Wine making

[Schneck]

Hey Jumpshot,
I put anything I want to into my wine but I didn't get real adventurous until I had done a few batches to see what did what. Depends on how gutsy you are. If you make several different kinds individually you can always blend at botteling time for interesting tastes if you like. I use real fruit because it makes my wine cost next to nothing, I'm lousy with fruit and poor as a church mouse but if you use concentrates be guided by what's already in them. Yeast won't make alcahol if it doesn't like the conditions. It can't eat certain types of sugar without nutrients, or too much acid can stifel the reaction. Or lack of tannin can make wine insipid or too much sugar.......
After a batch or two with good record keeping you may find somethings are a better risk than others. I just made a batch where I was 2 pounds short of having enough grapes so I threw in the same amount of raspberries. Some of the grapes used tested low acid so it was a safe bet. The gravity was a tad low so i adjusted with boiling sugar water. I suppose true wine snobs would turn up their noses at my meathods but I do know a few that have been brought over to our side by a 1999 organic peach mead. Experiment but with an eye to the basics. I had a 5 gallon batch of pear last year that I only use for cooking and that's alot of work for cooking wine. Let me know how it's going. P.S. I hardly have any time to goof around on-line so be patient between my responses-Schneck