I'm having fun on Twitter. It can easily turn into a time sink - you log on and read a few tweets and before you know it you've wasted a lot of time you didn't intend to. It took a couple of weeks before I was able to enter a routine. A good number of you are visiting me there with direct messages. Good to see you, but forgive me if I do not read or answer your tweets right away. As with email, I only have so much time. Also, if you ask me a question, you're going to get an answer not longer than 140 characters.

Don't know how to find me on Twitter? Just go to http://twitter.com/jackkellerwine or tweet me at @jackkellerwine. If you follow me, I'll follow you.

The serviceberries are ripening. In the past three weeks I've received four requests for "serviceberry", "shadbush" or "juneberry" wine recipes. Since I already have recipes posted for Allegheny Shadbush Wine, Downy Serviceberry Wines and Saskatoon Serviceberry Wines, and no one asked for a specific kind, I decided to go ahead and post a recipe I made a long time ago from canned Canadian Serviceberries. I converted it to a fresh berry recipe and posted it on my "Making Wines from Wild Plants" page (see links following this entry). However, while writing the page on Canadian Serviceberry Wine I had some thoughts I felt were inappropriate to post there but wanted to say somewhere, so this is where I will say them.

I am, of course, aware that these berries have many common names and that there are 20-22 species or varieties native to North America and each of those has a botanical (scientific) name rendering it unique from all others. And I am not even referring to named cultivars - another whole subject. But I am surprised to see how wrong the literature on the internet can be about these fine plants. There seems to be a lack of pride in being accurate. This not only pollutes the internet with lots of false information, but colors the reputations of the persons posting it. I am not speaking from a high horse. I have posted my share of incorrect information and I am sure I have not discovered and corrected all of it. But I try. But I simply no longer accept what I read on the internet unless I have vetted it to my satisfaction. I suggest you do the same.

I can live with the wrong species being commonly called "Downy Serviceberry" or "Saskatoon Berry." People move about and tend to apply a name they know to a plant that looks similar but is actually different. We are not all students of botany. But getting the common names wrong is one thing; getting the scientific name wrong is quite another.

There is a great deal of misinformation concerning the names of the species and varieties in the Amelanchier genus. One site claimed there are 118 representatives of this genus and listed their names. Well, this is absurd. There are at most a quarter that number. I know you can find respectable books and articles with long lists of names, but you have to look at the dates and the references to judge how relevant their information is today. There is a convention taxonomists must follow called the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) that dictates what can and cannot be accepted and how to determine which names will be used and which will not. Botanists love to find new species and name them, but very often they see something they were unaware of and name it even though it already has an accepted (or pending) name. Because of these problems, one must careful.

When I was building my pages on Native North American Grapes and Wines, I was totally confused for months. I found hundreds of binomials for grapes and spent years studying the literature and sorting it all out. To offer you some idea of what I had to sort though, I posted a page containing hundreds of names that have been offered over the years for Vitis species; the page is called "List of Offered Names for Vitis Species" and is linked to below.

I cannot be sure that my discussions of Serviceberries is 100% accurate, but I take great pains to try to make it so. I do not think that 80-90% of those posting on the same subject can make this claim.

I know of no serviceberries that can harm you unless you simply gorge yourself on unripe or infected fruit, but there are a lot of "berries" out there in the wild and some can make you regret eating or making wine from them. Be careful. Use a good plant guide, like one of those listed at the linked page below this entry.

Tomorrow is Father's Day. I hope you will remember you dad and honor him appropriately. If your father has passed on, remember him and honor his memory. If he is still with you, count him among your blessings and spend some time with him, even if on the phone. Remember, when you were born you did not come with a set of instructions, so if you feel he did some things wrong or unfairly then you are probably right, but I doubt you are perfect either. Tell Dad hi. Take him to dinner or cook one for him and enjoy a bottle of wine together. Life is uncertain and short, and we don't know how many more days we will be able to share. Make the most of those you have.

• Alleghany Shadbush Wine, recipe on my site>, recipe on my site
• Downy Serviceberry Wines, recipe on my site
• Saskatoon Serviceberry Wines, recipe on my site
• Canadian Serviceberry Wine, new recipe on my site
• Native North American Grapes and Wines, introductory page on my site
• List of Offered Names for Vitis Species, a very long list of names I compiled over many years
• The Winemaker's Library, scroll 2/3 down to the section on "Edible Wild Plant Books"
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I had finished a blog and was proofing it when the phone rang. While on the phone the lights went out for perhaps half a second. No, I had not saved it yet. That cost me about 3 hours of work. Really, really dumb.

Speaking of dumb, I made a big batch of sausage and green peppers last night, with onions, portabella slices, sun-dried tomatoes and smoked jalapeno (chipotle) in a roux. This is an old Cajun dish traditionally served on a sliced half (or quarter) of French bread, but last night I decided to serve it over rice. It was delicious and I had enough for another 4-6 servings, but I left it on the stove to cool down before putting away in the refrigerator and - you guessed it - it was still there this morning. It's the pork sausage I worry about. No matter what might be growing in it now, I know I can re-cook it and render it safe, but it will never taste the same. I called a friend who is a chef and he said he would dump it, so I did. He did manage to talk me out of my recipe, which of course was made up as I went. Somehow, he understood a "loose handful" (of sun-dried tomatoes) as a unit of measure.

Units of measure come into play in this entry's recipe. I will report it as I wrote it, but you're going to have to render your own interpretation of "large" or "small" flower heads.

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), is a perennial herb native throughout most of Europe and western Asia that has naturalized in North America and other places once introduced. Also known as Queen of the Meadow, Pride of the Meadow, Meadow-Wort, Meadow Queen, Lady of the Meadow, Dollof, Meadsweet and Bridewort, it grows in damp meadows and gardens and has long been prized in folk medicine for stomach, headache and general pain relief. Indeed, salicylic acid extracted from Meadowsweet flowers led to the development of aspirin by Bayer AG in 1897. It is also used in cooking and canning and to flavor beer, mead and wine. Our interest here is wine.

The whole herb possesses a pleasant taste, and the flowers and green parts have aromatic qualities highly prized in pot pourri. Young leaves, flowers and roots are brewed into a pleasant tasting homeopathic tea especially useful against gastro-intestinal ailments. The dried leaves are used as a flavorful, sweetening herb and condiment. Internal consumption should be avoided by people hypersensitive to aspirin or asthmatic. Otherwise, it would make a fine and useful herb in any garden that can be sufficiently watered to support it. It grows 1-2 meters high and blooms from June to early September with delicate, graceful cymes of creamy-white, but also lightly pinkish flowers; cultivars have been developed with reddish to purple blooms; all possess a strong, sweet smell.

