The next thread gets involved because of what happened and how others replied prior to my reading the thread. Here is the entire post starting the thread:

"I started to bottle my stabilized blueberry wine. I had degassed it thoroughly and added appropriate sorbate 8 months ago so I felt safe adding some sugar as I bottled it to backsweeten. Before corking the bottles however, I noticed the sugar I added was causing fine bubbles in the bottles. It looked a lot like fermentation. I panicked and decided not to cork the bottles in case what I saw was refermentation starting up. I poured the wine back into the carboy, added more sorbate and replaced the valve.

"To my frustration, no fermentation seems to be taking place now that the wine with the added sugar is back in the carboy which means:

"The oxidation is what it is. I can't do anything about that. But what about the extra sorbate? Is that a problem? Can it impart bad flavors? Can it affect clarity or color? Can sorbate somehow be extracted? How bad have I messed up here?"

Although several other people had already offered reasonable comments and recommendations, I do take issue with one and would expand upon another, so I said I would just comment on those two things -- no, three.

First, I pointed out that I would be more concerned with the potential for early oxidation than too much sorbate. Potassium sorbate is the potassium salt of sorbic acid, so the active ingredient in the wine is sorbic acid -- which can be buffered or mellowed by age. But if your blueberry is actually oxidized, and I'm not convinced it is yet but it is certainly heading in that direction, blending with another, non-sorbated, wine will only cause the other wine to become prematurely oxidized. If the writer maintained an aseptic level of sulfites at bottling time, his risk of early oxidation is greatly reduced and may not even exist.

But, as a principle, one blends to enhance or integrate flavors, add complexity and/or overcome weaknesses with strengths. You cannot blend away a fault. If you blend a faulted wine with a non-faulted wine you dilute the fault but it is still there, and it will eventually consume the entire blend if it truly exists.

Oxidation is a fault. You can attack some of the symptoms of oxidation by fining with PVPP (I covered this long ago in my July 21, 2003 entry of my WineBlog), but you cannot remove or reverse the fault if one is there.

Second, I would let taste guide me. Another member suggested conducting a blind taste test with 2-3 other wines to see if the sorbate stands out. I acknowledged he has the right idea, but I would carry it a step farther and invite 2-3 friends with good palates to taste the wine without telling them what he did to it. The hard part is getting them to be brutally honest. Friends usually do not like to tell friends that there is something wrong with their wine, especially if they are hoping to enjoy more of it later. On the other hand, they might not find anything to criticize, and wouldn't that be a nice result? Or, they might find something else, something he would have overlooked because he was focusing on the sorbate.

My third comment concerns a personal peeve - the use of made-up words as if they are real. You sweeten a wine. You do not backsweeten it. Backsweeten is not a word. Check Webster's Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary. The sooner we all stop using non-words the sooner we will return English to a language of defined words and ensure real communication.

I think I have posted more insightful comments than these, but these rang a bell with a reader in Tuscaloosa. If they point out anything, it is that there is more to winemaking than at first meets the eye. You don't learn it making wines from kits. You don't learn it making wines from recipes. And you don't learn it by reading a scattering of different advice on forums -- but they all help you learn if you're willing to think. It isn't rocket science. The Sumerians made wine so I have no doubt you can too. But we have advanced beyond the wisdom of the ancients, and the more we learn the more we realize there is more to learn.

• Pet Loss Support Hotline, website for the UC-Davis hotline
• Gateway to Information on Pet Loss, from UC-Davis - contains many resources
• Strawberry Wines, my recipe page
• Frozen Strawberry Wine, my recipe
• Pectic Enzyme, the original thread. first topic
• WineBlog Archives, scroll down to July 21, 2003
• Too Much Sorbate, the original thread, second topoic
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I have not answered much email this week because I had no desire to do so. I lost my best friend on Monday, my loving and always caring English Springer Spaniel, Colitia -- Coli for short. If you are not a person who has had a loving, bonding relationship with a dog or other non-human companion, just skip these opening remarks. I won't mind and Coli certainly won't.

