Before there was refined sugar there was honey. Mead and Melomel was the
drink. Melomel is honey wine made with fruit. Inother words you are just
using the same recipe but with honey instead of sugar. Why did people stop
using honey? Sugar is cheaper.

Ray

<reply@grouponly> wrote in message
...
> Greetings,
>
> I'm really struck by the recipes I've seen for fruit wines, meaning
> wines made from non-grapes. Peach, plum,tomato,etc. The vinifera
> recipe at it's simplest is 15-16lbs. or so of grapes and yeast. But
> every other recipes needs SUGAR added. I ask myself, what's the
> yeast feeding on, coverting, etc. - The fruit or the sugar ?
> Answer: Sugar.
>
> Not to be blasphemous, but it seems that most fruit wines are just
> yeast, sugar and fruit- "flavoring". Is this true? What about before
> that advent of refined sugar?
>
> Andrew
>