Mitch Earl, from Ireland, asked in my Home Page's Guest Book for a wine recipe. I have made both mead and wine with meadowsweet, although I have made neither since I contracted adult onset asthma. The wine requires another base to give the product body. I chose Niagara Grape because it is readily available in any supermarket as frozen concentrate and its flavor does not overwhelm the herb, but I do believe the mead allows the flavor of the herb to shine better. Mitch probably cannot get Welch's frozen concentrates in Ireland, but he can substitute another grape - look for a more neutral flavor and aroma.

• 2 large (or 4 small) meadowsweet flower heads
• 2 cans (11.5 oz) Welch's 100% frozen grape concentrate
• 1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
• 2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• water to make 1 gallon
• wine yeast

Either remove individual flowers from the cluster and tie in nylon straining bag in primary or break flower clusters into several pieces and drop in (or bag in) primary. Meanwhile, bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve the sugar in the water. Remove from heat and add frozen concentrate. Add additional water to make one gallon and pour over flowers in primary. Dissolve remaining ingredients except yeast in cup od water and add to primary. Cover primary and set aside 12 hours. Make a starter solution now and husband during the 12-hour wait. After 12 hours, add starter solution and recover primary. When active fermentation slows down (5-7 days, depending on yeast), transfer to secondary and fit airlock. When clear, rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 30 days, stabilize, sweeten if desired and set aside another 30 days. Carefully rack into bottles. [Author's own recipe]

• Filipendula ulmaria, Wikipedia's page on Meadowsweet
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Occasionally I find a recipe that is just too good to mess with - to "tweak." I found one a few months back and am featuring it in this WineBlog entry. I'm not even rewriting it to reduce its size.

I had intended to post a second recipe in this entry, but I cannot seem to find my wine log sheet on it. I'll keep looking and get back with you when I find it.

Lon DePoppe is a Minnesota winemaker who frequents the WinePress.us forums and dispenses good advice and great recipes. One of his more infamous recipes is for a hard lemonade -- a wine really -- he calls "Sketter Pee." There's a colorful story that goes with the name, but let's just say that "skeeter" is short for "mosquito" and let it go at that. But that's really outside the point that this stuff is fantastic.

Here are some things to know about this stuff. First, it is 10% alcohol by design, which means don't tweak the recipe to make it stronger or you'll throw it out of balance. Second, serve it chilled; like lemonade, it's a hot weather drink and needs to be chilled. Third, you can bottle this stuff in beer bottles and cap 'em so they can go along on outings in the mini cooler. Fourth, this stuff goes down so smoothly that it is very easy to drink too much of it. Pace yourself, keep track of what you drink and be responsible.

What follows is Lon's recipe in his own words.

• 3 bottles of 32 oz 100% lemon juice (e.g. ReaLemon in the green plastic bottles or equivalent)
• 7 lbs sugar (or 16 cups)
• 3/4 tsp tannin
• 6 tsp yeast nutrient
• 2 tsp yeast energizer
• Approx 4 3/4 gallons water
• Yeast Slurry*

*Yeast slurry is the yeast lees from a previous batch of wine or mead from the first racking, without any pulp or seeds

Many people have difficulty getting lemonade to ferment. This is due, I believe, to several factors. The high acidity, the lack of natural nutrients, and preservatives that are often included in the lemon juice. Therefore, I do whatever I can to assist the process.

I use reverse osmosis water (this is by choice and tap water should work fine since much of the chlorine should evaporate out during the initial steps). Make invert sugar by adding your 16 cups sugar to a large stainless cooking pot along with 8 cups water and 14 teaspoons lemon juice. Stir sugar to dissolve and heat to just below boiling while stirring. Hold at this temperature for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool slightly and pour it into your primary along with 2 of the bottles of the lemon juice (reserve the last bottle until later), and enough additional water to make 5 1/2 gallons. Add the tannin, 3 tsp of the yeast nutrient and 1 tsp of the yeast energizer. Measure SG with hydrometer and record it. I shoot for an SG of around 1.070 which yields a beverage of around 10% alcohol if it ferments dry. Vigorously beat the mixture with a wire whip for a couple of minutes to introduce oxygen and purge it of artificial preservatives. I then cover the bucket with a dish towel and let the sit for 24 to 48 hours.

After 24-48 hours, give it another quick whip and then pour in yeast slurry from the first rack of another batch of wine. It sometimes takes a while, but you should have active fermentation within a couple of days. It helps to keep this must warm (75-80 degrees). You may need to occasionally whip in some additional oxygen with the whip if fermentation seems to be progressing slowly.

Periodically check the gravity. When it gets down to around 1.050, add the other 3 tsp of nutrient, the second tsp of energizer, and the last bottle of lemon juice; vigorously mix it in. Don't be afraid to introduce some oxygen to the mix at the same time. This late addition of yeast food and oxygen helps reduce the likelihood of your batch developing a sulfur-dioxide problem. (Because of the high acidity and low nutrition, lemon has a higher propensity to developing the sulfur-dioxide rotten egg smell.) After a couple of days, you can rack into a clean, sanitized carboy.

Allow to clear. This may take a month or two. Rack into a clean, sanitized carboy. Give the batch a quick degas (use agitation and vacuum if you have the equipment). Add 1/4 tsp potassium metabisulfite, 2 1/2 tsp sorbate, and Sparkolliod. After two weeks, the Skeeter Pee should be crystal clear. Rack into a clean, sanitized carboy, add 5 cups sugar, and stir to dissolve. Wait two weeks to be sure no new fermentation begins and bottle.

Notes: I don't call this "hard lemonade" because too many people have tried the commercial versions and they tend to make a mental impression of what it's going to taste like before trying it. When it doesn't taste just like the commercial versions (which are usually flavored malt beverages with 5% alcohol) they conclude that it's a poor reproduction. This stuff isn't a reproduction; it's the original home-style without the big marketing budget and price tag. Please be advised that you need to keep an eye on those you serve this to. Because it drinks easily on a hot day and the alcohol is about double that of commercial hard lemonades and beer, it is easy to accidentally over consume; it sneaks up on you real fast.

Additional notes: The finished beverage will often take on highlights of the wine which provided the yeast slurry. I've made this with the slurry of raspberry, crabapple, and peach wines. All seem to have kept a bit of the originating flavor elements into the finished beverage. I guess what I'm saying, keep this in mind when you decide which batch should donate it's yeast starter. In other words, I'm not sure if a batch of candy cane wine would be the best choice. [Lon DePoppe's recipe]

• Hard Lemonade, Lon's original recipe is in post #11
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I found two wines in my bathroom. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it's true. About eight years ago I filled all my wine racks and shelves and put a couple of cases - temporarily, of course - in the corner of my bathroom. Two cases became four, then six, then eight. Then I started on a closet. There are several problems with this practice, not least of which it is difficult to find a specific wine you might want. After a few years, you forget what you even have. Yes, the cases were marked, but as wines were removed others replaced them and the markings eventually became meaningless.

