nutrient, recover primary, and wait 12 hours before adding yeast. Allow to ferment until vigor subsides (about 5-7 days), stirring twice daily. Strain, transfer to secondary, and fit airlock. Rack after 30 days, top up, refit airlock and repeat every 30 days until wine clears and drops no more lees. Wait two additional weeks, rack again, stabilize wine, sweeten to taste, and allow to rest a final 30 days before bottling. This wine can be sampled after only 4 months. If not up to expectations, let age another 6 months and taste again. Semi- to slightly sweet (1.004-1.008 SG), this wine will delight you even if you prefer dry wines. [Author's own recipe]

• Luther Burbank, in Wikipedia
• Fruit of the Month: Pluots and Apriums, general information, photos
• Plu-What?, good article in Slate
• Pluots, in Wikipedia
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

A Guest Book entry asked if I had a recipe for a heather wine. Most certainly I do. However, I suffer a great misfortune in that only cultivated heather is grown in this locale, not the common wild heather of the Rockies I enjoyed in Colorado or that the Irish, Scots, Scandinavians and even Russians enjoy in magnificent abundance.

According to Biology-Online, Calluna vulgaris is the only species of heather, despite the fact that it practically circles the globe in the northern third of the Northern Hemisphere. While well over a thousand cultivars have been bred from this single species, none are as hardy as the original in the wild. Nor are any as prolific as the wild heather, with one bush capable of producing 150,000 seeds.

Wild heather thicket and close-up of blooms

Heather flowers and new leaves each exude different but distinct fragrances with varied uses. For example, the new growth is cut, dried and placed on burning peat to create dense smoke that both dries and flavors the malt in certain Scotch whisky production. Quite apart, heather honey is distinctly flavorful and highly prized in making a varietal mead. But for making heather wine, it is the flowers that are needed, either alone or in conjunction with the small leaves.

Heather Wine Recipe

• 1 1/2 lbs Heather tips (in full bloom, woody stem removed)
• 1 lb 12 oz finely granulated sugar
• 2 small lemons, juice only
• 2 small sour oranges, juice only
• 2 thin slices of ginger root, 1 X 2 inches
• 11-oz can 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 6 1/2 pts water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 tsp dried wine yeast

Cover heather with 2 quarts water, place on high heat and bring to a boil; hold at low boil for 50 minutes, add ginger slices and remove from heat after additional 10 minutes. Strain off solids and retain liquid only in primary and add grape concentrate, citrus juice and sugar. Stir until completely dissolved, cover and set aside to cool. When cooled to room temperature, stir in yeast nutrient and then activated yeast as a starter solution. Re-cover, set aside and leave for 14 days. Transfer to secondary, affix airlock, and wait until all evidence of fermentation ceases. Rack, top up, reattach airlock, and set aside for 60 days. Rack again, stabilize, top up, reattach airlock, and wait 30 days. If no new lees have formed, rack into bottles. If even a fine dusting appears, wait additional 30 days and very carefully rack into bottles. Age at least six months. [Author's own recipe]

• Heather, a traditional recipe can be found here
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 18th, 2009

Today is the 222nd birthday of the United States Constitution. Although I think the framers of that enduring document would be quite pleased with how infrequently it has been tampered with on paper, I am absolutely certain they would all be appalled at the way the Supreme Court has found meaning in it totally absent from its words. Their intent, so clearly expounded in "The Federalist Papers," was to create a small federal government whose primary duty is the defense and protection of its citizens and thereafter the negotiation of affairs of trade and state with other nations. And they granted it power to create and regulate a national infrastructure, recognizing its essentiality in promoting the free movement of people and commerce.

The architects of the U.S. Constitution specifically vested a greater degree of governance of the people and their affairs in the individual states than in the federal government. We learned this in 7th and 8th grade civics classes - when they still had 7th and 8th grade civics classes. Thus, I am equally certain those architects would be astounded at how enormous the federal government has become, by how much power it has usurped from the states and how liberally it assumes jurisdiction over matters not enumerated to it in the document whose birth we celebrate today.

We forget at our own peril that Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention on September 18th, 1787, was asked by a woman whether they had crafted a republic or a monarchy. He responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." I have bookmarked the reminder that Franklin could have simply said, "A republic", but he added the five words, "if you can keep it." In so doing (I shall quote from my bookmark), "Franklin was suggesting that a republic is not something that can be expected to survive without nurturing and constant attention. Much like an infant, a republic requires the supervision and disciplinary hand of a watchful guardian. If that guardian takes his responsibility lightly, it can be expected that the republic will stray from all that is good and pure and will grow into an unrecognizable monster that knows not how to function properly, defiant and thirsty for self-gratification." Please look around and note a defiant Congress, thirsty for self-gratification. I think Doctor Franklin would simply say, "You were warned."

A Substitute for Yeast Nutrient

I am often asked if one can substitute something else for one or another winemaking ingredient. The answer in most instances is simply of course you can. But you should only do so with the understanding that you are changing the outcome of the process. You will still end up with wine, but it almost certainly will not be what it could have been if substitutions were not made. A dozen or so years ago a couple wrote to me from Senegal, asking what could be used as a substitute for yeast nutrient. I am going to repeat here my advice then, for I think I answered exactly as I should have.

There are numerous authorities that cite different ingredients and proportions. Proprietary yeast nutrients usually contain DAP (diammonium phosphate), which supplies nitrogen and phosphorus; urea, which supplies nitrogen; citric (and perhaps other) acid; trace amounts of biotin; and yeast hulls. The formulations of these nutrients are not generally public knowledge.

Less secret are the formulations of yesteryear. Pre-World War II recipes used malt extract and lemon juice as nutrient, while many post-war recipes used to use ammonium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, potassium phosphate, and citric acid for yeast nutrient. Both, I am told, worked well enough, but not as well as today's formulations. I would suspect that it would be easier to order a packaged nutrient from an out-of-country supplier and pay shipping than to find DAP and the other constituents locally and experiment with proportions. Still, a chemist (or druggist) might be able to mix the following nutrient for you without problem:

• ammonium sulphate...........130 grains
• magnesium sulphate........... 20 grains
• potassium phosphate.......... 70 grains
• citric acid .......................... 260 grains

This makes an ounce of nutrient, enough to make four gallons of non-grape wine or two gallons of mead. While not as good as commercial formulations, it still should work well enough. The absolute against-the-wall substitute is malt extract and citric acid (lemon juice) mixed half-and-half. By "against the wall" I mean "last resort" -- if you absolutely cannot find DAP at a garden supply store or a chemist to mix the above, but somehow can obtain malt extract.

A Substitute for Pectic Enzyme

Many years ago I was asked if there is a substitute for pectic enzyme. Technically, yes there is, but if you cannot obtain a simple, inexpensive powder (or liquid) available at any homebrew shop, you almost certainly will not have the means to hydrolyze pectin molecules. However, there is a substitute for commercial pectic enzyme.

Years ago I was asked this and replied that the best substitute for pectic enzyme is papaya peel. The layer of green immediately under the skin of the papaya contains natural pectic enzyme.

At that time I was familiar with a rather small papaya imported from Mexico that was seasonally available at a local market. Basing my experience on that size papaya, I advised that one could "... use the peeling from half a papaya as a substitute for one teaspoon of pectic enzyme, noting you can freeze the other half in a ZipLoc bag for later use. Just put the peeling in the primary and ferment it along with the other ingredients. It would be best, however, to order some pectic enzyme from a winemaking supplier over the internet."

Small and large (but not very large) varieties of papaya

Since that time the availability and variety of papaya in my local markets have dramatically increased. Very large papayas are now more common than the smaller ones I had in mind when I originally wrote the above advice, and every now an then some really huge ones appear. I am just guessing, but I would estimate only an eighth of the peeling from a very large papaya would be sufficient, but using more will not harm the wine.

A final reminder: the peeling needs to be thinly removed so the green layer is visible, not the gold or orange or reddish color of the papaya pulp.

• A Republic, If You Can Keep It, a remarkably short and well-penned essay by "Heather D."
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 15th, 2009

I went to the supermarket to buy some fruit and saw a "bargain bin" set up filled with mesh bags containing 20 key limes each for $.80 a bag. Why the bargain? Because the limes had all turned yellow, the exact color they become when ripe. There were eight bags in the bin. I wanted three, but spotted the produce manager on another aisle. I wheeled my cart around to him and offered him $.50 a bag for all of them. He said to wait and disappeared into the back room where records and stock are stored. After a few minutes he came out and said he would sell them for $.62 a bag. I said okay and he grabbed a pricing gun, set it for $.62 and changed the price on each bag.

What a deal! People don't realize that yellow limes are riper than green ones. I hope that produce manager doesn't read my blog.

Honeybush Mead

About six months ago I visited a health food supermarket in San Antonio and came across bulk honeybush (Cyclopia intermedia) tea leaves. Later, on the tea aisle, I ran across TAZO brand Honeybush tea. Having made wine before with Tazo Passion Tea, an idea formed and I went back to the bulk tea. Not really knowing how much I might need, bought 4 ounces (which was a lot). The aroma of the leaves was slightly herbaceous, but reminiscent of spun honey. I decided to make a mead with it and picked up a 3-pound jar of honey.

When I checked my notes on the Passion Tea Wine, I saw that I only used 1.7 ounces. I brewed a cup of honeybush tea with a teaspoon of leaves and savored it. The flavor was very nice - creamy, vanilla-like, honeyish, yet almost fruity. I decided to use 2 ounces in the mead. A little on-line referencing and I noted that honeybush contains no caffeine and very little tannin.

Honeybush in full flower in the wild
Honeybush Mead Recipe

• 2 oz honeybush tea, loose, or 29 Tazo Honeybush tea bags
• 3 lbs honey
• 11 oz can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate (optional, for body)
• juice of 2 small lemons
• water to make 1 gallon
• 1/4 tsp dried grape tannin
• 1-1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 sachet Lalvin DV10 wine yeast*

Pour the honey into a pot with a 1-gallon gradient line on the side and add water to that mark (NOTE: if you are going to add grape concentrate for body, mark must be 11 ounces shy of a gallon). Put honey-water on to boil while carefully measuring 2 ounces of crushed leaves; tie these in a very fine-meshed infusion bag with two glass marbles for weight. Stir the water intermittently until it comes to a high-boil, add lemon juice, then reduce heat to maintain a low boil for 15 minutes, skimming off the scum from the honey as it rises. Take pan off the heat, submerge the infusion bag (or add tea bags) and cover the pan. About four hours later remove the infusion bag, squeeze it well, and transfer the must to a primary. Add thawed grape concentrate if desired (I did not use it). Stir in tannin, yeast nutrient and activated yeast in a starter solution. Cover primary and set aside. When vigorous fermentation subsides (about 8-10 days), transfer to secondary and attach an airlock. Ferment to dryness and rack, top up and reattach airlock. Wait 45 days and rack into sanitized secondary containing 1/2 teaspoon potassium sorbate and one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. Carefully rack into bottles 30 days later. Allow to age 6 months before consuming. [Author's own recipe]

*If you wish a sweet mead, use Red Star Montrachet yeast. Do not sweeten after fermentation stops, but trust residual sweetness. Adding the grape concentrate will increase the residual sweetness.

• Honeybush, Wikipedia article
• Honeybush: Healthful Beverage Tea from South Africa, Institute for Traditional Medicine article
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 13th, 2009

Friday I had one of those magnificent Cajun meals that require you to loosen your belt halfway through. My dog knows enough to stop eating when she's full, but not me. I swear I gained 6 pounds. I've barely eaten since and still need to shed 4 pounds (my doctor says 14, my wife says 24).

For those who never thought about it, Smoked Burgundy pairs excellently with smoked barbeque pork. If you don't know what Smoked Burgundy is, read on. I won two blue ribbons with my 2001.

Smoked Burgundy Wine

Smoked Burgundy started out as a kit wine. I don't recall the brand (and that log is definitely boxed up in the garage) but it was still in a 5-gallon format, something I dearly wish they would return to. And it was, I'm quite sure, still called "Burgundy" rather than "Bourgeron," something else I wish they would return to but for treaty reasons will not. So, looking at the evidence, it might have been an older kit that was marked down for reasons I didn't really think about at the time. It had a mid-line label, a lower-line price, and I wanted to make a Burgundy.

Upon opening the box the kit came in, I scanned the instructions and tossed them out with the empty box. Those were the days when some wine kit manufacturers were still competing with beer kit manufacturers to see who could bottle their product first. Thank God those days are past. Anyway, I began making my wine.