I wrote the Epitaph to Coli's web page a few hours after I buried her. I could have written a volume on what she meant to me and what I think I meant to her, but the few words I did write are enough. Love, after all, is a personal thing, expressed imperfectly even when expressed well. If Coli were still here, I wouldn't have to express it at all. Just touching her would tell her everything. And her love? It was expressed, at the very least, every time our eyes met. And my eyes are having trouble reading the screen through these raindrops, so I need to move on to winemaking....

Several people write every year asking about making wine from jam, jelly or preserves. I send them a generic recipe and make a mental note to address this here, but invariably forget. This seems like as good a time as any to cover the subject, especially since I received another request just a few days ago. I think it beneficial to first discuss the difference between the three...what, spreads? Yes. And while at it I will add three additional types of fruit spreads from which wines can be made.

Jelly: Jelly is made from fruit juice, usually highly clarified. Prized jellies are "sparkling" or "brilliant." Four things are required to make fruit juice turn into jelly: pectin (gelatin), sugar, acid, and heat.

Jam: Jams are made from crushed fruit. Because they contain fruit pulp and possibly very small seeds (as in blackberries, figs or strawberries), they are not clear. They also do not hold a cut edge or their shape (as jelly should) when removed from the jar. Crushed fruit, sugar and heat are all that are required to make jam.

Preserves: When fruits are combined with 3/4 to an equal amount of sugar (by weight) and cooked until the syrup is thick and the fruit transparent (or at least translucent) and plump, it is called preserves.

Fruit Butter: When the fruit pulp has been pressed through a sieve and cooked with sugar and perhaps spices until it is thick enough to spread, it is called a fruit butter.

Conserves: When several fruits are mixed together and crushed and then sweetened and cooked like jam, often with raisins and nut meats added, they are properly called conserves.

Marmalades: Fruits or a combination of fruits, often including citrus peels and fruits, are finely minced or grated and cooked in clear sugared and acidic juice until thick and jelly-like. Marmalades rely on natural pectin, so gelatin is rarely added but a small amount could be. Those who have only tried orange marmalade and have never experienced carrot-pineapple or orange-carrot or apricot- prune or black cherry-orange or orange-peach marmalade, you have my deepest sympathy. It's like not ever having eaten homemade vanilla ice cream; having never had it, you don't know what you are missing, but your pleasures probably would be enriched if you had had it at least once.

I'll begin with making wine from jelly because it is the most difficult of the spreads to make wine from, although not really difficult at all. You simply have to make sure you neutralize all the pectin in the jelly.

• 4 lbs (36 fl oz) any flavor jelly
• 1 lb granulated sugar
• 5 tsp powdered pectic enzyme
• 2-3 tsp citric acid *
• 1/2 tsp powdered grape tannin
• water to one gallon
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 pkt general purpose wine yeast

* This really depends on the jelly. Add 2 teaspoons for high acid fruit, 3 teaspoons for low acid fruit. Other considerations: add more tannin for tannin-neutral jellies, like peach or apple mint. You can match the wine yeast to the fruit, just as you would for the fresh fruit itself, or simply use a general purpose yeast you like.

