YOU CAN MAKE GOOD WINE FOR PENNIES A BOTTLE!

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by ALAN McNEILL:

Although homemade wine can be really terrible, it can also be really great. In fact (if you know how to go about it), you can actually make wine at home that will be better than any jug wine you're apt to buy. Not as good . Better. And you'll have the additional satisfaction of knowing that your do-it-yourself drink is all natural and alive ... not laced with some commercial winery's sorbates, sulfur dioxide, or glycerol. And not filtered through asbestos.

Thanks to the high pressures of today's marketplace, you see, commercial wineries (if they want to stay in business) are forced to pound their products into shape with filters and chemicals and pasteurization. They simply can't afford to make everyday wines (which sell for less than $3.00 a bottle) in any other way. The longer they hold a bottle or a jug or a vat of their product, the more it costs them. To a businessman, time is money. .. and the more of it he can squeeze out of the line he markets — be it widgets or wine — the more competitive he becomes.

Ahhh, and there's the rub. Time. Really good wine can only develop over time. And, unlike the owner of a commercial winery, time is the one ingredient you have plenty of. This is the edge that you, as a home winemaker, have. This is the advantage which — used wisely — will allow you to make better wine than you can buy.

AND IT'S EASY!

If you can fall out of bed in the morning, you can make good wine. It's that easy. But you'll never do it if you try to just blunder along, follow a recipe, throw in a little baker's yeast from time to time, and see what happens.

To make really good — even superb! — wine, you must understand the fundamentals of each step of the process. And you must learn to be absolutely religious about keeping everything in your mini-winery spotlessly clean at all times. Master these two basics of the art, and you'll be able to produce exceptional wine from almost any fruit and a variety of vegetables. (Don't laugh. The English even make the drink from hedge leaves . . . and one of the best wines I've ever tasted was made from beets.)

THE MYSTERIES OF FERMENTATION

The (to most people) seemingly mysterious world of fermentation is actually as straightforward and easy to comprehend as any other chemistry experiment. A solution — called must — of water, sugar, fruit juice, and fruit pulp is prepared in a scrupulously clean container and wine yeast is then introduced to the must.

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