I had made a decision that I would oak this wine. I dug around and found a gallon-baggie of small, untoasted oak cubes a fellow in Missouri (I think) sent me, made from barrel staves discarded by a cooperage for defects. My wife had recently bought me a small smoker and I laid down a layer of charcoal briquettes and let them reduce considerably in size before applying a layer of water-soaked mesquite chips to the coals. As huge amounts of smoke began engulfing me I set the grill in place, laid a piece of hardware screen on it, and then spread out a layer of the untoasted oak chips on the screen. I closed the lid, choked the damper and went inside to watch a football game.

As I recall, I turned the cubes every 30-45 minutes and added new mesquite about as often. After about 4 hours (there are 6 sides on each cube), I took my mesquite-smoked oak cubes, now well toasted on two sides and medium-to-mildly toasted on the others, tied them in a nylon straining bag with about 30 glass marbles (for weight), and patiently worked these into the carboy. I think I left them in the wine about 8 weeks. I made the wine my own way, in my own time, but pretty much used their ingredients (except yeast and the smoked oak). And now you know my secret. The flavor is unique and complex, and two bottles survive. But I doubt they will see Christmas.

Propagating Vines from Grape Seeds, Part 3

Well, I am surprised by how many of you are interested in this. Your questions, for the most part, have been good ones, but I want to correct an impression I may have left you with and expand upon selected other aspects of the subject.

If this and previous entries have left you scratching your head wondering what I'm talking about, you can turn to Google and Wikipedia. For those wanting deeper understanding, I highly recommend investing in The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture by Lon Rombough.

In my September 11th Part 2 entry on this subject I stated near the end that if your seeds came from a Merlot and your pollen came from several different cultivars and species, "the resulting seedlings would be very different and only the Merlot X Merlot should be expected to yield vines with fruit resembling the original mother vine. All the others will be hybrids, some good and some less so." This is only partially correct. There will be a great deal of variation even within the Merlot X Merlot seeds. This is because the Merlot grape is a variant created by crossing many previous variants of the parent species, V. vinifera. Each crossing resulted in unique gene encoding and each of those uniquely coded variations is stored in the DNA of the ovary and the pollen that combine to form a seed. Which variations will manifest themselves is anyone's guess.

Think of it another way. My father is 88 and still has a full head of hair. One of my brothers and myself have a growing bald spot while two others do not. Two have receeding hairlines while two do not. My father has black hair and my mother has brown. None of us, their offspring, have black hair. Yet any of us could have children with black hair because we carry our father's genes. However, if our spouses have no immediate history of black hair then the odds increase that our offspring will not. And yet, even several generations into the future, the possibility of a black-haired child is real because our father's genes will still be carried into the future and could become determinate.

Merlot is an ancient grape whose mother was a previously unknown cultivar from northern Brittany, cultivated in the late Middle Ages in at least four places in Charentes and now named Magdeleine Noire des Charentes, and whose father was Cabernet Franc. This parentage is deduced from inheritance at 55 nuclear and three chloroplast microsatellite loci and is fairly definitive. But we do not know the generational lineage of the grape, so do not know what latent characteristics are lurking in the DNA of Merlot. Also, there are many clonal variations of Merlot, meaning they possess the same genes but express them slightly differently just as my brothers and I express different genes for hair retention, height, eye color, skin hue, and even right-hand/left-hand dominance.

The preferred method of grapevine propagation that yields new vines identical to the mother is rooting cuttings from the mother herself. The new vines are, in fact, clones of the mother and express the same genes as her. However, over time ever so slight mutations can occur in buds that grow into fruiting wood from which cuttings are taken, resulting in "clonal drift". The easiest mutation to explain is when cuttings are taken from "sports." A sport is a somatic mutation in a new trunk, cane or lateral shoot of perennial fruits. The first navel orange, for example grew on a bud sport of a seeded Citrus sinensis, yet was itself seedless.

The point here is that just as you get great variety from seedlings, you are not guaranteed of getting an exact clone of the mother vine even if you root cuttings. The latter, however, is still thousands of times more likely to produce vines "true" to the mother vine.

Do not shy away from growing seeds from the grapes you like simply because you probably won't grow an identical grape. Plant the seeds, transplant the seedlings, grow the vines, evaluate the results. If you aren't satisfied, plant some more seeds. Once upon a time someone did that and the result was V. vinifera cv. Merlot. Who knows what you might grow?

• The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture, order a Kindle edition or used copy here through Amazon.com
• Clonal Search Yields New Wine Varietals, from Western Farm Press, demonstrating clonal variation
• Molecular Characterization of a Bud Sport of Pinot Gris Bearing White Berries, abstract from American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, characterizing one sport mutation
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 11th, 2009

It is hard to believe it has been eight years since the guy on the radio said, "Wow, this is weird. A plane has just crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York. No other details are known but we'll keep you posted as we learn them." Sweet Jesus, what a horrible day that turned into.

My friends, we have to remember it. And I mean remember it as it really unfolded, not the way Michael Moore and all the latter-day, Bush-hating revisionists want you to believe it was. Remember the reality, not their propaganda. It was real, a day of disbelief, of dawning realization, of fear and terror - totally surreal as every private and commercial aircraft over and inbound to the United States and Canada was landed and parked somewhere ill-prepared to receive them, their passengers and crews accommodated somehow, and nothing, absolutely nothing flew overhead but emergency and combat aircraft.

On a dime, the world changed. Remember it. Remember the 3,000 victims. Remember the first responders who went bravely into the twin towers and climbed those endless stairs into the arms of the Lord. Remember it vividly and emotionally so that in 50 or 60 years when some hate-mongerer in Tehran or some other backwater of civilization says it didn't happen you can look your great-grandkids in the eye and say with certainty, "Oh yes it did, and I remember it well!"

Keep it with you, securely preserved, as life goes on, as we turn to other, more ordinary things.

Propagating Vines from Grape Seeds, Part 2

My piece two days ago on propagating grape vines from seeds generated a lot of questions. Most revolved around my statement, "You can [plant seeds], but you probably will not get a vine that produces fruit anything like the grapes you got the seed from." There were other issues as well, and I promised I would address them in time, but this was the key topic.

As I explained two days ago, most grapes are "open pollinated," meaning the inflorescence [grape flowers] that developed the grapes was pollinated by what ever pollen was blowing in the wind which could have come from any flowering grapevines near or far away. People are insisting it's "good pollen" because the grapes are all Merlot or Syrah or whatever because they simply don't understand the role of pollen in producing fruit and then in producing seed. A mini biology tutorial is necessary.

Some grape flowers are strictly male or female while others contain both male and female parts. The latter can actually pollinate themselves and often do, but windblown pollen can also slip in there and "do the deed" before the flower's own pollen matures enough to release itself to the whims of gravity and the wind. The female part of the flower is ready to accept any viable grape pollen, and once it does it rapidly begins producing a berry containing one or more seeds (seedless grapes are beyond this discussion, so don't even ask).

The berry (grape), unless somehow mutated, will always be true to the genetic coding in the mother vine and will look, smell and taste like just about every other grape borne by that vine. The pollen that triggered the formation of the berry can be from any other type of grape without affecting the size, shape, color, aroma, or flavor of the newly forming grape in any way. It's legacy, if there is to be one, is strictly confined to the genetic coding of the seeds developing within the individual grape. Each grape's character is solely determined by the genes of the mother vine. The seeds within each grape are determined by the genetic union of the vine contributing the pollen and the vine contributing the ovary. If both come from the same vine, then the seeds will be true (within a natural range of variation) to the single parent.

If you understand the preceding two paragraphs, you should also understand that it is possible for every single grape in a cluster to be pollinated by a different vine. The vines may all be of the same variety or they can be from different varieties or even species. This is not likely, but it is possible, and if it were true then the seeds of each individual grape would contain different genetic coding. If all were extracted, dried, stratified (wintered), and planted and just one from each grape germinated and grew into a vine, each vine and its fruit would be uniquely different.

This is not to say that the fruit would not be good, although we might expect some not to be. It is just that if the mother vine were a Merlot and the pollen came from Merlot, Riesling, Muscat of Hamburg, V. labrusca cv. Concord, V. aestivalis var. lincecumii, and V. monticola vines, the resulting seedlings would be very different and only the Merlot X Merlot should be expected to yield vines with fruit resembling the original mother vine. All the others will be hybrids, some good and some less so.

That's a layman's explanation of a complex subject with a lot of qualifiers left unexplained, but I hope you at least get the general picture. If you do, then you should recognize that planting OP (open pollinated) grape seeds is like rolling dice. You might get some really good vines from your effort but you might get a few you'll want to cull. Don't be afraid to plant the seeds just because the odds of you getting 30 Merlot vines from those 60 Merlot seeds are slim to astronomical. You may get a vine or two that are in fact superior to the vine that gave you the original grapes. It is the crossing of genes by professional and amateur breeders alike that give us new varieties in the first place. So do it, and you have my permission to name any outstanding prodigy after me...or not

Watermelon Rind Pickle Recipe

Okay, okay, I give up. My mentioning of watermelon rind pickles has generated a number of requests for the recipe. It isn't a secret or anything, so I'll gladly share it. Let me just preface the recipe with a couple of remarks. First, don't attempt this if you do not have the canning jars, fresh lids and canning pot for the boiling water bath. Second, thick rinds make better pickles than thin ones, but thickness is relative.

Two pints of watermelon pickles

The pickles above were made with the "Moon & Stars Watermelon" I mentioned in earlier entries. I apologize for not wiping the outside of the jars clean after they were lifted and sat a few moments in the hot bath while I readied a cooling rack, but what's done is done and the slight film does not affect the taste. Every single person who has tasted these pickles has raved about them. They are really good semi-sweet pickles that utilize a huge portion of the melon we almost always throw away. My last melon made 9-1/2 pints; I am down to 6. The pickles are very attractive if a thin layer of pink flesh is left attached.

Preparation

Slice melon rind into 1-inch wide strips and then cut away the hard, green, outter peel and discard. (I sliced with a chef's knife, laid the strips on their side and used a paring knife to separate the peel from the inner rind.) Cut strips into bite-sized pieces. The size depends on the thickness of the rind, but 2/3 to 3/4 inch pieces worked well for me.

I processed half the melon's rind at a time, a little over 2 quarts each batch. This will all depend on the size of your melon, how many bowls and saucepans you have, and how much refrigerator space you have free.

Watermelon Rind Pickles

Preparation Time: 3 days. For each quart of melon pieces you will need:

• 1/4 cup pickling salt
• 1 quart water
• 2 cups granulated sugar, added in stages
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1 medium lemon, thinly sliced
• 2 cinnamon sticks, 3-4 inches long
• 2 very thin strips fresh ginger root, 2 inches x 1/2-inch wide
• 1 teaspoon whole cloves
• 1 teaspoon whole allspice berries

First Day:

• Place rind pieces in large, non-reactive bowl. Dissolve salt in water and pour water over rind, cover and let stand for 4 hours. Drain off brine and rinse rind twice.
• Place rind in large stainless steel or enamel pot. Cover rind with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to low boil, cover and boil gently for 8 -10 minutes -- until just tender and slightly translucent. Drain and return to large, non-reactive bowl.
• Combine half the sugar (set other half aside in air-tight container), vinegar, lemon slices, cinnamon, ginger slices, cloves and allspice in non-reactive saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Pour over rind. Insert a plate into bowl to weigh down rind and keep it submerged. Place in refrigerator for 24 hours.

Second Day:

• Place half the remaining sugar into saucepan and drain liquid from rind over sugar. Bring to a boil while stirring to dissolve sugar, then pour back over rind. Replace plate weight and return to refrigerator an additional 24 hours.

Third Day:

• Before beginning next step, fill canning pot with water to level sufficient to cover jars being used. Place jars in water and put on high heat to bring to a boil. In small saucepan, cover ring caps and lids in water and bring to a boil.
• Place remaining sugar in pot or large saucepan and drain liquid from rind over sugar. Bring to a boil while stirring to dissolve sugar. Add the rind pieces to saucepan and return to a boil. Remove from heat.
• Using tongs or jar grips, remove jars and ring caps and lids. Remove cinnamon sticks from rind liquid and stand one inside each jar; place one slice of ginger in each jar. Remove rind pieces and lemon rings with slotted spoon and pack into jars. Pour liquid over rind to within 1/2 inch of rim. Using wet paper towel, wipe rim clean. Using hot mitts, assemble ring caps and lids and tighten onto jars.
• Place jars in hot bath and return to boil. Process 10 minutes for pint jars, 15 minutes for quart jars. Remove from water bath and place on cooling rack.
• Refrigerate overnight before opening to crisp rinds; keep refrigerated after opening.