Bring 3 quarts of water to boil, remove from heat and stir in all the jelly. Cover and set aside 4-5 hours (until room temperature). Transfer to primary, stir in pectic enzyme, cover primary, and set aside 3 days (72 hours). Transfer back to pot and bring to a boil and hold boil for 5 minutes. Put sugar, citric acid, powdered tannin, and yeast nutrient in primary. Pour liquid over dry ingredients in primary and stir until sugar is dissolved. Cover primary and set aside to cool to room temperature. At the same time, begin a yeast starter. When liquid is cool, check specific gravity and adjust to 1.095. Transfer to secondary but do not top up. Add activated yeast starter solution and cover with paper towel held in place with a rubber band. After 3 days seal with airlock. When vigorous fermentation subsides (5-7 days), top up; this will reduce the alcohol level slightly to a more amenable 11.5-12%. Wait 30 days and rack, sulfite, top up, and reattach airlock. Rack every 30 days (sulfite every other racking) until no new sediment forms and wine is clear. If wine doesn't fall perfectly clear in 60 days, add another teaspoon of pectic enzyme and wait 2 weeks. If still not clear, add another teaspoon. [NOTE: Be sure pectic enzyme has been stored properly. If wine does not clear after adding 7 teaspoons, replace the pectic enzyme.] Stabilize, sweeten if desired, wait 30 days, and bottle. Might taste after 3 months, but really should wait 6 or longer. [Author's own recipe]

The process is very much the same as for jelly, but less pectic enzyme is usually required. However, peach, plum, damson, and greengage are high in pectin and might require more enzyme than the recipe specifies.

• 4 lbs (36 fl oz) any flavor jam, preserves, fruit butter, conserves, or marmalade
• 1 lb granulated sugar
• 3 tsp powdered pectic enzyme
• 2-3 tsp citric acid *
• 1/2 tsp powdered grape tannin
• water to one gallon
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 pkt general purpose wine yeast

* The same considerations apply as to the jelly recipe.

Bring 3 quarts of water to boil, remove from heat and stir in all the fruit spread. Cover and set aside 4-5 hours (until room temperature). Transfer to primary, stir in pectic enzyme, cover primary, and set aside 3 days (72 hours). Strain through fine sieve or muslin cloth and transfer liquid back to pot; bring to a boil and hold boil for 5 minutes. Put sugar, citric acid, powdered tannin, and yeast nutrient in primary. Pour liquid over dry ingredients in primary and stir until sugar is dissolved. Cover primary and set aside to cool to room temperature. At the same time, begin a yeast starter. When liquid is cool, check specific gravity and adjust to 1.095. Transfer to secondary but do not top up. Add activated yeast starter solution and cover with paper towel held in place with a rubber band. After 3 days seal with airlock. When vigorous fermentation subsides (5-7 days), top up. Wait 30 days and rack, sulfite, top up, and reattach airlock. Rack every 30 days (sulfite every other racking) until no new sediment forms and wine is clear. If wine doesn't fall perfectly clear in 60 days, add another teaspoon of pectic enzyme and wait 2 weeks. If still not clear, add another teaspoon. Stabilize, sweeten if desired, wait 30 days, and bottle. Might taste after 3 months, but really should wait 6 or longer. [Author's own recipe]

• Colita, an English Springer Spaniel, Coli's web page
• Carrot-Pineapple Marmalade, a recipe for the adventurous
• Carrot-Orange Marmalade, another good recipe
• Peach-Orange Marmalade, this, my friends, is fabulous
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Once again I started receiving more email than I can handle. For those of you who have read my warnings that I might not respond for weeks and have written saying, "I know you might not answer for some time, but...," I thank you for your understanding. You can skip these opening remarks. For the gentleman who wrote (and he is not alone) with a problem and said he was sitting at his computer awaiting my answer, my apologies, but this is not a chat room and I am not sitting at my computer all day awaiting your problems. I have a day job, a family and some close friends, dependent pets, a property and home, two automobiles, a few grapevines, and civic and social responsibilities that fully occupy my time. I only look at unsolicited email an hour at most per day on then only on Mondays through Fridays when I can afford it. I can usually answer 2-4 inquiries a day -- sometimes as many as 6 -- but I rarely am asked questions that are not already answered in my WineBlog archives or elsewhere on my website. One only has to surf and read.

I no longer answer student surveys and get rather irate when asked to write a paper for them on any subject whatsoever. I do, however, still reply to one professor who sends me scanned student papers and asks if they were plagiarized from my website or if I plagiarized the students' papers. Thank you, Dr. R., for your humorous notes, for reminding me that plagiarism is a form of flattery, and for awarding me all of those A's for the papers submitted.