A few nights ago I removed every case of stored wine and opened them. I found a lot of wine I thought I had long ago consumed, but four bottles particularly caught my attention. I will only mention two - Luke Clark's 2004 Southern Home Muscadine and my own 2004 Red Raspberry Melomel (mead).

'Southern Home' is a cultivated muscadine by John Mortensen (Leesburg, FL) obtained by crossing Vitis rotundifolia cv. 'Summit' with the infamous P9-15 (see genealogy in first link following this entry). Because of its P9-15 heritage, it contains a few genes from Vitis vinifera cv. 'Black Morocco', so it is not a pure muscadine. 'Southern Home' possesses a uniquely beautiful leaf geometry and was patented "...as an ornamental, dooryard grape that could be grown on arbors around patios and as borders on fences." Its fruit were considered fit for the table or for jelly or juice, but due to color instability it was deemed "...undesirable for wine." Mortensen was quite wrong.

Luke Clark (Leesville, LA) presented me with two bottles of 2004 'Southern Home' wine the following April. Luke, myself and our better halves chilled and consumed one bottle on the spot. It was very good. I squirreled away the remaining bottle and after a while lost memory of it until I stumbled upon it a few nights ago.

Upon discovering the lost bottle I sadly thought I had missed out on a wonderful wine due to age. I carefully uncorked it and sniffed the mouth of the bottle, fully expecting evidence of oxidation or worse. I was surprised when greeted with a light, perfumed bouquet and fruity aroma. Standing on no ceremony, I lifted the bottle and took a hopeful sip. It was wonderful. I capped it with a T-cork and stood it in the refrigerator.

Two hours later I took down my finest Riedel and poured generously. I then laid a napkin over the glass to imprison the bouquet and let the glass sit about 20 minutes to allow the wine to warm to around 55 degrees F. By then I was salivating in anticipation, but dug out Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia soundtrack and waited for the 'Overture' to open before taking that first sip. Sometimes you just have to do it right!

In 2004 I obtained a gallon of raspberry honey with which to make some mead. To the uninitiated, raspberry honey is honey made from the pollen of raspberry blossoms. My plan was to make a varietal mead, but several days later at the supermarket I noticed and purchased a 20-ounce bag (1.25 pounds) of frozen red raspberries. I thus changed my plans and decided to make three gallons of raspberry varietal mead, a gallon of raspberry melomel (fruit-flavored mead) and a gallon of pyment (grape-flavored mead) using wild Mustang grapes. I made all three and assumed long ago that I had consumed them all. A few nights ago I happened upon a bottle of the red raspberry melomel.

Mead has legendary aging abilities, so I would have been surprised if it had peaked in only five years. I chilled the bottle for only about a half-hour and then carefully removed the cork. Still, gently pulling it from the bottle sucked the perfume bouquet out with the unmistakable aroma of raspberry, which quickly spread throughout the kitchen. The taste was every bit as good as the smell and I am enjoying it immensely. Digging through my wine logs, here is how I made it.

• 2 lb 10 oz raspberry (or any other) honey
• 1 lb 4 oz red raspberries
• Water to 1 gallon (about 3 liters)
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
• 1 Campden tablet
• 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate
• yeast

Bring one quart water to boil and slowly stir in honey. Add lemon juice and slowly stir periodically until water returns to boil. Adjust to low boil and hold about 40 minutes, stirring periodically and skimming off scum as it rises. Meanwhile, place defrosted raspberries in nylon bag, tie closed and mash with flat-bottomed wine bottle in bottom of primary. Separately, begin a yeast starter solution with mead or Champagne yeast. Pour honey water onto berries. Wait 15 minutes and add remaining water and yeast nutrient. Cover primary and wait until must is room temperature. Stir in yeast energizer and activated yeast starter solution. Stir twice daily for 4 days, remove nylon bag and discard pulp. Ferment two more days and transfer to secondary. Attach airlock and ferment to dryness. Rack into sanitized secondary in which a finely crushed Campden tablet and potassium sorbate have been dumped. Top up and reattach airlock. Set aside two months and rack again. Stir in 1/3 cup of honey until absolutely dissolved and bottle. Age at least one year. [Author's own recipe]

• United States Patent USPP09454, Mortensen's patent for 'Southern Home'
• P9-15: The Lure of the Vine, Thomas Dewolf's GREAT book
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Memorial Day: This American holiday, I assume, has counterparts in many (if not most) nations. Unlike Veterans Day, which honors all who serve or have served in their country's armed forces, Memorial Day specifically honors those who have given that "last full measure of devotion" to their country. It is their ultimate sacrifice that we honor on Memorial Day.

My consideration of Memorial Day echoes a brief but beautiful presentation by Humanity Healing Network called The Path of the Warrior. Rather than tell you about it, I'll simply offer it. It is up to you to watch it or not.

An email from a Tarheel marooned in Maryland reminded me of a pyment recipe that would fit well into his native state's culture. In the same vein, a phone call from an old Army buddy in North Carolina prompted me to dig out one that fits into a huge area of the Eastern United States.

• 10 lbs Muscadine grapes
• About 1 lb honey (target starting SG at 1.095)
• Water to bring total liquid to 1 gallon
• 2 crushed Campden tablets
• possible acid blend
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• wine or mead yeast

Make a yeast starter solution and husband it until needed. Crush grapes, tie inside nylon straining bag and place in primary along with any juice emitted. Bring one pint of water to a rolling boil, remove from heat and carefully add honey. Gently stir to dissolve honey and let sit about an hour to cool. Stir in one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and yeast nutrient and carefully pour the honey-water over the bag of grapes. Cover primary, set aside 10-12 hours and then stir in starter solution. Recover primary and set aside. After 5 days, remove nylon straining bag and press the grapes, returning their juice to primary. Do not add water at this time to make one gallon. When vigorous fermentation subsides, transfer to secondary and attach airlock. Wait about a week and then top up. When fermentation finishes, rack, top up and test acidity. It should not need much correcting, but bring up to 0.55-0.6 (if using Scuppernongs, bring to 0.6 to 0.65). Refit airlock and set aside 2 months. Rack again, wait another 2 months and rack once more, adding another finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. Check liquid level in airlock and set secondary aside for 3-4 months. Carefully check bottom for evidence of fine dusting of dead yeast. If present, rack very carefully, wait 2 weeks and bottle. If dusting is not evident, go ahead and bottle. Mead improves incredibly with age, so wait at least a year -- longer if you can stand it. [Author's own recipe]