• And Our Flag Was Still There..., my simple page for remembering 9-11
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 9th, 2009

I just received the new Fourth Edition of Jon Iverson's Home Winemaking Step by Step. I'll be comparing it over the next few evenings with the July 2000 Third Edition to discern the changes - certainly there were some as this edition is notably larger than the last. Thank you, Jon.

I also received some SB, Gervin and Unican yeasts in the mail from England. It's getting expensive to order them this way. I do wish someone would import and distribute them in the United States.

Dried Cherry Wine

I picked up a pound of bulk dried cherries from Whole Foods. I recall how good the wine was the last time I used dried cherries - took a gold medal as I recall. I don't need another medal, but I sure would like a few bottles of the wine.

Dried Cherry Wine

• 1 lb dried cherries (sweet)
• 1 11-oz. can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice Frozen Concentrate
• 1 lb 10 oz finely granulated sugar (to S.G. of 1.090)
• 1 tsp acid blend acid
• 3/4 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1/4 tsp tannin
• 7 pts water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 pkt Montrachet or Champagne wine yeast

Soak cherries in 2 quarts water for 24 hours. Bring water to a boil, lower heat and simmer 8 minutes. Strain, stir sugar in liquid until dissolved, cover and set aside to cool. Add remaining ingredients except yeast, stir and re-cover. After 12 hours, add activated yeast in a starter solution, re-cover, and stir daily until specific gravity drops to 1.010. Transfer to secondary, attach airlock and ferment to dryness. Rack when fermentation ceases, top up and reattach airlock, Rack, top up and refit airlock every 60 days for 6 months. Stabilize and sweeten to taste, wait additional 3 weeks and rack into bottles. Age another 6-12 months before tasting. [Author's own recipe]

Propagating Vines from Grape Seeds

Shortly after answering one email on propagating grapevines by use of cuttings (in which I discouraged propagation by use of seeds) I received a phone call on that very subject. A very excited novice (his word, not mine) had been given quantities of grapes sufficient to make a gallon of wine each from three different varieties. He wanted to know if he could simply save some of the seeds from each variety and plant these in the spring.

I said, "You can do this, but you probably will not get a vine that produces fruit anything like the grapes you got the seed from. This is because the seeds were almost certainly 'open pollinated,' meaning the inflorescence [grape flowers] that developed the grapes was pollinated by the wind and the pollen could have come from any flowering grapevine within a few feet to a mile away, depending on the wind."

Some years back I received two shipments of Vitis californica from two kindred souls who went to considerable trouble to collect the seeds. After reading the letters accompanying each batch of seeds, I selected one batch over the other because I could only plant so many seeds and this batch seemed more likely to have "true" seeds as the seeds came from vines in "deep woods" in the Russian River Valley.

I wintered the seeds in the refrigerator to simulate winter and in early spring I removed then and planted 30 seeds very carefully in a flat of vermiculite and sand. Eventually, 16 seedlings made it past the first leaf stage. The first leaves presented a variety, but I was more interested in the third and fourth leaves, as these would prove the seedlings sporting them were thriving and would also be closer to what the adult leaves would look like.

I wish I had photographs of those seedlings. There were at least eight different shapes of grape leaves on those seedlings. So much for the isolation of "deep woods," but I had identified three that most likely were closer to true V. californica than any of the others. Unfortunately, the seedlings all died when my wife and I went on a trip and the friend who looked after our plants while we were gone simply never saw them in their flat next to the garage and therefore never watered them.

Still, if you want to try your luck and see what grows, you can collect seeds from any wild or cultivated grape and plant them next year. Wild grape seeds are easier to germinate than V. vinifera or even French-American hybrids. Simply remove the seeds from the grapes you wish to grow and air dry them for a couple of weeks.

Place the dried grape seeds inside a moist paper towel and place the towel with seeds inside a Ziploc freezer bag (you can annotate the bag with the type of grape seeds) and seal it. Place the bag containing the seeds in the refrigerator until spring. This needs to be done because the seeds have to experience a "winter" so they know when it is time to germinate. But do NOT place the seeds in the freezer.

Consult the Farmers Almanac, your county extension agent or otherwise determine when the last frost occurs in your area. About a month before this date, remove the seeds from the refrigerator and plant them in a grid pattern in a nursery flat containing at least two inches of potting mixture. I place the seeds about 1-1/2 to 2 inches apart and then add about 1/2 inch of potting soil to the whole flat, covering the seeds with that much soil. Use a hand mister or refillable spray bottle to slowly moisten the soil. If you have a watering can with a really fine-spray head, you can use it to moisten the soil but you risk digging up the seeds if the spray is not fine and gentle. The soil should be damp but not soggy all the way down and the flat has to drain evenly and without restriction. Place the flat in an area that gets natural sunlight most of the day or, if inside, is exposed to a grow light. The area should be approximately 70 degrees during the day and no cooler than 50 degrees at night. If placed outside, be sure to bring them in just before any cold spell arrives.

Seedlings pushing and sporting 2nd leaf set

The seeds should germinate in about 30 to 40 days, but don't expect them all to sprout. Half would be a good number. There are techniques you could employ to raise the percentage, but you can research this yourself.

Seedlings inside and growing out of grow tubes

When the seedlings have fully developed their second set of leaves, transplant each seedling into a separate pot. By the time they reach a height of 8 to 12 inches, all danger of a late frost should be past and you can plant them permanently in the prepared ground where you want them to grow. Give them at least a month to get established and then fertilize as needed to promote healthy growth. I place a 30- to 36-inch grow tube around each vine and leave it in place until each vine grows past the top.

Vines grown from seed tend to require an extra year or two to establish a healthy root system. Small doses of fertilizer will do them more good that twice-yearly larger doses. Also, after they have been in the ground about three months a quarter- to half-inch surface application of compost in a 12- to 18-inch radius around the vines will greatly assist them in developing winter roots. This, in turn, will help them make a vigorous start the following spring.

• Dried Cherry Wine, original recipe on my site
• Growing Grapes from Seeds, a thread in the Grape Vine Blog
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 7th, 2009

Today, the first Monday in September - not May 1st - is Labor Day in the United States, a holiday with origins in Canada and codified following the deadly Pullman Strike in 1894. This holiday is the last chance for a summer outing for many - especially families with school-age children - and commercially is the occasion for final "back to school" sales.

Labor Day formally honors the strength and spitit of trade and labor organizations. That is the serious and reflective side of the holiday. But in this country, it also marks the beginning of college and professional football seasons (and I am talking about American football, not rugby or soccer). And therein lies its hidden charm for millions of fans of the game. I don't wish to belabor (pun intended) this point or debase the seriousness of the holiday, but I do have my favorite college and professional teams.

Dragonfruit Wine

Several years ago I received three requests for a Dragonfruit Wine recipe. I posted one and since then have only received 8 emails referencing it, but 6 have come in the past two weeks from one gentleman. Some of his questions are about alternative ingredients because of his inability to find winemaking supplies in the Philippines, so if anyone knows of a source of supplies there please write to me so I can pass it on. Other questions cover basic steps and processes, which are well enumerated on my site. I don't know if he simply hasn't read them, they aren't clear or I have left aspects out, but I will repost the recipe here and explain it in detail. I simply cannot exchange 9 emails explaining each recipe, so perhaps if I do the job well here I can avoid similar exchanges. It isn't that I don't want to communicate with you, but I have very little free time to answer email and I do want you all to learn how to do this.

The dragonfruit, or dragon fruit if you prefer, is the name variously given to Hylocereus undatus and Selenicereus megalanthus. It is also known as the red piyata, thang loy, dragon pearl fruit, strawberry pear, cactus fruit, and, in the case of Selenicereus, yellow pitaya. They are a type of pipe-organ cactus, although their trunk and branch segments are not round. These cacti can form very dense thickets and are cultivated for barriers, for their large, white or yellowish-white, strongly scented flowers, and for their spineless, very tasty fruit.

Dragonfruit (Hylocereus undatus)

The flesh of the Selenicereusmay be white or various shades of red whereas that of Selenicereus is white only, but their fruit are both sweeter and smaller. Numerous small seeds are embedded in the flesh and may be eaten. The fruit of Selenicereus has many fine spines which rub of upon ripening. Selenicereus fruits have many scales. They contain glucose, fructose, and sucrose sugars and are eaten raw, made into refreshing drinks, or dried for later use. Of course, they also make a very good wine, for which they may be washed and chopped with their outer skin intact or peeled to the white pulp and then chopped. Chopping the whole fruit produces a wine with a slightly pinkish tint. The recipe below makes one gallon of wine.

Dragonfruit Wine Recipe

• 6 lbs ripe dragonfruit fruit
• 2 lb sugar
• 6 pts water
• 2 crushed Campden tablet
• 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend (or juice of two lemons)
• 1 tsp dry pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient (or DAP -- diammonium phosphate)
• 1 pkt wine yeast (Red Star Pasteur Champagne works well)

Put the water on to boil. Meanwhile, carefully trim the greenery from the fruit, wash the fruit well, and chop it coarsely. Put chopped fruit, acid blend, sugar and yeast nutrient into a primary container. When the water boils, pour it into the primary and stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Cover the primary with a sanitized cloth (I use muslin, but a very clean towel will do) and set aside to cool.

When the water is at room temperature, add a finely crushed and dissolved (in 1/4 cup of water) Campden tablet (or 1/16 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite) and stir; this will kill any spoilage bacteria in the must that survived the boiling water. Re-cover the primary and set aside for 6-8 hours. Add the pectic enzyme, stir, re-cover the primary, and set aside another 6-8 hours; this will help break down the fruit so the sugars, flavors and other constituents are more easily extracted by the yeast. Add the yeast, activated several hours earlier in a yeast starter solution. You can use baker's yeast, but it might stop fermenting before all the sugar has been converted into alcohol, leaving a sweeter wine than desired, and/or it might produce slightly yeasty off-flavors (although some people actually like this).

Stir the must at least twice daily for 7 days. The fruit will rise to the top, pushed there by the CO₂ created by the yeast. You must stir the must at least twice a day to keep the fruit moist, the yeast working on all surfaces, and prevent the tops of the elevated fruit from drying out and sporting mold.

After 7 days, strain the must through a nylon straining bag and gently but with slightly increasing firmness squeeze the trapped juice out of fruit pulp. Homebrew shops sell nylon grain bags for brewing that winemakers use for straining, but any nylon bag will do - paint stores sell nylon mesh bags for straining paint, but the legs of ladies' pantyhose work just fine. Strain into another sanitized primary or into a large funnel directly into a sanitized secondary (gallon jug). If you strain into a primary, transfer all liquid immediately into the secondary. Top up with good water (distilled or boiled) if required and attach an airlock.

Wait a month and then rack, top up and refit the airlock every 30 days until the wine clears and no new sediments form during a 30-day period. Stabilize the wine with 1/2 teaspoon of potassium sorbate and one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet [or 1/16 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite] to prevent renewed fermentation later. These chemicals (and diammonium phosphate) can be obtained from any homebrew shop or good chemist and they really are essential if you are going to sweeten the wine. Sweeten the wine with simple syrup made with two parts sugar dissolved into one part of boiling water. Add two tablespoons at a time and stir until it suits your taste. Wait 3 weeks to make sure fermentation does not restart (the potassium sorbate might be old and not work) and then rack the wine into bottles and cork them. Like most wines, it should improve with age. [Author's own recipe]

• Labor Day, history of the holiday in Wikipedia
• Dragonfruit Wine, the original recipe on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 5th, 2009

I mentioned earlier (August 23rd) I had made watermelon rind pickles from a large "Moon and Stars" watermelon and that they were quite good. After prodding, I typed up the recipe for the pickles and sent it to those who asked for it as well as a few who didn't, including my uncle in Florida. He replied that he has never acquired a taste for watermelon rind pickles. My immediate reaction was (sorry Gordon) "Duh!"

With few exceptions it is the pickling brine, not the thing being pickled, that imparts the taste. If you don't like dill pickles, try non-dill Kosher. If you don't like sour pickles, try sweet ones. I like dill pickles, but not those made with too much vinegar. The point is, it isn't the watermelon rind one acquires a taste for, but the type of brine used. My recipe makes semi-sweet pickles and they are quite good.

If these thoughts tie into my blog entry in any way it is that they illustrate faulty thinking. In this case it simply restricts my uncle's potential enjoyment of what I consider to be a very good pickle. In other cases, like the one I will discuss next, it can create anxiety where none is warranted.