Here are a couple of subjects asked about in recent emails.

I don't know if it is because it is Spring or because so many mail order catalogs have arrived across America, but several of you are thinking about purchasing juice extractors of one kind or another. I will discuss three types I was recently asked about.

Juicers:

There are all kinds of juicers out there, both cheap and expensive. I have nothing insightful to say about them except to relate my experiences. My wife and I have tried several of the electric juicers spanning a wide range of quality and expense -- from $29.95 cheapies to $400-plus engineering marvels. Most (but not all) are fine for making juice to drink from most fruit and vegetables. To me there are four performance-related questions whose answers determine their worth. (1) How well do they juice carrots? (2) How well do they isolate the residual matter (pulp, seeds, stems) for disposal? (3) Do they grind any bitter tannins from the seeds of apples, pears, grapes, and other fruit? (4) How easily do they clean up? There are other questions that matter as well -- how durable and long-lasting are the products and how well does their manufacturer stand behind them? -- but the performance questions are, to me, crucial.

I am not "carrot juice nut" or even a big carrot juice drinker, but I recognize that carrot juice is a truly amazing, nutritional drink. If every man, woman and child above age three drank one 8-oz. glass of carrot juice biweekly, I am convinced the nation's health care costs would drop. I'm not kidding. So, my first question concerns carrots, not only because they are good for you but because they can be difficult for some juicers to process well. I have a friend who had a very expensive Tribest juicer and asked me to bring over my brand new Lequip, which was not a cheapie. When I got there, another person I did not know was there with an inexpensive juicer picked up at Sam's Club. That person went first and juiced a bunch of carrots -- just enough to produce 6 ounces of juice. We then took the pulp and ran it through my juicer and extrected another ounce of juice. The Tribest then extracted anther half-ounce from my residue.

The cheapie was a high RPM (over 3,000) centrifugal juicer, by far the most common type. Mine was a masticating juicer operating around 100 RPM. My friend's Tribest was a chopping press type also operating around 100 RPM. The two more expensive ones isolated the residue in a compartment for disposal but the cheapie didn't. The cheapie, however, was still the easiest to clean. Mine had the best warranty (6 years).

We then ran about a pint of grapes through each machine until no more juice was readily extracted. We examined the residue from each machine and found that the cheapie took part of the outer surface off the seeds, my Lequip did not, and the expensive Tribest did not but cracked several. Since all three of us were winemakers, I at least decided I had the best machine for the job. It cost over $200. The odd thing is, I almost never used it for juicing fruit for winemaking. You have to decide for yourself if you want to spend the money for one. If you do, make sure you have another use for it (like making carrot juice).

Citrus Juicers:

Again, there is a wide range here, and it includes both manual and electric. I have little to say about the manual ones except I use both the press and rotate type and the squeezie type -- for different fruit -- and they both work just fine. There are lever-press types I have never used, but I would think they would make juicing a bushel of oranges a breeze. Personally, unless I had more than two citrus trees and wanted to freeze their juice, or I had a handicap or infirmity that prevented using a manual one, or I had a commercial application requiring it, I could not justify the expense of an electric citrus juicer. But that's me. I can offer no advice for these. You're on your own.

Steam Extractors

I have to admit I have only tried using one of these three times at one setting. The steamer is used was a top-of-the-line brand and model and cost the friend who loaned it to me about $150. I will say this -- it did a superb job at extracting juice from frozen cranberries, fresh mayhaws and frozen grapes. The problem was that none of the wines made from the juices thus extracted cleared completely, and I treated them with both pectic and amyl (starch) enzymes and two fining agents. Two other friends and numerous forum members have reported similar experiences. If you want juice for drinking or for jelly, these are fabulous, and I mean that. Perhaps the slight disclarity is not universal across all fruit, but it is for the three I mentioned above using the steam juicer I used. Your mileage may vary.