Crush grapes, tie inside nylon straining bag and place in primary along with any juice emitted. Bring one pint of water to a rolling boil, remove from heat and carefully add honey. Gently stir to dissolve honey, pour over grapes in secondary and add a quart of cool water. Wait about an hour to cool further and test acidity; add acid blend to 0.6. Add one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and yeast nutrient. Cover and set aside 10-12 hours while feeding your yeast starter solution. Meanwhile, begin a yeast starter solution and maintain it until needed. After 10-12 hours, stir yeast starter into must. After five days, remove grapes and press, returning juice extracted to primary. When vigorous fermentation subsides, transfer to secondary and attach an airlock. Ferment to dryness, wait an additional month and rack. Set aside 2-3 additional months and rack into a sanitized secondary containing another finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. Set aside at least 30 days. Rack if required and bottle. Age at least a year -- two will be better but requires great will power. [Author's own recipe]

With only a little understanding of meadmaking, chemistry and native grapes, you can adapt these recipes to other native grape species or varieties. One that works in my area with about 8 pounds of grapes is V. cinerea var. helleri, known to old timers as V. helleri or V. berlandieri. Another I have used is V. monticola, adapting the Mustang Grape recipe I posted last time. The grapes had undergone verasion but were not fully ripe and had almost no sugar and high acid. I should have waited another 2-3 weeks, but there was evidence everywhere that the birds were testing them and I feared if I waited they would be gone. I've had similar experiences with other natives; some turned out well but one could not be made into anything drinkable and I was sorry to have denied the birds the grapes.

I know this will not interest most of you, but earlier this month I started a new rose petal wine, mentioned it here, and a few have told me they had taken the plunge and started one too. I thought I would update those who have begun one on mine. With fermentation complete and clarification all but complete, the wine has retained the color that has always eluded me and is a bright, strawberry rosé.

You may recall that I have always maintained that rose petal wines seldom retain the colors of the roses that lent them their scent and unique flavor. This time I picked a lot more petals from roses with the color of deep garnet with a lovely fragrance. The petals were then steeped in boiling water about a half-hour, which pulled the color from the velvety petals. About then I dissolved the sugar and added 11 ounces of just-thawed 100% white grape juice concentrate (Welch's). After about an hour's maceration, I dissolved in the sulfites, yeast nutrients and acid blend. The petals were left in.

I covered the primary and separately made a yeast starter solution. After about 10 hours, I pitched a yeast starter and recovered the primary. I left the petals in for the yeast to work on for another 32 hours. There is nothing magical about that number. It just happens to be the number of hours that passed before I thought they were looking depleted and feared that after much longer they might begin to deteriorate. I removed them with a slotted stainless steel spoon. The remaining liquid was opaque from a good bloom of yeast.

I took a hydrometer reading at day five and it was at 1.032. I went ahead and transferred it into a 4-liter secondary, which gave it a little headspace for foam. After affixing an airlock, I set the secondary in a pie-tin just in case the foam got too vigorous. This proved to be unnecessary, as I used Unican Sauternes dry yeast and it is generally a low foamer. Fermentation was complete in under two weeks and the wine fell clear in about 35 minutes. It always amazes me to see this happen.

The airlock has been still for a week, so last night I racked the wine into a one-gallon secondary and reset the airlock. The lees were very tight and I topped up with about a half-cup (150 mL) of 2007 cranberry wine I was in the process of consuming. I doubt this will affect the flavor much, but have noted it in my wine log just in case.

• Humanity Healing, featuring numerous videos besides The Path of the Warrior
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

The search engine on my site no longer works. Thanks Mark for informing me. I worked very late last night so did not have time to fix the problem last night. I did, however, diagnose the problem with the help of the support staff of my hosting company, which bought out my previous hosting company. You may recall that when they migrated my site to their servers, my site disappeared for three days. Shortly after they managed to resurrect it, I noticed my counter had disappeared. Seems they do not support the code that ran the counter. Now the search engine is down. You guessed it. They do not support the code that ran the search engine either.

I’ve found a third party, off-site search engine, but because I do not want to pay a monthly fee it will come with embedded ads. Rather than install it, I will continue looking to see if I can find a simple, server-side, non-branded engine my host will support (they’re pushing Google’s site engine, which I do not want). If anyone out there has such an engine to recommend, please contact me at jackredkellerwhitewine@gbluemail.com (delete the patriotic colors to reveal the email address).

People often ask if honey can be substituted for sugar and I say yes, but honey is about 17% water and 3% nonfermentable substances. According to one authority, honey contains more than 180 separate substances, which average (in descending order) fructose (38.2%), glucose (31.0%), water (17.1%), maltose (7.2%), nonfermentable solubles [minerals, vitamins, proteins, amino acids, organic acids, enzymes, etc.] (2.9%), trisaccharides and other fermentable carbohydrates (2.1%), sucrose (1.5%). These numbers are averages, but close enough to a given honey to rely on. Thus, only 80% of the honey is fermentable. This can (and often does) lead to adding too little or too much honey to a mead.

If one takes a wine recipe and substitutes honey for the sugar unit for unit, the result is not enough fermentable sugar to achieve the desired alcohol level. Two pounds of honey is equal to only 1.6 pounds of sugar and in a gallon of water will ferment to 9.6% alcohol. Because honey is more often than not sold by the pound rather than the volume, most mead recipes call for 3 pounds of honey or (God forbid) 4 pounds per gallon. Three pounds of honey equates to 2.4 pounds of sugar, which will ferment to around 14.5% alcohol in a gallon batch. If you’re just trying to produce something for a buzz, that’ll do it, but if you’re trying to produce a smooth and balanced mead, you’re going to have to work at it to overcome the hotness of the alcohol.

Now, I do understand that 4 pounds of honey per gallon will not all go into alcohol, but you’ll really have to select your yeast carefully to end up with a well-balanced, sweet, high alcohol mead. It's much better to use a reasonable amount of honey and make a reasonable mead.

Crush grapes, tie inside nylon straining bag and place in primary along with any juice. Bring one quart of water to a rolling boil, remove from heat and carefully add honey. Gently stir to dissolve honey and let sit about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make a yeast starter solution and husband it until needed. Add 1-1/2 quarts cold water to honey-water and stir in one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet and yeast nutrient and carefully pour water over grapes. Cover primary, set aside 10-12 hours and then stir in starter solution. Recover primary and set aside. After 5 days, remove nylon straining bag and press grapes, returning juice to primary. When vigorous fermentation subsides, transfer to secondary and attach airlock. When fermentation concludes, rack, top up and test acidity. Bring up to 0.55-0.6. Refit airlock and set aside 2 months. Rack again, wait another 2 months and rack once more, adding another finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. Make sure liquid level in airlock is sufficient and set secondary aside for 3-4 months. Carefully check bottom for evidence of fine dusting of dead yeast. If present, carefully rack, wait 2 weeks and bottle; if dusting is not present, bottle. Mead improves incredibly with age, so wait at least a year -- two if you are strong-willed. [Author's own recipe]

Disolve honey in 1 gallon of water. Crush and press grapes, add juice to honey-water. Add water to make 3 gallons. Test acidity and add acid blend to 0.6. Add three finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablets and yeast nutrient. Cover and set aside 10-12 hours while feeding a yeast starter solution. After 10-12 hours, stir yeast starter into must. When vigorous fermentation subsides, transfer to 3-gallon carboy and attach airlock. Ferment to dryness, wait additional month and rack. Set aside 3 additional months and rack into sanitized carboy containing 3 finely crushed Campden tablets and 1-1/2 tsp potassium sorbate. Wait 2-4 weeks and sweeten with 1 to 1/12 pounds of honey. Stir well and set aside at least 30 days. Rack if required and bottle. Age at least a year -- two will be better. [Author's own recipe]

• Honey Amount Converter, enter amount, check box in each column, scroll up for results
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I was going to mow the back acre today (it really needs it!) but it's raining. I will never be ungrateful for rain, but I do wish it would confine its appearance to the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Still, my grapes need it.