Potassium Sorbate Shelf Life

Sorbic acid is used in conjunction with sulfite to render a sweet wine biologically stable so it does start fermenting again in the bottle, an event that could have explosive consequences. Sorbic acid is stored in a dry form called potassium sorbate that produces sorbic acid when added to wine. A forum reader asked about the shelf life of the acid. "If it does expire when dry, it should also expire in solution which makes me wonder if my sweetened wines are ticking timebombs for refermentation once the sorbate has expired." This worry was compounded when the reader discovered that 90% of sorbic acid in solution decomposes within a year. This was, I thought, a very good question, but one based on faulty understanding.

I replied that sorbic acid in wine effectively neuters any residual yeast, leaving them incapable of reproducing. Within a month or two, most will simply die of old age. Even if some of them somehow manage to outlive the half-life of the sorbic acid, they are physiologically incapable of reproducing and kindling a wholesale refermentation. If a winemaker uses appropriate doses of potassium sorbate in conjunction with potassium metabisulfite, the wine will become biologically stable and the winemaker can sleep well without worrying about ticking timebombs.

As for whether potassium sorbate has a shelf life, the answer is most decidedly yes. It is considered effective for up to three years from date of manufacture if immediately and properly stored. However, once the sealed vial, jar or container is opened, it has a shelf life of about six months - less if exposed long to high humidity.

If you are new to winemaking, you might wonder why I mentioned using sorbic acid in conjunction with sulfite. The reason is that if a wine that has been treated with sorbic acid later undergoes malolactic fermentation, it will produce a byproduct compound called 2-ethoxy-hexa-3,5-diene that produces an offensive odor reminiscent of geraniums; an aseptic dose of sulfite will kill any malolactic bacteria present and prevent the wine from undergoing malo-lactic fermentation in the bottle. Sulfites are added in the form of crushed Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite.

Bitter Flower Wines

A reader made both elderflower and honeysuckle-rose petal wines. He claimed, "The bouquet of each is great, the color and mouthfeel good. Only one thing mars the taste...." He then describes an herbal bitterness that hasn't gone away after a year in storage. He said he was careful to remove all greenery beforehand and used boiling water poured over the flower petals as both an extraction means and a sanitizing agent. He naturally wondered if that could have been the source of the herbal bitterness and, if so, there might be a better technique for extracting color and aroma from flower petals?

I replied that I use the boiling water extraction method and do not get a bitterness. However, once I used about twice the recommended amount of elderflowers that resulted in a bitter wine. More is not always better. I asked if this might be his problem too? I then recounted that solved the problem by making a gallon of Niagara wine using Welch's white grape juice frozen concentrate and then blending the two wines. I did not simply mix them one to one, but actually did taste trials to see when the bitterness disappeared. This experience led me to devise the following recipe.

Elderflower Wine

The white or whitish-yellow flowers of all species and varieties of elder are pleasantly fragrant and impart a muscat flavor to wines, ciders and vinegars. They are also edible and can be fried in a fritter or beer batter, added to pancake or muffin batter, cooked into pies and tarts, and added fresh to salads or many other food dishes. Obviously, they can also be used to flavor wines.

Elderflower wine is an acquired taste and not appreciated by everyone. Too many flowers will yield a bitter, almost undrinkable wine, so do not exceed the amount specified below. I have made several batches of elderflower wine using different recipes, but the recipe below yields a fuller-bodied wine and is more drinkable to a wider population than others I've made because of the addition of the grape juice concentrate.

• 1 pt fresh elderflowers
• 12 oz can frozen white grape juice concentrate
• 1 lb 12 oz granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
• 2 finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet
• 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate
• 7 pts and 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Red Star Pasteur Champagne wine yeast

Thaw grape juice concentrate and then put water on to boil. While water rises to a boil, wash flower heads to remove insects and road dust and then separate flowers from stalks. Put flowers, sugar and grape juice concentrate in a primary container and pour boiling water over them. Stir well to dissolve sugar, cover with sterile cloth, and set aside several hours until cool. Add acid blend, one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and yeast nutrient, stirring briefly. Recover with cloth and set aside 12 hours. Add activated yeast in a starter solution. Ferment 5-6 days, strain off flowers, pour liquid into secondary, and attach an airlock. Rack when specific gravity is at or below 1.005, top up and refit airlock. Set aside additional three months, rack, stabilize with potassium sorbate and remaining finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, and sweeten to taste. Wait three weeks to ensure stillness and rack into bottles. Age six months before tasting. [Author's own recipe]

• Sorbate Shelf Life, original thread on WinePress.us
• Elderflower Wines, on my site, the second recipe is an earlier variant of the one above
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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September 1st, 2009

There are six deer in my back property as I write - two bucks, three does and a fawn - eating the grass where the sprinklers overshoot the fence. They are in the back acreage, not in the yard itself where my grapevines are planted. They used to jump the six-foot chain link fence and eat the grapes, but I now have mustang grapes growing on the fence and they don't jump over it anymore. An old-timer told me that one - deer won't jump a fence higher than themselves that they can't see through, so let some wild grapes grow on the fence and they'll stay out. It worked. They haven't jumped the fence in the three years since the mustangs filled out the fence.

I wonder if they would be so brave if they knew what was going on inside the house. Last night I took 3.8 pounds of precooked venison neck meat out of the freezer and am in the process of making venison chili. It smells wonderful, so I know it will taste great. The neck was heavily rubbed with Cajun spices, wrapped in foil and cooked in a roasting pan at 200 degrees F. overnight. What didn't fall off the bones was pulled off with a fork so it is mostly shredded, just the way I like it in my chili.

Hmmm, another doe and fawn have joined the herd. The doe jumped the back cattle fence out and the fawn sort of stepped through it. One of the bucks has ten points. The other has six. My dog is sleeping through it all but will be up half the night barking at things that like the dark. What a job...!

Sugar in Recipes

A winemaker recently complained in a forum that many recipes call for way too much sugar. He gave as an example a blueberry wine recipe that called for 2.5 lbs per gallon. He starting with 2 pounds, and when he checked his specific gravity it was 1.115! My reply really was a quick, off-the-cuff recitation of points I have made many times but new-comers fail to read because they don't search for past entries on a given subject. Because I penned a hasty reply, it was incomplete. Below is my reply. Please note that the writer was actually asking about elderberry wines and mentioned the blueberry experience to punctuate a point about too much sugar in recipes.

"The question of sugar amounts called for in recipes has been addressed many times. I cannot speak for others, but I usually top up with plain old water. If I rack a wine 3-4 times (average for wines made from fresh fruit), I'm going to lose anywhere from a cup to a pint per gallon the first racking (possibly more if the fruit totally disintegrates) and a half-cup to a cup each racking thereafter. Since most of my wines are intended to be table wines, I want to start at around 15-16% PA so that I end up with 12-13.5% alcohol after dilution from topping up.

But fruit do contribute sugar to the must. It just may not be as much as you thought. Blueberries are typically 7-7.5% natural sugar (although superior blueberries picked just right can go as high as 13%), so crushing 100 pounds of blueberries typically only provides about 7-7.5 pounds of sugar. Go to Sugars in Winemaking (see link below) and scroll down to the table, "Sugar Content of Selected Fruit and Fruit Juices, 100 Grams". I don't have the data on elderberries, but [another member] might."

What I failed to question was his s.g. reading of 1.115 for the blueberry must. It is roughly 0.010 points higher than it should have been. Assuming his hydrometer was correctly calibrated and temperature adjusted, either his blueberries were exceptionally sweet or his must had a lot of minute suspended pulp in it. The former is possible for home grown berries picked just as the firmness in the berry relaxes, while the latter is not at all unusual under any circumstances - but especially if the berries were frozen.

Many of my older, "adapted" recipes call for more sugar than even the above can justify ("adapted" recipes originated with another winemaker and was "tweaked" by me). There are several possible reasons for this. I cannot speak to the motives of other winemakers but can often infer a rule or inclination from the body of their work. I think many of the "old school" winemakers used 3 and even 4 pounds of sugar per gallon to ensure the wine was very sweet. This is both a matter of preference for sweet wines on the part of the original winemaker and recognition that sugar is a natural preservative. Then again some recipes are for Imperial gallons, which are roughly 1/5th larger than American gallons (while American gallons are about 1/6th smaller than Imperial gallons). I usually adjusted these amounts to allow for the difference, but sometimes I missed it. To adjust, add 20% to go from American to Imperial gallons and subtract 16.7% when down-sizing from Imperial to American gallons.

Brown Red Wines

A reader wrote to ask why a number of red wines would start browning prematurely. By prematurely, he meant in 2-3 years. These are French-American hybrids fermented with minimal sulfites and without cooling jackets, barrel aged for less than a year, and bottled without sparging with inert gas. Three possibilities come immediately to mind.

The first is obvious - oxidation. This would not be too surprising given the low sulfite additions and possible warm fermentation temperatures. Also, barrel aging can be a double-edged sword. The edge cuts as intended if sharp and used properly - in this case the barrels are properly maintained between usage and kept topped up when in use. If either one is lacking, the wine suffers. Finally, while not sparging your bottles is probably more common than using a gas, it is just one more thing that can contribute to excessive uptake of O₂.

The second thought was that excessive phenolic compounds could contribute to premature browning. Red French-American hybrids can be rich in phenols, even richer if not destemmed during crushing and if fermented too long on the skins, pulp and seeds. Oak barrels also contribute phenolic compounds, but good barrel management should negate any deleterious effects. For example, wines are not held nearly as long in new barrels as they are the second or third times the barrels are used.

A third possibility is that a very acidic wine can brown if the acid is neutralized with a base rather than manipulated to remove excess acid as tartrate or malate.

There are other possibilities, but they were not suggested by the limited conditions mentioned by the writer. Also, certain possibilities exist for white wines that don't apply to reds; the reverse is also true. More information would be helpful and may be offered, but the above are the common reasons for browning of reds.

• Exceptional Elderberries?, Not much sugar needed, original thread at WinePress.us
• Sugars in Winemaking, on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 29th, 2009

The media knows no restraint. There was WAAAAAY too much coverage of Michael Jackson's death, and now there is too much Ted Kennedy. The man served Massachusetts for the better part of five decades and he certainly suited his state's liberalism, but he, more than anyone, proved that if you are rich enough and have the right last name you can get away with manslaughter. I hold no esteem for a man who would swim to safety while leaving a woman to drown in his car. I do believe he lived his life thereafter trying to overcome this singularly profound failing in character, but my personal measure of honor required that he step down as Senator. If you strongly disapprove of my litmus test for honor and character, then we can either agree to disagree or you have my blessing to navigate elsewhere. I will not hold it against you.

If you're sticking around, I hope you enjoy today's WineBlog entry. The first topic is dear to my heart, literally. The second is an examination of possible ways to make a specific wine.

Chocolate and Red Wine for a Healthier Heart?

In an 8-year post incident study of 1169 non-diabetic heart attack patients, Swedish doctors have found that survivors who eat chocolate two or more times per week reduce their risk of dying from heart disease about threefold compared to those who never eat chocolate. Consuming chocolate less frequently confers less protection, but less is better than none.

Antioxidants in cocoa are thought to be responsible for these and other beneficial results of consuming chocolate, which include a reduction in blood pressure. Antioxidants are compounds that offer protection against free radicals, cumulative molecules believed to contribute to heart disease, cancers and aging.

With evidence mounting that both chocolate and red wine can contribute to a healthier and longer life, the golden years are looking decidedly brighter. While I am not suggesting that chocolate should replace tofu in your diet, I have to admit it appears that a healthy diet can allow a few indulgences previously discouraged. But you must remember one important thing; chocolate consumption and weight management are almost always in conflict. Perhaps a little longer exercise session after chocolate consumption would balance things out. I don't know. Ask your dietitian.

Cranberry-Raspberry Wine

I posted a tweet last night that I was drinking my last bottle of 2006 Cranberry-Raspberry Wine (with a tiny splash of Elderberry added for color), and noted it was a very good wine. In response I received two messages almost immediately requesting the recipe.

I have previously posted two recipes for cranberry-raspberry wines. The first was made with a commercial, frozen "cranraspberry" concentrate and the second, a social wine, was made with cranberry juice and raspberry mix syrup (see recipe links following this entry). This recipe mimics neither of those recipes, but rather uses whole raspberries and whole cranberries.

We are approaching the end of the red raspberry season, so get out there and pick some, cull and weigh them, and set aside a pound for the wine. Put these in a freezer-grade Ziploc bag and freeze them. I had to buy my fresh raspberries (I found a great bargain at Costco and had plenty to eat and enough to freeze). You can also buy the frozen berries in most supermarkets.

If you can still find elderberries, get out there and pick some. You won't need many for the wine - a quarter of a cup will do. Put these too in a freezer-grade Ziploc and store for future use (I put mine in a snack-sized Ziploc and put that inside the quart-sized bag of red raspberries. If you cannot get fresh elderberries you can use a tablespoon of dried elderberries, available in most homebrew shops.

