Usually it's made from corn, but it is closer to beer than wine. Corn has a lot of starch that can be turned to sugar, so the beer mashing and sparging is required with corn. Distillation occurs after fermentation.
Yes I turn my own stafs, I was in my shop the other day and saw the jars sitting on a shelf (thats when the litebulb went on)so i made the stems and apoxied them to the jars.
Lloyd I hope that isn't you in there recently. It might be a tad cool! It would look even more cool with one in each hand while swimming there- although maybe one in each hand and one of them beer sipping cap contraptions.