Budbreak two months ago of my Blanc du Bois among the
blue bonnets. Today the vines are loaded with grapes.

Look at the picture above and imagine the vines in full canopy and loaded with grapes. Also imagine all those beautiful blue bonnet flowers gone and the plants brown and dead. Yes, we need the rain.

A friend sent me some Medieval food recipes two days ago right around supper time. While reading them, I became so hungry I went into the kitchen and integrated one of the dishes (Whiskey Glazed Carrots) into the meal I had planned, which revolved around pan fried pork chops. Today I found a bottle of my 2003 Beetroot Wine in a case in a closet. Tonight's meal revolved around braised beef tips in porcini mushroom sauce on a bed of rice with another of the Medieval dishes and something I cooked up. I used some of the Beetroot Wine in the beef tips and mushroom sauce and also drank it with the meal. It was a fabulous pairing, so good in fact that I want to share the recipe - for the buttered greens and leeks.

My friend included the link he got the Medieval recipes from, so I need to acknowledge it also. See the second link after this entry. I've made two of the four recipes on the page and both were heavenly, but especially the following.

I'm going to make a couple of admissions here that could get me kicked out of the South. First, for some strange reason I cannot explain, I have not, as an adult responsible for feeding myself, ever eaten collard greens. I probably had a bad experience as a child in Louisiana, but I have no memory of it and so cannot point to a reason for avoiding collards. The recipe below calls for greens, mentioning collards, kale or chard. Yesterday my market had collards. Secondly, I have only cooked leeks into soups. I had no idea they could be used as below. Having said that, I am very glad I tried this recipe. Together, collards and leeks are wonderful. With 6-year old Beetroot Wine, they are even better.

• 1 leek
• 2 1-lb bunches of Collard Greens (or Kale or Swiss Chard)
• 4 qts water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• salt and pepper to taste

Trim the tough outer leaves down to light green from the leek with kitchen scissors. Trim the inner leaves only to remove toughness; leave most of the inner leaves intact. Trim off the roots and lay the leek on a cutting board. Halve it lengthwise with a sharp knife and then halve each of the halves. Wash them under running water to dislodge any dirt between the leaves. Back on the cutting board, cut them crosswise into 1/4-inch pieces all the way to the trimmed tips. Collect in bowl and set aside.

Wash the collards and prepare as follows. Lay a leaf on the cutting board with the leafy tip away from you. Using a sharp paring knife, cut the leaf lengthwise on either side of the tough rib. Discard the rib and tear or cut the two sides of the leaf into large (2 inch X 2 inch) pieces. Toss the pieces in a large bowl and repeat until all the leaves are in the bowl.

In a large pot bring the water and salt to a boil. Stir in the greens and leek pieces and boil about 5 minutes, or until soft but still bright green. Strain through a colander and pat dry with paper towel. Melt butter in a large skillet and toast the bread crumbs, stirring occasionally. I sliced and diced two English muffins for my bread crumbs and am glad I did. When bread crumbs start browning, reduce heat to low and toss in the cooked greens and leeks and stir well with a wooden spatula. Cook on low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste halfway through. Serve immediately.

The recipe says it will serve six, but my wife is away and it looks like I will get one fresh and three leftover servings. I sprinkled sesame seeds over them at the table - just something I like with spinach, so I thought it would work here (and it did). It was absolutely delicious with the braised beef tips and porcini mushroom sauce, corn cooked with sun-dried tomatoes and chopped roasted red peppers (my own creation), black bread, and the 2003 Beetroot Wine. That was over two hours ago and I'm still stuffed.

I received an email that claimed that at 5:30 a.m. on an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The drive starts at Porte Dauphine and winds through Pl. Charles de Gaulle, Champs- Elysees, Pl. de la Concorde, Tuileries, Pl. du Carrousel, Pl. de l'Opera, Pl. Pigalle, Pl. du Tertre, and ends on Montmartre with the Cathedral Sacre Coeur behind the car. The drive is nonstop and insane as the driver runs dozens of red lights, narrowly misses lorries, other automobiles and pedestrians, and even goes the wrong way on a one-way street. The email claims speeds of 140 mph in places, but I have my doubts.

The run is 8 minutes and 50 seconds. I must have watched it 4 or 5 times before I noticed something. I used to own a Ferrari 250 GT SWB with a slightly smaller V12 than the 275 GTB and the sound of the engine, the brakes and the heel-and-toe down-shifting are all real, but in a few places the sounds just do not coincide precisely with the movements of the car. It's a good dubbing, but a dubbing nonetheless. So I Googled it and discovered that the car is actually Claude LeLouch's Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, but the soundtrack really is Claude's Ferrari 275 GTB. It's an excellent dubbing, but not perfect. If I hadn't mentioned it you might never notice. Heck, you might not notice anyway. I had to watch it several times before I first suspected anything.

I never put links in the body of the WineBlog. But I'm going to make an exception here. Buckle up and watch the film here. It's one heck of a drive.

• Beetroot Wine, Best of Show recipe on my site
• Vegetables Fit for a King, Medieval vegie recipes
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I am blessed that my mother is still with us, as is my father, and am cognizant of all she and he and they have done for me throughout my 64 years of life. If your mother is still living, don't forget her tomorrow.

If you, dear reader, are a mother, let me join your child or children in wishing you a very happy Mother's Day. Lifting a glass of chilled, award winning Key Lime wine, "Cheers."

Okay, Pete, you win. I'm going to answer your question, so please stop asking it.

I have no idea where the term "minerality" came from, but it isn't officially a word. Still, wine snobs use it so it must mean something. In my Glossary of Winemaking Terms I relented and listed the non-word, defining it thusly:

Minerality: Claims that a particular wine captures the aroma and/or taste of a place -- the gout de terroir -- through aromas reminiscent of minerals or vineyard geology. While minerals don't have much smell to most people, some describe it as the aroma that rises when rain falls on parched ground. The technical term for this smell is petrichor, which is "the smell of rain on dry ground."