Cranberries are another matter. If you are a purist in the Great North and are blessed to know of a stand of highbush cranberries, then go forth at the appropriate time (they DO taste better in late winter or early spring, even though the odds of them avoiding being eaten between October and March are slim) and harvest some. Taste them. Some have to be cooked to become enjoyably edible. If yours require that extra step, you're on your own as I have no experience cooking them before making wine.

Most of us do not live in wild cranberry country. We have several options, but three are most appropriate. (1) Look for commercial fresh cranberries around Thanksgiving and buy a few bags. (2) Look for frozen bags of cranberries at other times and get what you need. (3) Buy fresh cranberries over the internet and have them shipped to your home.

Why, you might ask, would anyone select the third option above? Certainly they are going to be super expensive, with shipping and all. The answer is two-fold. First, they are not all that expensive (certainly cheaper than a day at Sea World). Second, the best cranberries I've ever eaten and made wine with were purchased this way after an internet acquaintance swore the flavor of these berries were far superior to any he had tasted. Having said that, I cannot steer you to the place I bought mine. That was four years ago and I lost the address. But if you join rec.crafts.winemaking and ask about buying fabulous tasting cranberries, someone will steer you in the right direction.

Finally, you can get canned whole cranberries pack in water year-round in just about any supermarket. Read the label carefully before you buy them. You do not want to buy any containing potassium sorbate (or sorbic acid) or sodium benzoate (or benzoic acid). I have never made wine with canned cranberries but know people who have and it is not rocket science. As for how many cans to buy, if the can does not list the weight of the contents (don't confuse "oz. wt." with "fl. oz."), just drain and weigh them, but keep the water they are packed in to use in making the wine.

Some may wonder why I used a white grape juice frozen concentrate and then added elderberries for color when I could have used red grape frozen concentrate and cinched the color without the elderberries. There are three reasons. First, the white grape juice does not compete with the flavors of the cranberry and raspberries to the extent red grape concentrate would. Second, I wanted to add the elderberries anyway for their contributions in flavor complexity and (third) tannin.

So, you can see that there are many ways to assemble the must for this wine. I'm simply going to tell you how I did it. Use your own circumstances to your advantage and make adjustments as required.

• 2 lbs 4 oz fresh (or thawed) whole cranberries
• 1 lb fresh (or thawed) whole raspberries
• 1/4 c fresh (or thawed) elderberries
• 11-1/2-oz can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1 lb 12 oz finely granulated sugar
• Water to achieve 1 fluid gallon
• 3/4 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 sachet wine yeast (I used Pasteur Champagne)

Wash the cranberries and cull out unsound or unripe berries. Put the water on to boil. Meanwhile, coarsely chop the cranberries and put in primary with raspberries and elderberries. Use rubber-gloved hands to mash raspberries and elderberries. Pour sugar over fruit and boiling water over all. Cover with sanitized muslin cloth. When cooled to room temperature, add thawed grape concentrate, pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient. Stir, re-cover and set aside for 12 hours. Add activated yeast in starter solution, re-cover and stir daily. After 10-14 days of fermentation, pour through a fine-mesh nylon straining bag, squeeze gently to extract all juices without exuding raspberry pulp, transfer to secondary, and fit airlock. Rack after 30 days, top up, refit airlock, and ferment to dryness. Rack again after 30 days, add 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate and 1 finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and stir to integrate. After 30 days, may sweeten to s.g. 1.002-1.004. When wine is brilliantly clear, rack into bottles and age at least 9 months before sampling. [Author's own recipe]

• Chocolate Consumption and Mortality Following a First Acute Myocardial Infarction: the Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Program, in Journal of Internal Medicine, Vol 266, No, 3, pp 248-257
• Cranberry-Raspberry Wine, recipe on my site
• Cranberry-Raspberry Social Wine, low alcohol sipping wine
• Highbush Cranberries, my recipe for the wild berry wine
• rec.crafts.winemaking, one of the best use groups for winemakers anywhere
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 23rd, 2009

I want to thank all of you who are following me on Twitter. However, please understand that I do not visit the site every day, so tweeted questions may not get answered promptly if at all -- address it to me if you intend that I see it. My Twitter handle is jackkellerwine.

The "Moon and Stars" heirloom watermelon wine did not make it. I mentioned back on August 16th that there were two ways to approach making a wine if the melon's flavor were good enough. It was. I tried the first method, but the juice had spoiled by the third day and I dumped it. I did not use Montrachet yeast (which I usually do with melon wines) but should have. But there was melon left over to eat (about a quarter of it) and I also made watermelon rind pickles that are quite good.

Why Green Tomato Wine?

I've received some really strange communications regarding the Green Tomato Wine in my last WineBlog entry. Lisa, unless you have tasted it, "Yuck!" is an entirely tasteless (pun intended) response. To those who asked why even make it, I have two very good answers.

The first reason is taste. It just so happens it has a unique taste, and if the wine is well- made the taste is very, very enjoyable. Red tomato wine usually has an aroma of tomatoes and the taste usually suggest its origins, but green tomato wine is less obvious. And taste-wise, you would never know what it is unless it was made poorly. I received two emails claiming to have made it before with undrinkable consequences. I'm not saying this is a bulletproof wine, but mine was good.

The second reason, frankly, is to utilize what the Good Lord has provided us while minimizing waste. The first time I made green tomato wine was when I had a huge autumn crop on the plants and an early norther had dropped down from Canada and marched to within a couple hundred miles of us without slowing. Knowing all my tomatoes would be frozen by morning, I went out and harvested almost 90 pounds of green tomatoes. That night I started four 5-gallon batches of green tomato wine while my wife made a green tomato hash casserole for dinner and then we canned many jars of green tomato salsa, stewed green tomatoes, green tomato chow-chow, green tomato chutney, green tomato relish, and green tomato and onion pickles.

We canned all night, but if it weren't for a disc I had bought called Easy Chef's One Million Recipes that contained 308 green tomato recipes, we'd have made the four batches of wine (I only had 4 empty carboys at the time) and the remaining 28 pounds of tomatoes would have been largely wasted. I made two trips to our Super Wal-Mart during the night for cabbage, onions, bell peppers, jalapenos, pickling salt, pickling spices, etc., but it was well worth the time and effort. There is a lot you can do with green tomatoes if you embrace the motto "waste not, want not."

Hubbard Squash Wine

When a kind neighbor gave us several Hubbard squashes we were at first stymied. These suckers can be huge and a couple of them were. My wife made two pies when I told her they would be indistinguishable from pumpkin if she spiced them accordingly. She did and our guests thought they were pumpkin pies. She also baked some with brown sugar and spices like you would sweet potatoes, with marshmallows on top. Tasted close to sweet potatoes, but buttercup squash is a closer substitute. I have never seen a recipe specifically for Hubbard squash wine, but we had too many squashes and so I thought I should try it.

Both Leo Zanelli and Terry Garey have recipes for squash wines and I have made both pumpkin and sweet potato wines, so I sort of did a blending of them all. The trick to making a good pumpkin wine is to use small pie pumpkins, so I thought this might also work with the Hubbards. I selected the smallest survivors and peeled, cleaned and grated just over 5 pounds of yellow meat.

Hubbard Squash Wine

• 5 lbs peeled and cleaned squash, grated
• 2 lbs Demerara (or Turbinado) sugar
• 11-oz can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1 tsp finely diced fresh ginger
• zest and juice of 3 Valencia oranges
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 3 3-inch cinnamon sticks
• 6 whole cloves
• 1/8 tsp grape tannin
• Water to one gallon
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
• Champagne wine yeast

Put water on to boil. Meanwhile, peel squash, remove seeds and grate with food processor. Put squash, sugar and juice of citrus fruit in primary. Combine zests and spices in jelly bag, tie closed, and place in primary. Pour water over ingredients in primary. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Cover primary and allow to cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, thaw grape concentrate. Then must is cool add grape concentrate, yeast nutrient and then stir briefly. Add activated yeast in starter solution and recover the primary. When fermentation is vigorous, ferment three days, stirring daily. Remove spices and strain liquid into secondary, fit airlock and ferment 30 days. Rack, top up and refit airlock. After 60 days, stabilize with 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate and one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, rack again, top up, and refit airlock. After additional 60 days, sweeten to taste if desired and rack into bottles. Allow to age one year; two is better. [Author's own recipe]

This was a marvelous golden-white wine that aged wonderfully. If you cannot get the smaller, more tender Hubbards, use what you have but combine half-and-half with the grated flesh of one or two small pie pumpkins.

• Squash Wines, two recipes on my site
• Pumpkin Wine, on my sire
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 21st, 2009

One never knows what the mail will bring. I've been expecting some meds I ordered from my HMO's on-line pharmacy, so I was surprised when it appeared they had arrived packaged differently than in the past. Upon opening the large reinforced envelope, I discovered several containers of various herbs, plus a letter. A woman in Santa Barbara, California had sent me quantities of damiana leaf, angelica root, dandelion root, sarsaparilla leaf, and a blend of three kinds of anise. She said she hopes I can find a use for them. She makes tea, liqueur, and carbonated beverages from them but had never considered wine until she started exploring my website. She figures if anyone can make wine with any of them, it would be me. I'm flattered and will have to do some experimenting. Thank you, Angie.

In another large, stiffened envelope I was sent several pressed flowers identified as Sundial Lupine (Lupinus perennis) and asked if these were okay to make wine with. I have previously written about these and other Lupines (including the Texas Bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis but cannot find the passage so perhaps it was on a forum.

There are a few hundred species of the genus Lupinus. Only a few natives and a few cultivated hybrids are edible, although it is the beans, not the flowers, that are consumed. The overwhelming majority found in the wild are not. They contain two toxic alkaloids, lupinine and sparteine, which attack the nervous systems of humans and grazing livestock. At least three Mediterranean species contain only minute levels of the toxins and are grown for livestock and poultry feed. I am not familiar enough with the species that are edible to trust my health to chance, especially when the odds are against guessing correctly.

Updating Great Uncle Paul's Green Tomato Wine

An emailer wrote, "I got started making wine by discovering an old recipe for Green Tomato Wine from my great uncle Paul...and I was wondering if you could help me adjust uncle Paul's recipe so I can make it safely but keep its great flavor. Here is the old recipe verbatim:

• 6 lbs green tomatoes
• 6 lbs sugar
• 2 lbs raisins
• 2 large oranges
• 1 gallon water
• yeast"

The writer does a good job of analyzing the recipe, judging that it makes 2-3 gallons, the sugar is excessive, the raisins are for body, etc. "Basically I would like to modify this to a workable 1 gallon recipe and none of the green tomato recipes I have found seem to be sufficient. Any advice you could offer would be a great help."

I compared this one with C. J. J. Berry's recipe, which I adapted and posted on my site and the ingredients repeated here:

• 3 lbs fresh green tomatoes
• 1 qt balm leaves, including stalks
• 1 lb raisins (or sultanas or currants)
• 1 lb maize, barley or wheat
• 2-1/2 lbs granulated sugar
• 3-1/2 qts water
• 2 lemons or oranges
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1/8 tsp grape tannin
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1 pkg Champagne or Montrachet yeast

Berry did some very insightful things in this recipe, weaving flavors and body while finding balance in unlikely ways. It has more finesse than Great Uncle Paul's recipe, but I think Great Uncle Paul's recipe has great character as well as the obvious essential core ingredients. The question now is how to scale it to a gallon.

If we compare the two recipes, we can see that we need to cut the tomatoes and raisins by half. We can cut the sugar by a third and still make a potent wine as the raisins are 65% sugar, but we should keep the oranges. We will then bring the recipe "up to date." It should look like this:

• 3 lbs green tomatoes
• 2 lbs sugar
• 1 lbs raisins
• 2 large oranges
• 1 Campden tablet
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• water to make up 1 gallon
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Champagne yeast"

Bring 1 quart water to boil and pour over raisins and let soak about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, chop tomatoes and thinly peel oranges (orange portion only, no pith). Drain and chop the raisins, then combine them, the chopped tomatoes and the orange peel in nylon straining bag. Tie and place in primary. Add sugar and 3 to 3-1/2 quarts boiling water and stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover and allow to cool. Add finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and juice of the two oranges. Wait 12 hours and add yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme, stirring to mix. Wait additional 12 hours and add activated yeast in a starter solution. Cover and gently squeeze bag 2-3 times a day. When vigorous fermentation subsides, remove bag and drip drain, then squeeze well but not too hard. Pour all liquid into secondary and top up with water if required to within 2-1/2 inches of airlock. Rack after 3 weeks, then again every month until wine clears and no additional deposits form during two-week period. Bottle and allow to age 6-9 months. [Adapted by author from Great Uncle Paul's Green Tomato Wine recipe]

How Much Wine Do My Recipes Make?

