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liteboyo

Junior
Joined
Aug 6, 2022
Messages
6
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2
Location
Ireland
Hello everyone from Ireland.

I'm a new member who has just gone back to homebrewing/winemaking after quite a long break.
I began the art many moons ago with beer kits which were drank with my student mates in England.
In Ireland I moved on to wine making kits with varying results, no disasters, a few quite reasonables but mainly ok's.
Moving to Connemara I then moved on from kits to flower wines using local gorse and elderflower. The elderflower champagne in particular turned out pretty good and i have saved one bottle for a special occasion. One time the local supermarket got a stock of lychees fruit very cheap and having found a recipe to make a german type wine using lychees and peaches the result of that was probably my best effort to date. My last wine was made in 2012. A friend had a greenhouse with a vine which wound right around the whole inside. He could not use all the fruit and said I could take enough of the red grapes to make a few bottles of wine. He doubted it would work as he had failed in the past with the wine developing off tastes. It took some careful prep but the wine turned out quite drinkable. We shared the result but I did not have enough bottles for myself so a good percentage of my share was saved in 3 demijohns. I drank my bottles of wine some time ago but inertia set in and I just left the wine in the demijohns. Finally this year i got myself motivated again and bottled the wine. Well I think its wine but after 10 years in the demijohns it tastes more like sherry than wine and I think its pretty strong. What has happened to it ?
Ps. i have just started making some hard cider with apples from our garden. The cider is still fermenting in a demijohn, but i'll let you know how it turns out when I get to bottling latter this week.

Regards,

Gearóid
 
Hi Gearóid, welcome to the forum. How do you find winemaking from beer-making?
 
Welcome to WMT, and welcome back to winemaking.

What happened? Your wine got oxidized over the 10 years it sat in demijohns. Not a big surprse, really. But now you will know how to properly treat and store your finished wine in the future!
 
Thanks Sour grapes lesson learned. In truth i am amazed the misses didnt tell me to pour it away long ago.

Does oxidised mean it cannot be drunk/should not ne drunk. I guess i am a palatless philistine but it actually tastes like a sherry with a mule kick! I would not be out to drink a bottle of it but shared with an amiga a glass i am tempted.

Gearóid
 
Hi Gearóid, welcome to the forum. How do you find winemaking from beer-making?
Well its more challenging , more to go wrong, and more patience required to resist opening the bottles too soon and knocking a few back. Beer gives fairly instant gratification but the challenge especially of crafting a wine from flowers/fruits is more satisfying. I was particularly proud of a Gewurztraminer wine rendition i made using lychees and peaches many years ago. In the garden now I have a few different fruits, brambles, apple, rubarb as well as flowers such as gorse and elderflower, sadly no access to greenhouse grapes so i have a demijohn of cider currently fermenting. With the fine weather there is a bumper crop of apples hence the sneeky excuss to try cider. I have perhaps used apples which are still a month away from been fully juicy but hey if its not perfect i can always try again in a month. The apple trees are native so I am really keen to see how the cider turns out.

Regards,

Gearóid
 
Thanks Sour grapes lesson learned. In truth i am amazed the misses didnt tell me to pour it away long ago.

Does oxidised mean it cannot be drunk/should not ne drunk. I guess i am a palatless philistine but it actually tastes like a sherry with a mule kick! I would not be out to drink a bottle of it but shared with an amiga a glass i am tempted.

Gearóid
Welcome! Sherry is an oxidized type of wine. If you are not opposed to drinking, it will not hurt you. Keep it until you drink it or need the bottles. Madeira is similar but is cooked wine. There is a lot more to both but you get the idea.

Use your sherry for cooking. If you can tolerate the taste, it might be just the thing for cooking.
 
Welcome! Sherry is an oxidized type of wine. If you are not opposed to drinking, it will not hurt you. Keep it until you drink it or need the bottles. Madeira is similar but is cooked wine. There is a lot more to both but you get the idea.

Use your sherry for cooking. If you can tolerate the taste, it might be just the thing for cooking.
Hi VinesnBines,

I like the cooking suggestion, I might even use it latter when I make our Christmas cakes, assuming i dont drink it before !

Regards

Gearóid
 
Well its more challenging , more to go wrong, and more patience required to resist opening the bottles too soon and knocking a few back. Beer gives fairly instant gratification but the challenge especially of crafting a wine from flowers/fruits is more satisfying. I was particularly proud of a Gewurztraminer wine rendition i made using lychees and peaches many years ago. In the garden now I have a few different fruits, brambles, apple, rubarb as well as flowers such as gorse and elderflower, sadly no access to greenhouse grapes so i have a demijohn of cider currently fermenting. With the fine weather there is a bumper crop of apples hence the sneeky excuss to try cider. I have perhaps used apples which are still a month away from been fully juicy but hey if its not perfect i can always try again in a month. The apple trees are native so I am really keen to see how the cider turns out.

Regards,

Gearóid
Hi Gearóid,

I guess that's what makes patience a virtue.🙂 Congrats on that Gewurztraminer wine rendition you made using lychees and peaches. Have you been fermenting elderberries as well?
 
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