Now, I'll admit that I ripped that definition off, more or less, from Tim Patterson. But when it comes to defining words that are not really words, you've got to turn somewhere for inspiration. It just happens that I had bookmarked Tim's article on the subject because of the interesting word petrichor, not because I cared one wit about what imaginary characteristics people assigned to a wine. Tim noted:

Even though chunks of slate (or clay or sandy loam) don't make their way into the grapes, some elementary minerals and mineral compounds do get taken up from the ground and end up in the juice. They arrive in small quantities, not enough to independently influence flavor, one way or another. They do, however, play an important role in yeast nutrition and metabolism during fermentation. And they are not particularly glamorous minerals, not the stuff of lyrical tasting notes: potassium, magnesium, sodium and calcium are the major players, none of them with noteworthy aromatic properties, particulary in such low concentrations.

There is, however, one elementary mineral that does sometimes become noteworthy in wines, and not favorably - sulfur. I have yet to hear anyone refer to it as "minerality."

A good-too-many people think they are allergic to sulfites. A very small fraction of a percentage actually are, but the majority of those who think they are aren't. I read somewhere that the human body actually produces a gram of sulfites a day, about 10 times the amount found in a bottle of wine. But sulfites are only one side of the sulfur equation. On the other side are sulfides.

Elemental sulfur is acted upon in one of two ways. It is either oxidized or reduced, two opposing activities. Sulfur oxidizes to form sulfur dioxide, a gas which in excess stings the nose while prolonging the life of wine. It also forms bisulfite and sulfite ions, which want to bind with things in the wine and contribute to its ultimate complexity.

Sulfur reduces to form sulfides, of which there are many potentials. The best known is hydrogen sulfide, a foul-smelling gas reminiscent of rotten eggs or smelly flatulence. There are also a number of mercaptans with various odors such as asparagus, onions, wet wool, diesel fuel, or skunk. In excess, these are all undesirable in wine, but a little bit - let me stress little bit -- of any but the more vile can be a good thing in a young wine because they will usually disappear within a year in the bottle and actually open up the wine. Here I am referring to wine sealed under natural cork, as it does permit a gradual intake of oxygen to counter the reduction. If the wine is sealed with a screwcap, reduction can continue rather than abate.

Should you open a young wine during its first year and before all sulfides have disappeared, you will probably be tempted to dump the batch. Don't. Give it further time and see if it doesn't mature past the sulfide stage. If it doesn't, you can open the bottles and treat the wine with copper.

• Glossary of Winemaking Terms, on my site
• Myths of Minerality, by Tim Patterson in Wines & Vines
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

My thanks to Kenton for pointing me to a couple of problems with my RSS feed. His Google Chrome not only told him there were problems, but pointed precisely to the line and row in which the problem manifested. This was a great help and my sincerest thanks go out to him.

I know I could use a code generator and probably produce reliable pages most of the time (code generators seldom are foolproof all the time), but I like to do it myself. That is the only way I know of to ensure I know exactly what is happening (in theory) on my pages. You have no idea how easy it is to type a colon in place of a semi-colon, a comma in place of a period, a capital letter in place of a lower-case letter, etc. If the error occurs inside the html or xml tags, things stop working. If you have trouble with my feed or one of my pages, let me know at jackredkellerwhitewine@gbluemail.com (remove the patriotic colors from this address).

I received an email strongly suggesting I should open a Twitter account, an activity that had never crossed my mind. Well, at 2 a.m. yesterday morning I did it. I really haven't figured out how to use it yet, have no idea what I will use it for, but suspect I will figure it out. Millions of others seem to have done just that. My Twitter name for those who tweet is jackkellerwine.

I don't know why I did this other than to satisfy the request of a friend, but I'm willing to see where it goes. So far, I've spent several hours I didn't know I had to spare reading very short entries by many different people. Right now I am following 20 winemakers. If you tweet, follow me and I'll probably reciprocate.

I was watering my wife's roses and noted the ambrosiac aroma from one bush loaded with flowers and I starting counting them -- 38. Since my wife is out of town and won't miss them, I got a bowl and picked the petals. These are deep, velvety red. My last three batches were from yellow roses, peach roses and white roses, respectively, and made pales white wines. This promises to be a dark rosé if the color doesn't drop out.

Some will recall that back in January I said that even the deepest red roses will only make a pale pink wine, and these were the roses I was referring to. Why then, do I have hopes for a dark rosé this time? The reason is the initial color. The initial boiling water pour and one- hour maceration pulled a good color with a very vibrant hue from the petals. I added sugar and dissolved it before adding the frozen 100% white grape juice concentrate, which pulled the temperature down enough to add sulfites, yeast nutrients and acid blend. I won't know if the color sets until fermentation runs its course. Stay tuned....

I don't usually plug things like this, but a friend sent me a url, I went and watched. Now I watch it first thing in the morning while waiting for the coffee to brew. What a refreshing way to start the day!

More than 200 dancers performed their version of "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music in the Central Railway Station of Antwerp, Belgium. With just two rehearsals, they created this amazing stunt! Those four fantastic minutes started at 8:00 a.m. of March 23rd, 2009. It was a promotion stunt for a Belgian television program, where they are looking for someone to play the leading role, in the musical. Watch the expressions and reactions of the passers-by (some of whom join in).

• Scroll down to the January 4th, 2009 entry for my rose petal wine recipe
• The Sound of Music in Antwerp Central Railway Station,
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I'm having trouble with my internet connection again. The trees between my 50-foot antenna and the transmitter for my wireless signal are affected by the 30 mph southeast winds and their waving upper branches are waving through and slicing my signal. I am receiving much better than sending, so this file, although written last night, was not successfully sent until today. My apologies.

I visited a new shop in San Antonio this week - Home Brew Party, on Nacogdoches Road (for those of you not local, most of us ignore the "g" in Nacogdoches when pronouncing it). Manager Stu Hutchinson is also a member of the San Antonio Regional Wine Guild and Bexar (pronounced "Bear") Brewers. He entered his first wine competition last weekend and did very well.

The San Antonio Regional Wine Guild held its Spring Competition last Sunday (April 19th) and I entered seven wines. One (a Port) did not place, but three did very well. An Ison Muscadine I left ageing in the carboy for four years tied for runner-up (Honorable Mention) to Best of Show (Grape) with Martha Tarkington's Blanc du Bois. Then, a fruit wine (Key Lime) I made for my wife won Best of Show (Non-Grape) and the Bay Leaf wine I featured on this blog took runner-up (Honorable Mention) to Best of Show (Non-Grape). Thinking about these wins, I came up with a few tips to share about each of these wines.