I am asked this question all the time, although it really baffles me sometimes. I mean, some recipes say to use a specific herb or flower, add sugar and other dry ingredients, and then add from 7-1/2 pints to a gallon of water. Since the herbs contain no juice or other liquid, it shouldn't be difficult to conclude that the recipe makes about a gallon of wine. I say about because sugar has a volume, some liquid is lost as sugar is converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide (a gas), and different yeast's lees compact differently -- meaning that you lose more wine with some lees than others when you rack. However, if you top up as instructed, you should always end up with a gallon.

So, as to the question of how much wine do my recipes make, unless they specifically cite another volume, all the recipes on my site are for one U.S. gallon batches. There are several reasons for this:

• I am constantly experimenting with new wines or improving old ones, with approximately 22-30 batches going at all times. One-gallon jugs take far less room than larger carboys.
• One-gallon batches are more economical to gamble with, especially when some of the ingredients have to be shipped refrigerated and are therefore quite expensive to me. No one pays me to do this, so if I decide to try cloudberry wine and have to import cloudberries from Finland, I have to suffer the cost. Devising a recipe is therefore a gamble (it might not work) and I try to keep the amount gambled at a minimum.
• It is less painful to dump out a 1-gallon batch that didn't work out than a 5- or 6-gallon one, and I have dumped out a few.
• When they do work out, most wines have to be aged for 6 months to a year, and 5 bottles take less room to store during aging than 25 or 30.
• For people who want to make larger batches, all they have to do is multiply the ingredients (except yeast) by the number of gallons desired. This is far easier than trying to adjust a 5-gallon recipe to 3 gallons, for example.

So, if you wanted to make a 6-gallon batch of a particular wine, just multiply the ingredients by 6, except use two packets of yeast instead of one (each sachet of yeast is usually enough to start a batch of 1 to 5 gallons in volume).

Some recipes initially make a little more than a gallon (and I mean an American gallon or 3.7854 liters). I usually say to crush the fruit, add the sugar and other ingredients, and then add water to make one gallon. Many people mistakenly read this as adding one gallon of water. If you do this, you'll have a problem. Obviously, when juice is extracted from the fruit and sugar is dissolved, if you add a gallon of water you're going to end up with more than a U.S. gallon.

Sometimes I say to crush the fruit, extract the juice, add the sugar and perhaps a grape concentrate (for body), and then add a specific amount of water (e.g. 6 1/2 pints). I say this because that is what I did, but your fruit might be larger and contain more juice than mine, and when that occurs you end up with more than a gallon.

In either case, when you transfer from primary to secondary it would be nice if you had a jug that would take all of the liquid without overflowing and with exactly an inch of ullage (airspace between the top of the wine and the bottom of the bung) -- a 4-liter, 4.5-liter (British gallon), or 5-liter jug, for example, might work perfectly. It would behoove you to collect a few of these over-sized jugs for situations like this.

• Tomato Wines, see the second recipe, on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 16th, 2009

I'm happy to report that my pineapple-coconut juice mead (see WineBlog entry of August 1st) has just about completed its fermentation. After its extreme foam generation in primary, I transferred it to a 4-liter secondary only after the foam subsided to a thin head. Even with about 4 inches of headspace, it pushed foam into the airlock for about two days. After cleaning the airlock about 6 times, it finally calmed down and slowly finished fermenting over the past week. The pressure in the airlock is still positive, but specific gravity is just below 1.000 and I watched it for 12 minutes and it did not push a bubble. I think it is done or very close to it.

Now the waiting game. The must is very milky and I really do not know if it will clear. But I am patient and have a few tricks up my sleeve if it is stubborn. But, in the end, if it doesn't clear then I will have a milky mead. We shall see.

Moon and Stars Watermelon Wine

A friend gave me a 32-pound "Moon and Stars" watermelon, a dark green rind with small, bright yellow spots (the stars) scattered over it and a 4-inch circular yellow spot (the moon) atop it. The bottom is yellowish-green. I am feeding a yeast starter in orange juice before I cut it. When the starter is at least 24 hours old I will open the melon. The piece I ate (from another melon off the same vine) was very sweet and just on the pinkish side of brilliantly red. If this one tastes as good, there are two ways I could approach this.

The first is to press a gallon of juice, adjust gravity with simple syrup, stir in yeast nutrients and acid blend, and immediately inoculate with the starter. Both the starter and the juice will be room temperature and fermentation should take off very quickly. The goal would be to get the alcohol up to 10% quickly, and only then will I worry about sulfites and tannin (I like a little in all my wines). This melon certainly has much more than a gallon of juice in it, so I'll eat what is not required for a gallon-batch. If the melon is not quite as good as the one I tasted, I'll simply eat it all; it is a waste of time and effort to attempt making wine with less than perfect melons.

Moon and Stars watermelon

For those who do not understand the reasons for the steps I am taking, I invite you to read the introduction to my watermelon recipes collection. Watermelon wine is terribly difficult to make because it spoils so quickly, but if a 10% alcohol level can be obtained fast enough it will prevent spoilage bacteria from ruining it.

The second method is more traditional. I would press the juice, then sulfite and refrigerate it for 12 hours before pitching a 24 hours old yeast starter solution. The sulfite would help combat the spoilage bacteria while the alcohol builds up. This method has a better chance for success if the yeast starter solution and the juice can be brought to the same temperature before joining. I'll be using Montrachet yeast. The low end of its fermentation is 59-60 degrees F., so I would have to allow the juice to sit outside the refrigerator for an hour or so to warm up from the 39 degrees the refrigerator is set at. During that hour I would also put the starter in the refrigerator for 10 minutes and then remove it for 5, then repeat this several times until the starter is slowly chilled to 60. The reason for playing these temperature games is to prevent the yeast from going into cold shock and shutting down for 24 hours.

If I follow the latter approach I'll add sugar to reach 1.085 s.g., 1-1/2 teaspoons of acid blend initially (probably will need to add a little more after fermentation), and one teaspoon of yeast nutrient. I have a measure that holds exactly 1/16 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite. Wish me luck.

Rose Petal Soup

I mentioned on Twitter that my antique red roses bloomed again and then got pretty well deflowered by rain and wind. I didn't have nearly enough petals left for a batch of rose petal wine, but did have enough for two bowls of rose petal soup. That resulted in several request for the recipe. Okay, here it is.

This soup is an adaptation of one posted by Angela Harris (link following entry). Mine differs a bit and is for two 24-ounce bowls of soup. You need two large- or three medium-sized roses, preferably red or pink and with lots of fragrance. You cannot use hybrid roses; use antique (old garden, old fashioned, heritage, traditional) roses. Gently peel away the rose petals one at a time. Cut away the bottoms of the petals that have no color. Cut up a few of the rose petals (1/4-inch squares) to sprinkle on top of the soup just before serving.

Rose Petal Soup

• 2 large or 3 medium antique roses
• 32 oz (1 qt) cold water
• 8 ounces sugar
• 2 pinches cinnamon
• 1 tsp Tabasco sauce
• 2 16-oz cans of pitted sweet cherries
• 16 oz dry white wine
• 16 oz sour cream
• 4 oz Cherry Schnapps or favorite (Heering?) cherry liqueur

Add water, sugar, and cinnamon in 2-quart pan and bring to a boil on medium heat, stirring occasionally. Drain the canned cherries, add to the pan and return to light boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in Tabasco sauce. Next, add wine and rose petals. Let cool. Put in blender and mix on liquefy setting. Divide into two bowls and stir in the sour cream and Cherry Schnapps. Refrigerate until cold. When ready to serve, sprinkle the remainder of the rose petals on the soup. Sprinkle with cinnamon and by all means serve cold.

• Watermelon Wines Special Recipe Collection, on my site with 10 recipes
• Weird Recipes From Your Yard, Rose Petal Soup is the first listing
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 10th, 2009

I bottled my latest rose petal wine last night - a beautiful blush, finished just off-dry, made from our antique, deep red roses (variety unknown). The aroma is very nice, the color very good for rose petals and the flavor is slightly herbal but pleasant. I'm quite pleased with the result.

Having bottled two wines this week, I thought it only proper to start two new batches - one a mead and the other a wine. The mead is honeybush and the wine a remake of my classic sand burr concoction that won numerous awards.. I will talk more about these at a later date.

Why Things Are

I received an email from a cousin who had appended a file which looked like a Word document but wouldn't open. After numerous attempts employing various strategies, I finally threw in the towel and sent an email asking what kind of file it was. Three minutes later the phone rang. It was a Word 2007 file and I am still using Word 2000. No problem, as my cousin opened the file, saved it as a Word 2000 document and resent it. Problem solved -- sort of. The document copied the April 16, 2009 entry of Barbara Keck's blog, WineBizNews. In it was a critique of my blog's artistic layout and design.

I know there are an endless number of possible layouts and design features that would improve the appearance and readability of the WineBlog and The Winemaking Home Page. I get dozens of respectful emails every year pointing this out with varying degrees of tact or absence thereof.

Most are by people who make a living designing and possibly maintaining blogs for people who just want to write and not be bothered with the mechanics of the display. A few are from folks who offer to do this free, as a sort of payment for the years of benefit derived from my musings. The first group I delete - I cannot afford their services. The second group I try to thank for their offers, their willingness to redeem a perceived debt.

And some, a few, express another motive kin to the last. The following comment sums up this corollary fairly well: "...[A]nd while I greatly admire and even revere your writings, your web site is, in a word, boring. It is stuck in the mid-'90s in both design and layout and I am embarrassed for it. It needs a makeover badly."

So let me explain briefly why things are as they are. First, I don't write something and plug it into an online template or code generator as most bloggers do. I write the whole thing out, selecting and placing every tag where needed. I insert every image using the simplest format I know - admittedly from the mid-'90s - because I know how to do it and it usually works. Occasionally I make a boo-boo and I hear about it soon enough. Most I can and do fix as soon as I can. A rare few, like the seven lines of ">" (greater than signs?) in my February 28, 2009 entry immediately preceding the table of songs are total mysteries to me. Neither I nor two other programmers could find anything in the encoding that would produce them. But generally, doing it myself exerts the greatest and most absolute control over the content and its appearance.

Secondly, over the years I've fallen in love with innumerable websites and blogs and grown comfortable with their layout, look and feel. Then they change drastically, and old, familiar features disappear or get lost in a new hierarchy or schema that escapes my intuition. I generally don't like these changes and have resisted making them on my sites. I want my viewers to grow comfortable with it as it is. Things usually are where they were last week, last month, last year. There are areas I would like to improve, but I don't know how to enact the changes and do not currently have time to learn (a recurring theme).

Thirdly, I have a vision for a "makeover" and have tried several times over the past 5-6 years - experimentally, out of public view - to integrate CSS and a couple of HTML variants into the site. The initial learning curve is steep and I really don't have the time to see it through. I have abandoned each attempt after a couple of days. One day, after retirement, I will tackle it again. Until then, what you see today is what you will see tomorrow.

Finally, as much as I appreciate the several offers to do a "makeover" for me, each offer has included turning the admin privileges over to someone else, and in every case but one that someone was a total stranger. Sorry, but I cannot do that. To one fellow who wrote me at the exact moment I was trying to get a grasp on CSS and object spatial placement, I invited him to send me the code for his "makeover" of three pages I selected as being particularly resistant to my self-learning methods. He said he would do this if I gave him admin rights to my site. I said no, just send me the code. I never heard from him again. And so my site remains as it is and that is why things are as you see them.

Wild (Woodland) Strawberry Wine


Wild strawberries in the field (Photo courtesy Nami-Nami: A Food Blog)

I have received several emails from Sweden, Finland, Minnesota, and Idaho over the past three months about wild strawberries. I really should have posted something before now, as their season is past everywhere that I know of. Still, I feel compelled to write about them. They simply make the best strawberry wine imaginable and maybe you can plan a batch for next year.

My earliest memory of eating wild strawberries was as a Boy Scout at Camp Arataba in the San Bernardino mountains when we happened upon a patch while on a day hike. The Scoutmaster did not notice them, but I was surveying the areas adjacent to where we hiked for snakes and I spotted the small red berries just above the ground. I stepped out of formation and gathered perhaps 6 or 8 before being called to get back into the file. Only after I resumed my place did I taste one. Instantly I was sorry I had obeyed.

