I was just wondering...
Does anyone have any wine making horror stories?
Really awful batches? Major mistakes?
Might be kind of fun to hear about them...


--
Bob Becker

www.becker.org

Let's see....
-my husband refers to my first "very young" dandelion batch of wine as
tasting like battery acid
-and a friend of mine swore she had hayfever symptoms after drinking a
glass of my second dandelion batch, which aged a bit better, but still
ewwwww....
-my watermelon wine tasted nothing like a watermelon, nor did it taste
good ;o(
-a batch of watermelon wine had started fermenting again; after 3 out of
the 5 bottles popped in the basement (of course all on different
days), I put the last 2 bottles in the fridge - when I opened one a
few days later, it exploded like Champaign all over my kitchen
-I figured out that I'm not really crazy about the wines I made out of
citrus fruits...there's just a taste to it that I'm not crazy about,
now I have all these bottles leftover
-my oregano wine could peel paint, but it is very good as a cooking wine
I know for a fact there are some better stories out there....
Darlene

"Bob Becker" > wrote in message
...
>I was just wondering...
> Does anyone have any wine making horror stories?
> Really awful batches? Major mistakes?
> Might be kind of fun to hear about them...
>
>
> --
> Bob Becker
>
> www.becker.org
>

Oh yeah. Stories.

How about the batch of Pinot Grigio I was taking over my dads in a 6
gallon lidded pail, sitting on my back set? When it flipped over
because people in Pittsburgh are known to drive in an unpredictable
manner I now had 3 gallons. My interior got to drink 3 gallons. I can
tell you from experience Nissan Sentra's do not appreciate a young
Pinot Grigio... I tore out the entire interior and hosed it out
several times to get most of it out.

Or the raspberry wine that tasted closer to Vicks 44? That got blended
with mead, sweetened, blended with several others until the initial
batch of 5 gallons ended up 17. It was no longer Vicks 44 and is a
testament to the 'sugar covers a multitude of winemaking sins' credo.

And yes, I have more...

Joe

Dar V wrote:
> Let's see....
> -my husband refers to my first "very young" dandelion batch of wine as
> tasting like battery acid
> -and a friend of mine swore she had hayfever symptoms after drinking a
> glass of my second dandelion batch, which aged a bit better, but still
> ewwwww....
> -my watermelon wine tasted nothing like a watermelon, nor did it taste
> good ;o(
> -a batch of watermelon wine had started fermenting again; after 3 out of
> the 5 bottles popped in the basement (of course all on different
> days), I put the last 2 bottles in the fridge - when I opened one a
> few days later, it exploded like Champaign all over my kitchen
> -I figured out that I'm not really crazy about the wines I made out of
> citrus fruits...there's just a taste to it that I'm not crazy about,
> now I have all these bottles leftover
> -my oregano wine could peel paint, but it is very good as a cooking wine
> I know for a fact there are some better stories out there....
> Darlene
>
> "Bob Becker" > wrote in message
> ...
> >I was just wondering...
> > Does anyone have any wine making horror stories?
> > Really awful batches? Major mistakes?
> > Might be kind of fun to hear about them...
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bob Becker
> >
> > www.becker.org
> >

This is fun, and while my stories pale in comparison (I'm sure I'm no
better, just less exeperienced), this'll at least get this post to the
top where more can join in.

My story is a Merlot I made from concentrate that was, um, improperly
de-concentrated. OK, it was greatly diluted. But I was young, didn't
know better, hey, lets keep going. Then I oaked it. When you tasted
it, you reached for the tweezers to pull the splinters out of your
tongue. Luckily, I had a cousin who liked woody wine (or wine-flavored
toothpicks - never have gotten that cleared up).

A story on someone else (who I can't name, as I only know this story
second hand from someone who was there but didn't know the name either)
was at a local wine-judging. During the judging, there was a call to
the chief judge to know what to do about scoring a wine when "a lump of
algae came out of the bottle when pouring into the glass".

Rob

I'm still new at winemaking, but my worst story to date is when I tried
my first 'non-kit' attempt. I used Welch's Concord frozen, made up a
gallon on a website recipe.

Totally unaware of measuring (or tasting, boy, I've learned a lot in 18
months!), I did the recipe and bottled. I let it sit for a few months
and gave a bottle to my new brother-in-law (who loves dry reds and lives
several states away), even prior to ME tasting it. He tried it a few
days later, he never mentioned it to me, in fact has never asked for any
of my other wines (approaching 500 bottles soon).

It turned out the must never fermented, and I'd bottled grape juice!


I was too embarrassed to ever mention it to him, either. blush.

--
DAve

p.s. I guess that leaves more good wine for me, though I was trying to
make an impression. sigh.

Bob Becker wrote:
> I was just wondering...
> Does anyone have any wine making horror stories?
> Really awful batches? Major mistakes?
> Might be kind of fun to hear about them...
>
>

Bob Becker wrote:
> I was just wondering...
> Does anyone have any wine making horror stories?

I'm sure watermelon wine will come up in this conversation a lot- I
only tried making it once, and couldn't stand the smell after the
second day of fermentation. I followed through with it anyway, and
gave a bottle of it to a fellow who kept complaining that my wine was
always too sweet. He admitted that it was dry enough, but I assume
that he (like me whenever I checked to see if it had improved with age)
poured most of it down the sink.

When I just started making wines, I discussed the art with my mother
(who started her first batch shortly before I was born, which my sister
claims explains a lot about me). We pulled out a number of her bottles
of wine, including a 20-year old bottle labelled "Rowanberry Wine".
Absolutely beautiful- nice, slightly orange colour, perfectly clear,
nicely balanced...until it hit the back of the throat, and the berries
could be tasted. I could not get the taste of mountain ash (a berry
that I never thought was edible) out of my mouth for hours, despite
tasting numerous other wines that night.