First, the Ison Muscadine. Luke Clark grew and brought me a large cooler of Isons some four and a half years ago. Wanting to "do it right" and knowing no better maker of muscadine wines, I prepared the must while Luke was still visiting. However, Luke did not guide me as I had hoped he would, but rather helped me when requested and basically observed. This was not what I had hoped for, but he explained it with the comment, "Jack, there are many ways to skin a cat; I gave you the cat, so skin it." So we simply crushed eight gallons of grapes, added 3-1/2 gallons of water (this was a guess to produce a 5-gallon batch) and a quarter-teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite. About 6 hours later I sprinkled in 5 teaspoons of powdered pectic enzyme, stirred the mass to distribute the enzyme throughout and left it overnight. The next morning I drew off a cup of liquid and measured the specific gravity, added sugar as simple syrup to reach a specific gravity of 1.093, added acid blend to taste (2 teaspoons per gallon) and stirred in 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. A little later I pitched a sachet of Lalvin RC212, a tried and true Burgundy yeast with good extraction qualities and color stability. The grapes were pressed four days later, volume was adjusted (added about a pint) and the wine finished fermentation in about three weeks.

Label for Honorable Mention Ison Muscadine

I intended to bulk-age this wine for a year, so I racked it three times over a 5-month period to achieve clarity approaching brilliance. Thereafter, the bung was not disturbed until I bottled it last month. It bulk-aged almost exactly four years. I simply maintained the liquid in the airlock. Why four years? Well, I simply have made more wine than I have room to store in bottles, so it simply sat there. One day I checked the tag on the carboy, realized how long it had sat there, and hesitantly opened it to see if it was still drinkable. Indeed it was, so I bottled it.

SARWG President Larry Lothringer and Jack Keller holding
Honorable Mention and Best of Show rosettes

On to the Key Lime. My wife loves this wine, which I featured here in late November 2007. While making a new batch, I borrowed a tip from Martin Benke which I mentioned here a few months ago. In addition to the can of Welch's 100% frozen White Grape Juice Concentrate per gallon of wine, I added 200 mL of Finest Call (brand) Premium Triple Sec Syrup. I really cannot describe what this does to the taste, but it both softens the key lime sharpness and adds a mixture of flavors that set it apart. I was not surprised to won Best of Show (Non- Grape).

And now, the Bay Leaf. I have written here three times about the bay leaf wine, beginning on April 18, 2008 when I started experimenting with how much bay leaf to use. I published the final recipe three months ago in January, so refer to it for details. My tip here is age. The wine was very good when I bottled it in January, but when entered last weekend it was exactly one year to the day that I started the wine, and it was much better last weekend than it was three months ago. So, aging it at least a year is a very strong recommendation.

At the wine competition last week, an amalgamated cork was too old and had lost its ability to expand once removed from a bottle. Thus, when inserted into a bottle of elderberry wine after a T-cork broke apart it was too small and was pushed into the bottle. After the competition, I retrieved all my bottles to reuse them later. At home, I needed to remove the cork from the elderberry bottle.

I assume most of you have seen the video on removing a cork that has been pushed into a bottle, but in case you haven't I am linking to it below. I used this method to remove the amalgamated cork, which now was swollen from laying in the wine. I twisted and inserted 2/3 of a plastic shopping bag into the bottle, turned the bottle upside-down so the cork slid down toward the neck, blew into the bag to inflate it, and then grabbed the end of the bag and pulled. It took a hard tug, but the bag slid out with the captured cork. If you ever need to remove a cork from inside a bottle, don't forget this method. It really works.

I once used this method to remove a bung from a carboy. The trick there is to make sure the bung is aligned with the wedge pointed into the mouth of the carboy and that the plastic bag is large enough to capture the bung. I used a medium-sized trash can liner for this one.

• Winemaking and Homebrew Shops Online and Off, check here (in Texas) for Home Brew Party's web link
• See entry for January 11th, 2009 for "Lime-a-Rita" recipe that won Best of Show
• WineBlog July-December 2007 Archives, scroll to November 29, 2007 entry for basic Key Lime Wine recipe
• The Bay Leaf wine's development was reported on April 18th and 21st, 2008 and the final recipe was detailed on January 11th, 2009
• How to Remove a Cork from Inside a Bottle, in case the viewer above did not work
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Too much going on. Life is full enough without getting sick, having a sprinkler head break and discovering a Form 1099-INT for interest income AFTER you mailed in your tax returns. My medication has me wired, my irrigation specialist retired, and I have to figure out how to file an amended tax return. Oh, how I long for simpler times, of chicken and dumplings and dandelion wines.

April is the month I usually start a dandelion wine. Been too busy to think about it until now, and I'm not sure my medication will allow me to venture outside too long. Seems my eyes are terribly dilated and sunlight hurts. Maybe sunglasses will help, But I just tasted last year's dandelion and have a new recipe I want share - if there really is such a thing as a new dandelion recipe.

Believe it or not, this recipe came to me in a dream - I made the wine in the dream and was able to taste it as the dream time seemed elastic enough for the wine to age immediately. That was last year and I have tasted this wine. It is very, very good.

This recipe actually marries two excellent wines at the very beginning and melds them together as a complex "field blend." At the same time, it discriminates the "pickin's" to include only true dandelions while rejecting catsears (I described catsears in a previous post - see first link, below). You will need two nylon straining bags.

• 7 cups dandelion petals
• 1/2 cup dried golden chanterelle mushrooms
• 1-1/2 lbs granulated sugar (approximate)
• 20-oz can apricots in syrup
• 11.5-oz can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1 medium orange, juiced
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 3-1/3 qts water
• 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate
• 2 crushed Campden tablet
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Champagne yeast

Thaw Welch's frozen concentrate before starting. Separate dandelion petals from flowers (no "false dandelions" or catsears), saving petals only. Chop the dried mushrooms and tie in nylon staring bag with dandelion petals. Bring water to a boil. Meanwhile, drain the apricots but save the liquid they were canned in. Chop apricots and tie in second nylon straining bag. Put both bags in primary. When water boils, remove from heat and add grape concentrate, liquid from canned fruit and juice from orange and lemon. Add 1 lb. sugar and stir until dissolved. Measure S.G. and continue adding sugar (1/4 cup at a time, then stir to dissolve) until S.G. reaches 1.090-1.095. When S.G. is right, pour sweetened water over nylon straining bags in primary. Add tannin, yeast nutrient and one finely crushed Campden tablet and stir. Cover with cloth, wait 12 hours, then add pectic enzyme. Recover, wait additional 12 hours, then add activated yeast starter solution. When fermentation is very active stir, collapse bags by hand and push down into liquid. Don't worry if they float back up. After 4 days, remove bag of apricots and drip drain (don't squeeze). Return drained liquid to primary and discard fruit pulp. Two days later remove bag with dandelion petals and mushrooms and squeeze gently to remove liquid. Return liquid to primary and discard petals and pulp. Transfer liquid into sanitized secondary and fit air lock. Rack, top up and attach airlock every two months until wine is crystal clear and no new lees form between rackings. Stabilize with potassium sorbate and another finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, wait additional 14-21 days, and rack again if needed. Sweeten to taste with up to 1/4 cup sugar dissolved in 1/8 cup water and bottle the wine. Allow wine to age one year before tasting. [Author's own recipe, inspired by Tom Asp and a dream]

I will be starting this wine next weekend. Join me.