I found some on an Explorer Scout camping trip at Tuolemne Meadows in Yosemite National Park and that time I ate scores of them. Years later I encountered some on the lower slopes of Mount Rainier, in Washington State. These were larger than others I had encountered but not nearly as large as even the smallest commercial berries. But my fondest memories were the enormous patches my brother and I found on 22 acres I owned near Pikes Peak and other patches I happened upon while hiking north of the Flat Irons, above Boulder, Colorado and others near Estes Park. Years later I found them on the Presidio of San Francisco and on Mount Tamalpais north of there. Wherever I have found them, they are by far the tastiest and most aromatic strawberries there are.

In Europe, the wild (Woodland) strawberry is the Fragaria vesca. In North America it is Fragaria virginiana. The fruit ripens in late spring or early summer. Much smaller than commercial strawberries, they typically vary from the size of a pencil eraser to that of a woman's thumbnail. It takes a while to collect enough for a batch of wine and your back will ache unmercifully if you bend over for them, so squat or sit and pick all you can reach before moving. If it takes two hours to collect enough, it will be worth it. As one website said, "They're so good, they're the symbol of perfect excellence." I have to agree.

Technically, the strawberry is neither a berry nor a fruit, but a "false fruit" or "accessory fruit." This means the fleshy part we enjoy does not develop from the flower's ovary, but from the stem supporting the ovary. The seeds, called achenes, are actually the fruit. However, for the average Joe, the fleshy part is a "berry" or "fruit" and I too use that terminology when not being scholastic.

Wild Strawberry Wine

• 3.5 lbs wild strawberries
• 8 oz Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 2 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 1 tsp acid blend
• 1/8 tsp powdered grape tannin
• 1 finely crushed Campden tablet
• water to one gallon
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• wine yeast (Champagne, Montrachet,

Bring quart of water to boil and dissolve sugar in it, stirring frequently and well. Put berries in nylon straining bag, tie and place in primary. Mash the berries with your hands. Pour boiling water over berries. Add grape concentrate, acid blend, tannin and yeast nutrient. Add water to bring liquid to one gallon. Cover and set aside to cool, then begin making a yeast starter solution. When water is 85-90 degrees F., add finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, recover the primary and set aside additional 10-12 hours. Pitch activated yeast starter, recover primary and stir daily. When s.g. drops to 1.020 or lower, remove straining bag and drip drain over bowl to collect juice. Allow to drain without squeezing (1-2 hours). Pour all liquids into secondary, top up to one gallon, attach airlock, and set aside. Rack every 30 days until wine clears and goes 30 days without dropping dust on bottom (3-6 months). Bottle as dry wine. Allow to age at least 6 months, then drink within a year. [Author's own recipe]

• What Millennials Want Included in a Wine Blog, Barbara Keck's WineBizNews blog entry.
• Fragaria vesca, an excellent Wikipedia article on the European wild strawberry
• , nice little site, good history
• Strawberry Wines, on my site, #4 uses wild strawberries
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 8th, 2009

I'm starting to get more emails (and twitter questions) than I can answer. Some questions, like for a recipe I haven't published, are fair game. Others, like why do we have to top up, are explained on my site already. You simply have to read more. Here's a hint: air space in a secondary is called ullage and contains oxygen, and oxygen causes wines to oxidize.

On the other hand, someone asked why my elderflower wine recipe has the wine ferment and clear for three months without racking - why? Fair question. The original recipe was developed by Steven A. Krause in his book Wines from the Wild and it works. Wines will not go bad sitting three months on their yeast lees, but could go bad sitting on gross lees containing bits of fruit pulp or other decomposing organic matter. Just why this is so would require a chapter in a book to explain, so just trust me on this.

Resveratrol Does It Again

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have discovered another health benefit of resveratrol and by extension its source, red wine. Researchers found that mice pre-treated with resveratrol were protected when exposed to a strong inflammatory agent. Mice not pre-treated developed a serious reaction similar to sepsis.

The study, published in the journal of the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB Journal), found that resveratrol blocks two major proteins that trigger inflammation. Resveratrol is a phytoalexin - a compound produced by plants to ward off fungal infection. That it can also protect human cells from various types of assault is our fortune.

But fortune appears to come with moderation. Two glasses of red wine with a meal is adequate for a health maintenance dose, we're told. More than that and the effects of alcohol can offset the health effects of resveratrol.

Personally, I have begun taking a daily dosage of resveratrol as a supplement. My cardiologist has approved this, but I think he is watching me to see what happens. The gel-caps I take contain 100 mg of red wine extract (24% polyphenols with 100-200 ppm resveratrol), 50 mg grapeseed extract (90% polyphenols), and 30 mg resveratrol (from Polygonum caspidatum root extract). I don't think it can hurt.

Champanel Grapes and Wine

I received a request for a Champanel wine recipe and am happy to oblige. First, however, a word about Champanel grapes for those not familiar with them. This is a T.V. Munson hybrid, a cross between V. champinii and a Worden seedling, that grows well in Texas and other Gulf Coast states due to its resistance to Pierce's Disease (it can carry the bacterium but will not succumb to it). It has excellent resistance to nematodes, tolerates the black-waxy alkaline soils of Texas and mild resistance to Phylloxera. It is vigorous to a fault, ripes with Concord, and the black-skinned berries make an excellent wine if allowed to fully ripen, which means netting against birds. It tolerates heat and drought better than 98-99% of the other grapes and grows so well on its own roots that it is often used as a rootstock in very alkaline soils.

If left unchecked, this vine will put out a dozen or more 12-20-foot shoots each year. Since grapes are only produced on the first 2-3 (rarely 4) nodes, 75-80% of that growth ends up shading the grapes of the adjoining vines. Yes, you need extra growth to support the vine and clusters, but Champanel can tolerate at least two summer prunings. And vigor does not equate to high yields. The clusters are not large, so 10-12 pounds per vine is about normal yield. This is barely at or just shy of a gallon of wine per vine. But the wine can be excellent if the berries are fully ripe. I cannot stress the latter enough.

The best Champanel wine I have ever tasted was Rob Overley's. It was a off-dry but not quite sweet and I hinted for a bottle but didn't get one. Instead, I obtained Champanel cuttings and started growing my own. This recipe is for one gallon. It is pretty much a standard recipe for making a grape wine, but the pectic enzyme used extracts much more color and polyphenols. Without using Rapidase Ex-Color, the wine will probably be a blush. Do the math to make larger batches.

Campanel Wine

• 12-15 lbs Champanel grapes
• possibly sugar to bring up to 22.5 degrees Brix (s.g. 1.095)
• 1 tsp Fermaid
• 1/4 tsp drops Rapidase Ex-Color pectic enzyme (and color extractor)
• 1 finely crushed Campden tablet (or 1/16 tsp potassium metabisulfite)
• red wine yeast

Crush and destem the grapes. Move to primary and sprinkle the finely crushed Campden or 1/16 tsp potassium metabisulfite over the grapes. Cover the primary and set aside 8-10 hours. Begin a yeast starter solution. Sprinkle the Rapidase Ex-Color over grapes and stir with wooden spoon. Recover and set aside 12 hours. Adjust Brix if required and stir in Fermaid. Pitch the yeast starter and cover primary as before. Stir daily to punch down the cap. When s.g. drops to 1.015 (5 degrees Brix), Strain must through Nylon straining bag into secondary and press pulp firmly. Discard pomace. Attach airlock to secondary. Rack two weeks after wine falls still. Top up, reattach airlock and allow to clear. Wait additional two weeks and rack again into clean secondary with finely crushed Campden tablet or 1/16 tsp potassium metabisulfite. Top up and reattach airlock. Wait additional 30 days. Use flashlight and illuminate bottom of secondary. If absolutely clear, bottle it. If even a fine dusting of dead yeast, rack, top up and reattach airlock for another 30 days, then bottle. Wait 3 months before tasting. Should improve with age for 2-3 years. [Author's own recipe]

• Requested Recipe: Elderflower Wines, two recipes on my site
• "Vitis Champanel", this name is botanically wrong, but it would take too long to explain
• Winemaking Additives and Cleansers, scroll own to Rapidase Ex-Color, on my site
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 3rd, 2009

For those who prayed for my brother, thank you. He is home again and on a two-week, self- administered, IV antibiotic cocktail protocol. But he is already improved enough to be in his own bed. Again, thank you.

I'm finally making a wine from my pitiful harvest of Champanel and Cynthiana grapes. The Champanels, a T. V. Munson hybrid, ripened just as my parents arrived and we took off for family visits in East Texas and Louisiana. The birds had a feast while I was gone, but I picked what were left and froze them. The Cynthianas were reduced to one vine after a dog we had for six weeks chewed 13 vines of various varieties off at or near the ground. The Cynthianas ripen unevenly and the only way to beat the birds to them without netting is to either pick bunches before they are fully ripe or to pick individual berries as they ripen. Because I only had one vine, I did the latter and stored the daily pickings in the freezer. Still not having enough Champanels and Cynthianas to make a decent batch, I picked some of my Dog Ridge (a natural V. champinii variety) to make up the volume. I've done this before in different proportions, so this is not unknown territory. Wish me luck.

Another Great Wine Barbeque Sauce

Back in November 2008 a reader asked me to publish a few barbeque sauce recipes featuring wine as an ingredient. I posted one and asked readers to contribute, fully expecting the fellow who requested this topic to join in. He has not. I received an excellent recipe after Christmas from Georgia and in April of this year received a homemade sauce with attached recipe from Pennsylvania. That's it. I didn't think anyone else was interested in barbeque sauce until an email arrived last night with a new recipe. I have just made a batch for a rack of baby back ribs and I think it is a winner.

Randy's Wine Barbeque Sauce

• 1 white onion, finely diced
• 1 Tblsp butter
• 1 Tblsp 6% acidity wine vinegar
• 2 Tblsp lemon juice
• 2 Tblsp dark brown sugar
• 3 Tblsp orange marmalade
• 1/2 cup ketsup
• 1 1/2 Tblsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp Tabasco or other hot sauce
• 1/4 tsp dry mustard
• 1 cup garlic wine*
• 1 Tblsp celery salt

*or onion, chile pepper or any other white wine

Brown ribs on rack in roasting pan in 350 degrees oven. While ribs are browning, make sauce (below). Drain roasting pan before basting ribs with sauce.

On low heat, melt butter in skillet, add onions and barely brown them. Add remaining ingredients and bring to simmer, stirring, until ribs are browned and ready for sauce. Baste ribs liberally until done.

Corn Squeezins

I received a pitiful phone call from a good ol' boy up near Shreveport who told a sad tale of losing his uncle. Of course he missed their afternoons fishing and conversations about women and politics and things, but what he really missed was his uncle's corn squeezins, a wine he made from the juice of corn stalks run through a crusher-wringer. He intended to obtain the crusher- wringer but the probaters seized it and sold it at auction. Did I know another way to make corn squeezins? Well shucks, I think I do - sort of.

This will not be the same thing because it doesn't use the squeezins from the corn stalks, but it is palatable wine and goes down cleanly after the first glass (or mason jar). There are two hard parts. The first is that you have to cook (boil) about 12 ears of corn, which means either cooking a meal for a sizable gathering, bringing corn on the cob to a pot luck affair, or cooking the corn and shaving the corn off the cobs with a good knife for subsequent meals. The second hard part if the corn was eaten off the cobs at a single sitting is that you need to retrieve the cobs and not think about who might have cleaned the corn off them. Admittedly, this could be the show stopper, but remember that alcohol kills most micro-bugs. Digging those cobs out of the trash could be embarrassing, but if you're into corn squeezins then maybe not.

One last thing. You can use more corn cobs if you want more flavor or plan on serving it at your cousin's wedding.

Corn Squeezins (Wine)

• 12 ears of corn
• 1 Tblsp lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp grape tannin (powder)
• 32 oz light corn syrup
• water to one gallon
• 1 Campden tablet, finely crushed
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• any general purpose wine yeast

Boil the corn, save the water used for the boiling, save the cobs after the corn is cleaned off them, cut the cobs into 1/2 to 3/4 inch pieces, toss them back into the water used to cook them, and barely bring them back to a boil and hold it for about 45 minutes to an hour. Remove and discard the pieces of cob with a slotted spoon, stir in the corn syrup, lemon juice, yeast nutrient, and grape tannin and stir until dissolved. Pour into primary, add cold water to bring volume to one gallon, cover the primary, and set aside to cool. When cool, stir in finely crushed Campden tablet, recover the primary, and let sit overnight. Add activated yeast in a starter solution and let nature do its thing. When vigorous fermentation subsides, pour water into secondary through a muslin-lined funnel. Attach airlock and let finish fermentation. When still, rack, top up and reattach airlock. Repeat every 30 days until wine clears. If not clear after third racking, add 1/4 teaspoon amylase. When clear, bottle (or jug) it and set aside a month. Mason jars are also acceptable. [Author's own recipe]

• WineBlog, see "Healthy Heart Barbeque Sauce" in April 5, 2009 entry
• WineBlog Archives Jul-Dec 2008, scroll to 25 Nov and 29 Dec entries for other barbeque sauces
• Corn Wine 2, on my site, another recipe
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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August 1st, 2009

Last night was a truly memorable evening for me. I've been corresponding with a gentleman in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India for seven or eight years. Last night he and his wife were in San Antonio and we met for dinner and good talk. We had exquisite Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine at El Mirador and shared a genuinely enjoyable evening with their local hosts. Balaji, Tamara, Stacy and Dale, thank you for the fine fellowship, stimulating evening and enriching conversations. I cherish the memories.

