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Preface - Never before in the long, long history of home wine-making has the hobby enjoyed such tremendous popularity as it does today, with thousands of new enthusiasts joining our ranks every week. Fortunately we no longer have to follow antiquated methods and recipes that so often resulted in cloudy wines that would not clear, sour wines, acid wines or wines that turned into vinegar. Nor are we bothered with massive tubs and giant jars and masses of bottles of fermenting wines corked loosely (one of the main causes of spoiled wines) or any of the paraphernalia of the home wine-maker of a few short years ago. Modern methods are quick, clean, simple and sure.

Introduction - H.E. Bravery has been making wines for over twenty years but took to writing about the subject comparatively recently. He has contributed many articles on home wine-making to the Smallholder, Do It Yourself, and the Gardener's Chronicle, as well as to other journals, and he also lectures on the subject.

1. Essential Info - The simple methods described here are designed for beginners who do not know where to begin and for those with some experience who frequently run into difficulties and disappointments.

The making of top-quality wines is absurdly simple, yet not quite so simple that we can be careless about it.

2. Fresh Fruit Wines - There is no need for me to mention the enormous popularity this branch of home wine-making enjoys, or that countless thousands of people all over the world embark with tremendous enthusiasm each summer upon turning wild fruits and surplus garden fruits into wines fit to grace the tables of a banqueting hall.

3. Root Wines - The fame of these wines will never die. This is understandable when one considers that potatoes, parsnips and carrots give you wines of superb character: wines that bear striking resemblance to expensive spirits.

These wines are commonly known as 'carrot whisky' or 'potato Scotch' or whatever it is, and, make no mistake about it, these wines do develop many of the characteristics of whisky when kept a long time.

4. Ribena Wine - Before I explain how easy it is to make wine with Ribena let me point out that this famous syrup of excellent quality could well be added to fermenting 'musts' made up from other fruits to get special results. The rate to add it would be one to two bottles per gallon.

5. Wines Extracts - This chapter shows how easily wines the flavor of world-famous liqueurs and other commercial products may be made with the minimum of utensils and labor; indeed, this is probably, if not decidedly, the simplest, the least troublesome and the most rewarding of all adventures into wine-making.

In what are known as T’Noirot Extracts we have a readily prepared ingredient and, as will be seen in the recipes, no preparation is needed, the stuff is ready to use.

6. Ladies Wines - It is mostly men who want their wines to be knock-out drops and usually they take care to get them as strong as possible. But a high percentage of alcohol is not everything. Many indeed, I would say most continental wines are in the region of eight to eleven per cent of alcohol. Ours, made with the recipes in this book, will be a good deal stronger than this as has already been explained. It is the ladies who like the milder-flavored, low-alcohol, dry to medium-dry or medium-dry to sweet wines, so let me explain how any recipe here may be quite easily turned into a 'wine for the ladies'.

7. Recent Experiments - I am especially glad to be able to pass on the results of my most recent experiments. The gin recipes here were evolved from a single idea. I wanted to make a wine as near as possible in taste to commercial gin, and because gin has no colour worth mentioning my first thoughts were to ferment sugar and water and flavour the resulting 'wine'. But I was aware that yeast produces more alcohol when the fermenting liquor contains the essentials of yeast reproduction that is, in addition to sugar and nutrient, it needs also a vegetable matter such as fruit pulp. But all fruits and most vegetables give colour to wine and my aim was to produce a strong wine with little or no colour at all.

8. Wines: Citrus Fruits - This is a delightful wine that develops a flavour that can readily be likened to an orange-flavoured whisky.

12 large oranges, or their equivalent, 4 lb. sugar, ½ oz. yeast, 1 gal. water, nutrient.

Drop the whole oranges into boiling water, and push each one under the surface. Then take them out and throw the water away.

9. Flower Wines - Let me begin this chapter by assuring you that one of the loveliest wines I have ever tasted was made with gorse flowers by a member of the Bournemouth Wine-Makers' Circle. This I sampled while lecturing at the Town Hall there on the occasion of the Amateur Wine-Makers' Second Annual Conference and Show.

10. Wines: Dried Herbs - In case the advantages of making wines from dried herbs do not immediately become evident, let me explain that the town and city dweller (and countryman, too, for that matter) may make all the old favorite wines of Granny's day for next to nothing. Practically no work is involved because, unlike fresh fruits which have to be gathered and roots that have to be scrubbed, grated and boiled, suitable packets of herbs are available ready for use. In any case, many town and city dwellers might well know of the old country wines and wish that they could make them indeed, they may well have lived in the country and tasted the wines made from the fresh herbs; dandelion, sage, coltsfoot, mint, balm, yarrow and countless others.

11. Wines: Dried Fruits - The making of wines from grain and dried fruits is a boon to the townsman who finds these ingredients easily obtainable and they make good wines. Mixtures of dried fruit and grains make for strong, fully flavored, but not too fully flavored wines which, when not made too sweet, are often likened to whiskies and brandies. They need time to mature to reach their best two years is not too long, though at one year old they are very excellent wines. As with root wines the addition of some acid is necessary here (see 'Root Wines', chapter three), and this is put into the 'must' in the form of oranges and lemons.

12. Wines: Grapes - In the ordinary way, recipes for wines made entirely from grapes are not a practicable proposition. This is because grapes are merely crushed and fermented without either sugar or water being added. Provided you have enough grapes, making wines from them is the simplest wine-making of all that is, of course, provided you have good-quality grapes, all ripe and on the sweet side.

13. Liqueurs - In my grandmother's day brandy cost about five shillings a bottle (now we know what is meant by 'the good old days') and her recipes call for gallons of the stuff as casually as today's call for one measly bottle.

Nevertheless, one bottle of gin, whisky or brandy will give two bottles of the finished product with a high percentage of alcohol at half the cost of the commercial product.

14. Some Q & A - Q. I have been making wines for a number of years and upon your recommendation have recently graduated to using wine yeasts. I find these a little more expensive to use and have hit upon the idea of taking a little of one lot of fermenting wine to 'start off' another batch instead of using a freshly started 'starter bottle'.

15. The Right Glass - It is not so much a matter of using the right glass as it is of using the most suitable one. I am at a loss to understand the reason for so many shapes and sizes, which range from a pudding basin on a short stem to a saucer on a single stilt. Who designs them and who the devil buys them? Surely not the people who will be using them. I rather fancy that designers of glasses design them for a certain type of woman, knowing that if they design something elaborate and quite useless it will sell.

Appendix - Supplies and yeast mentioned in this book may be obtained from:

Berg & Sons, 511 Puyallup Avenue, Tacoma 2, Wash. Aetna Bottle Co., 708 Rainier Ave. South, Seattle 44, Wash. Milan Laboratory, 57 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. Semplex, Box 7208, Minneapolis, Minn. 55412 Wine Art, P.O. Box 2701, Vancouver 3, B.C., Canada

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