I have written about this before (see link, below) but it still comes up as a new topic from time to time. Recently two independent inquiries sought advice, each having unsuccessfully attempted to stop and active fermentation in order to capture some residual sugar at the correct balance point. What went wrong?

One did what most of us have done at one time or another - added the appropriate amounts of potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite and waited, but nothing happened. Why not?

Yes, this is how you stabilize a wine from future fermentation if you are going to sweeten it, but you stabilize a wine when it is still - when fermentation has already stopped. The potassium sorbate "neuters" any residual yeast that may be hanging around (there usually are at least a few), making them incapable of reproducing. If the added sugar revives them and they resume fermentation, they will die of old age without leaving any offspring. And potassium metabisulfite (I hope everyone learns this) does not kill yeast; it kills bacteria and fungi and does many other beneficial things for the wine, but it doesn't kill yeast unless you add so much of it as to make the wine undrinkable.

You can heat a wine or chill a wine to stop an active fermentation, but heating can adversely alter the taste (see second link, below). And it takes time to chill a wine sufficiently to kill all the yeast so you have to anticipate at what point you want fermentation stopped, guess at how long it will take the wine to chill to that point, and calculate at what specific gravity you should start chilling to make it all come together. I know it can be done, but I have no idea how to figure it all out.

I once took an actively fermenting wine to work and placed it in a -40 degrees freezer to get the temperature down quickly. The internal temperature got all the way down to 19 degrees and ice was forming on the inside of the glass before it stopped and I took it out. Several times I have placed carboys in regular refrigerators and seen fermentation continue for 12-16 hours. Regardless of the temperature limitations advertised for the yeast, once they are thriving they don't want to give up on life.

Your best bet is to use a yeast that reliably stops at a given alcohol point and then prime it with enough sugar to retain the residual sweetness you want and hope for the best. Even better, set the starting gravity at the desired alcohol level, ferment to dryness, stabilize the wine, and then sweeten to taste.

• Foreword to entry of April 30, 2003, WineBlog Archives
• Stopping Fermentation, scroll down to the February 10, 2004 entry
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I have been tasting wines for a distant friend, who likes to make "my kind" (unusual) of wines. She sends them to me in beer bottles, capped and all, and I enjoy them and then tell her how much. So far, I have tasted the Golden Canadian Maple Wine (an excellent mead), two fruit mélanges (one pomegranate dominate and the other heavy on mango), an excellent rhubarb (this one would give Tim Vandergrift a run for his money), and a dry cranberry-Concord grape blend. I still have Mandarin orange-chocolate and Bing cherry-chocolate to consume, and I know they will be good. These are from the woman who shared with me her secret for infusing the chocolate flavor into wines (see first link following this entry).

And I still have the better part of a case of wines (minus two bottles) from Cherokee Wines to drink my way through, and four bottles from a very kind chap in Michigan who experiments with various cherry varieties and both red and black raspberries. If you read my article in the next issue (May-June) of WineMaker magazine, you'll get the idea that I especially love black raspberry.

Raspberries belong to the Rubus genus, of which there are 300-400 species in the temperate regions of the world. In North America, it is found throughout the Rocky Mountain states, the Midwest, New England, and throughout Canada south of the Artic Circle. It can most often be found along the margins of woodlands, streambeds, clearings, roadsides, and abandoned fields. Red raspberries should be made as a fragrant, subtle wine. It should be made dry so that a subtle hint of tartness carries its distinctive flavor to the sides of the tongue as it is sipped, chilled. Like its cousin the red raspberry, the black raspberry is one of about a dozen or so varieties of the raspberry species native to the United States and Canada. Its wine is distinctively different from the red raspberry in flavor and can be made dry or sweet. Of the two, I prefer the black.

The following recipe is a variation of one that won Best of Show some 8 or 9 years ago. I made mine from frozen berries purchased in a gourmet market. They were expensive, the market only had a limited supply (which I bought out), and the wine was heavenly. It was also my wife's favorite wine.

• 4 lbs black raspberries
• 1 9-inch long vanilla bean
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 2 lbs sugar
• 7 pts water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast

Dissolve the sugar in boiling water, stirring to dissolve. Maintain at a simmer, stirring every 4-5 minutes to prevent sugar from caramelizing on bottom of pan. Wash, destem and tie berries in nylon straining bag, with vanilla bean cut into short (1/2-inch) segments, and place in bottom of your primary. Crush the berries in the bag with your hands (seriously consider wearing rubber gloves) or the flat bottom of a wine bottle. Pour boiling sugar-water over berries to set the color and extract the flavorful juice. Cover primary and allow to cool to 70 degrees F. Add yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme and re-cover the primary. After 12 hours, add wine yeast and re-cover the primary. Stir daily for a week, remove nylon bag and allow to drip drain about an hour while keeping the primary covered. Do not squeeze bag. Return drippings to the primary. Continue fermentation in the primary until specific gravity falls below 1.015. Transfer to an appropriately sized and sanitizes secondary, top up with water and attach an airlock.

Use a dark secondary or wrap clear one with brown paper to preserve the wonderful color. Ferment an additional 2 months, then rack, top up and reattach airlock. Rack again after additional 2 months. Wait one month, rack again, stabilize wine, top up with 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 1/4 cup boiling water and reattach airlock. If refermentation is not evident within 30 days, bottle in dark glass. Drink after one year. This is an excellent sweet wine, but the timelines described are critical. This batch only makes a gallon of wine. If you can make more, by all means do so. I am always ready to "evaluate" samples of this wine.

Several months back a reader asked about barbecue sauces and suggested I publish recipes every now and them. I requested reader input but received minimal replies and only one reader- submitted recipe until now. This one actually came as a package containing a recycled barbecue sauce bottle, a letter, and the recipe. I tried the sauce last night and it is very good. Here is the letter that accompanied it.

"Jack, over the years I have mined real treasures from your web site and blog, while becoming distressed whenever I read of your heart problems. I, too, have a bad heart and have had to adjust my diet accordingly. Thank goodness red wine is still allowed and even encouraged for health maintenance. I have a cookbook called 'Choices for a Healthy Heart' that I would recommend you look into. Within it is an excellent barbecue sauce recipe. I am inclosing a bottle of the sauce with the recipe printed on the back label, modified slightly. I hope you enjoy it and continue your blog for many more years."