Thank you one and all who have said prayers for my brother Larry following his quadruple by-pass. He is back in the hospital with cellulitis, an infection that in most cases is non-threatening and easily cured with. The danger is severe if it migrates subcutaneously to the fascial lining and goes systemic or turns necrotizing. There is no indication it will do that in my brother's case, but if you have the time and inclination please keep those prayers going just a little longer.

Extreme Foam

Some time back I visited a Texas winery and chatted with the winemaker about winemaking things. We got to talking about yeasts and I mentioned that I really miss the old packets of Epernay, sold today by Lalvin as DV10 but only in bulk. He had some and gave me a 20 mL vial of it. When I got home, I put it in the refrigerator with my other yeasts and sort of forgot about it for a while. I recently started three batches of wine and mead with it, including a one-gallon batch of pineapple- coconut juice mead. I was flabbergasted when I found two gallons of foam on top of the must.

I had made a yeast starter by hydrating a half-teaspoon of DV10 in 1/2 cup of warm water into which I had dissolved a pinch of yeast nutrient and a teaspoon of sugar. After a half-hour I added 1/2 cup of white grape juice, covered the container and let it "work" for about 8 hours. I added another 1/2 cup of grape juice over the next 8 hours and then added the starter to the must. The must was placed in a 3-gallon glass canister. I have used this primary many times and have a "one gallon" marker taped to it for reference. After 18 hours it showed clear signs of vigorous fermentation, with about 3/8 inch of foam floating atop the must.

Primary after 18 hours and 23 hours of fermentation

The next morning I awoke to find about a gallon of foam above the must. While this worried me, I had chores to do and left the house for two hours. By then the foam had risen another couple of inches and I figured it had reached its apex. I left again and was gone about six hours. When I returned, the foam had overflowed the canister and made a mess on the countertop and floor. After I cleaned this up, I put the canister in my largest skillet and it continued to emit foam for three days. Then the foam started to subside. Now, a week later, the foam is back to around 3/8 inch and the fermentation is about done, which is very fast for a mead.

Primary after 25 hours and 32 hours of fermentation

As I said before, DV10 is what we once called Epernay, named for a town in the Champagne region of France where it was isolated. In fact, it is the originally isolated Champagne yeast and one of the most widely used strains in Champagne. The reason for its long, long popularity is because it possesses several traits desirable in a wine yeast. It tolerates a wide range of temperatures (50-85 degrees F.), high SO₂, low pH, low volatile acidity, and low H₂S production. It has relatively low nitrogen demands and gives clean fermentations with roundness, volume, preserved varietal character, and low foam production. These qualities make it a favorite for premium still varietals, as well as fruit wines and meads. Finally, because it will tolerate up to 18% alcohol, it is a favorite for clean, crisp sparkling varietals as well.

Oh, did you notice the low foam production part? So what happened to my pineapple-coconut juice mead? None of the other three batches started with this yeast produced any noticeable foam at all. Actually, I have a theory.

Coconut juice is more commonly called coconut water. This is the thin, clear, non-fat liquid contained in immature coconuts. As the nuts mature, the liquid thickens, clouds and is absorbed into the gel that becomes the coconut meat. Fully mature nuts contain no liquid inside.

My mead is made from a blend of pineapple juice and coconut water. The coconut water was not thin and clear, but thicker than water and milky in color. I was careful NOT to buy coconut milk, as that is made from coconut meat and contains coconut oil. However, considering the color of the canned coconut juice I obtained, it perhaps was from coconuts that were too mature or had some coconut milk added for reasons I cannot imagine. But in either case, the juice contained a slight amount of coconut oil and it is the oil that facilitated the creation of a large amount of foam.

If anyone else has a better theory, please send it to me.

• El Mirador's dinner menu, excellent cuisine
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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July 26th, 2009

I've been very busy and apologize for my absence. Life happens. Family comes first.

My brother went into surgery three weeks ago for a triple-bypass and came out with a quadruple. That means his doctors were following the problem instead of following the HMO-preapproved protocol. If you don't know what that means, you don't know what government-run healthcare means. If you're clued in, pray we don't follow the path to socialized medical mediocrity. My brother did very well after the surgery, surrounded by family, home after three days. Wow!

Like me, he is now on a long list of medications. Most will be taken for the rest of his life. To that list I recommend resveratrol. It comes in several forms and strengths. I prefer Cabernet Sauvignon, but also take a supplement. It can't hurt.

Thinking About Starch

A friend recently asked me to look at a sugar cane wine many, many months in secondary that still had a noticeable haze. He thought it was pectin and had added pectic enzyme (pectinase) in stages to no avail. Although sugar cane is quite fibrous, I could not imagine pectin being the problem. Also, having researched making sugar cane wine, I remember reading that one of the problems encountered when processing sugar cane juice to clarity is the presence of starch. Although I did not bookmark where I found this, I did bookmark an article on problems of starch hydrolysis.

The main problem with sugar cane is that there are some starches that contribute to total sugar content and some that don't and simply need to be removed. One teaspoon of amylase, a starch enzyme readily available to most winemakers, will aid in clarification of sugar cane wine by hydrolyzing starch. One tablespoon of Amylozyme 100 is an alternate treatment. Fining or filtration might be required to polish the wine.

Pomegranate-Elderberry Wine

I recently bottled a two-year old wine and shared some of it at a function of the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild. The reviews were hugely positive, but my wife and a friend each said they thought it was "too young." It isn't the pomegranate in the wine that they consider immature; it's the elderberry.

This wine was made with diluted pomegranate juice to which I added one and one-half pounds of thawed elderberries that had been frozen several years and forgotten. Of course, sugar, nutrients, etc. were also added, but the maturity issue derives from the elderberry.

This wine began with a quart of pure pomegranate juice. This is about what I usually use for a gallon of pomegranate wine. I decided to add elderberries because I found the frozen berries in the bottom of my chest freezer and there wasn't enough for a gallon of elderberry wine. I normally use 3 to 3.5 pounds of elderberries per gallon of elderberry wine, but have used more. I thought the elderberries would add complexity to the pomegranate and there I was not wrong. The wine is delicious, but the bottles may be cellared for two more years. We shall see. Two bottles are screw- capped, so I can taste minute amounts of the wine from time to time

Pomegranate-Elderberry Wine

• 1 qt pomegranate juice
• 1.5 lbs frozen and thawed elderberries
• 1.5 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 0.75 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1.25 tsp yeast nutrient
• 2 finely crushed Campden tablets
• 0.5 tsp potassium sorbate
• water to 1 gallon
• Lalvin RC212 yeast

Bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve sugar in it. Wearing rubber gloves, inside your primary pour the thawed elderberries into a nylon straining bag, tie the bag closed and leave the bag in the primary. Crush the berries where they lie. Pour hot sugared water over berries and allow to steep 30 minutes. Add pomegranate juice, yeast nutrient and water to one gallon. Stir in pectic enzyme and cover the primary. Wait 8-10 hours and add activated yeast in a starter solution. Stir daily. After 5 days of vigorous fermentation, put on rubber gloves and remove the nylon straining bag, squeezing well. Discard spent elderberries, recover the primary and ferment until vigorous fermentation subsides. Transfer to secondary and attach airlock. After 45 days, rack into clean secondary into which one finely crushed Campden tablet was scattered. Attach airlock and set aside. Wait 45 days and rack again. Wait additional 45 days and rack again, dissolving potassium sorbate and second finely crushed Campden tablet into wine when topping up. Sweeten to taste if desired. Reattach airlock and bulk age two months before bottling. Cellar at least one year before tasting, but may require more time. [Author's own recipe]

• Resveratrol, my WineBlog archives - scroll down to March 23, 2008 entry
• Live to be 150?, same archives - more on resveratrol in the April 6, 2008 entry
• Blog Archives Jul-Dec 2004, scroll down to the Oct 15, 2004 entry for sugar cane wine recipes
• The Use of Enzymes in Starch Hydrolysis, not for the chemically challenged
• Pomerganate Wine, on my site
• Elderberry Wines, on my site
• Taming the Wild Elderberry, my article in WineMaker Magazine
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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July 5th, 2009

Yesterday was the 233rd birthday of the United States of America. I observed it with very mixed emotions. I had planned for 6-8 months to spend it with one set of friends and instead spent it with another. We were disappointed that our original plans were derailed, but the alternative turned out to be very enjoyable as we spent the day with great friends, met some new people, ate some fabulous barbeque and side dishes, and drank some wonderful wine.

Yesterday I also learned I lost a friend of nearly four decades - a medic from my days in Special Forces -- to liver failure. Geoff once caught my safety line when I fell while rock climbing in Colorado, sent me to the hospital when I tore a cartilage in my knee on a parachute landing fall, and diagnosed a ruptured disc in my back by feel which x-rays later confirmed. I owed him more than I repaid him, and the finality of the imbalance troubles me. We must do more to settle our accounts while we can. My faith assures me Geoff is in a better place and in better company and I trust my faith, but I grieve his passing anyway.

On another note of disappointment and sadness, we drove through several neighborhoods yesterday and all of us in the car remarked that we had never seen so few American flags flying at residences on the 4th of July. Why this is so I cannot say and will not speculate, but it does not suggest a healthy faith in the nation's future. This troubles me deeply.

Heart Attack Symptoms

Some of you know I have suffered two heart attacks. This morning I learned my immediate younger brother was hospitalized yesterday after suffering shortness of breath his asthma medications did not resolve. He had suffered a heart attack that will be more accurately diagnosed today. I am departing from my normal discussions of winemaking to share some concerns dealing with common symptoms of heart attack.

When I had my first heart attack I exhibited some of several classic symptoms but, through ignorance, thought I was experiencing something else. When I had my second heart attack I again experienced several classic symptoms, but they differed from the first episode and I went into denial for several days; I turned a multiple blockage into congestive heart failure. I should have known better. I am determined to do my part to help you know better.

Men and women can have several different symptoms of heart attack, but they share some common classics. There is ample literature out there for you to peruse and I have referenced some of it following today's blog entry, but if you ignore prudence at least look at the table below. The information therein could save your life.

Common Heart Attack Symptoms

SYMPTOM	DESCRIPTION
Shortness of breath	Panting for breath or struggling to take deep breaths; symptom may precede chest discomfort. During my first heart attack I tried repeatedly to take a deep breath without success.
Chest pain or discomfort	Feeling a tight ache, pressure, fullness or squeezing in center of chest lasting more than a few minutes; may come, go or persist. May feel similar to rising heartburn. During my second heart attack I thought I had heartburn that persisted for 5 days.
Stomach pain	Pain extending downward into abdominal area. May feel similar to sinking heartburn. During my second heart attack I was convinced my stomach was full of gas.
Sweating	Sudden-onset of sweating with cold, clammy skin. During my first heart attack I sweated profusely and thought I was having heat stroke.
Lightheadedness	Dizziness or feeling like you might pass out. During my first heart attack I passed out cold.
Upper body pain	Chest pain or discomfort may spread to shoulders, arms, neck, back, jaw or teeth. Could have upper body pain without chest discomfort. During my first heart attack my shoulders began to ache.
Anxiety	Feeling a sense of doom or having a panic attack for no apparent reason. I did not experience this.
Nausea and vomiting	Feeling sick to your stomach and/or vomiting. I did not experience this.

The bottom line is if you experience any of the above, but especially several in concert, seek immediate emergency medical help. Do not try to diagnose the symptoms yourself. I did that twice with severe consequences. I encourage everyone to read more. Some of these symptoms are more likely to be experienced by women than men, but shortness of breath and chest pain are universal red flags. Read more and be prepared.

• Heart Attack Symptoms..., Mayo Clinic article I borrowed heavily from
• Heart Attack Symptoms and Warning Signs, American Heart Association site
• Heart Attack Symptoms and Warning Signs, MyHeartCentral page
• Women's Heart Attack Symptoms Different from Men's, good page at About.com
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

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For earlier entries, see archives (left column)

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