I do not consider this the bottom line in evaluating these products. It is, however, except for the electric citrus juicers I haven't tried, the fruits of my experiences.

A fellow wrote asking about a wine that could be made with mayhaws, wild strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, and blueberries, with perhaps a little banana thrown in for body. And, he would prefer it sweet.

Okay, I realize it is not exactly the same mix of berries as I listed in my mixed berry wine recipe, but my recipe ought to serve as model of sorts for making such a wine, especially since it won a first place in a big competition. So if it isn't the same, what do you do? Well, for one thing you can adapt my recipe to your circumstances. If you go to my page on making wines from wild edible plants, you'll see a major section on it called "Adapting Recipes." It offers hints on general strategies to follow, fruit content, sugar content and supplementation, and acidity. But the first thing it does is tell you to look for a recipe for a fruit as close in taste to the one you are making. I don't care how you cut it, that should bring you back to my mixed berry wine recipe.

My recipe used 1 quart each of seven different kinds of berries. If you have fewer kinds of berries, the key is that I used 7 quarts of fruit. So mix the component amounts, but shoot for 7 quarts of fruit. I have no idea how many wild strawberries and other berries the reader will have, but the two obvious strategies are to either balance the flavors roughly equally or tilt the mix in favor of the flavor you want to push forward. I used apple juice in place of water, but you can use white grape juice, white cranberry juice, orange juice, or some other flavor readily available as a bottled juice or frozen concentrate in most food markets. However, bananas are best used by boiling them and using the water they were boiled in, so you cannot do as the writer asked using a fruit juice exclusively. You have to use some banana water.

Finally, the desire to finish the wine as a sweet wine is not a problem. Simply read any available instructions for sweetening a finished wine. My own directions are found in many places throughout my site, but certainly can be found in the last of my "Basic Steps." See the fifth link following this entry.

Okay, so here then is a sample recipe for a mixed wild berry wine using the ingredients the writer has. This certainly is not the only way to do it, but it shows how one might do it.

• 2 qts mayhaws
• 2 qts wild strawberries
• 1 qt wild blackberries
• 1 qt wild dewberries
• 1 qt wild blueberries
• 6 very ripe bananas
• 1 lb. granulated sugar
• 3 pts apple juice
• 1 pt water
• 1 tsp. citric acid
• 1 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 pkt general purpose wine yeast

Slice the bananas and place slices in pot with 1 pint water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered 30 minutes, adding 1/2 cup water after 15 minutes and again at 30 minutes. Strain off solids and discard, saving water but spooning off and discarding any scum on the surface. In separate operation, wash mayhaws and remove any stems. Place in nylon straining bag and mash in your primary with a piece of hardwood or the flat bottom of a wine bottle. Open bag and add remaining berries. Wearing rubber gloves, in primary tie bag closed and squeeze bag with hands until berries are well mashed. Leave bag in primary and add sugar. Pour banana water over sugar and add apple juice and all remaining ingredients except yeast. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Cover primary and set aside 8-10 hours. Add activated yeast starter and punch down bag twice a day with gloved hands or wooden spoon. Remove bag after three days of vigorous fermentation, allowing to drip drain (do not squeeze). Discard berry pulp and transfer liquid to secondary. Cover with paper towel held by rubber band until vigorous fermentation subsides (3- 5 days). Top up and affix airlock. Ferment to dryness and rack every 30 days until no new sediments form. Stabilize and sweeten as desired. Wait 30 days and bottle. Taste after 6 months. [Author's own recipe]

• Vegetable Guide, scroll down to "Carrots"
• Juicer Comparison Chart , one of several you might look up
• Requested Recipes, scroll down to "Mixed Berry Wine"
• Making Wines from Wild Plants, scroll down to "Adapting Recipes"
• The Basic Steps, click on the link to "Step 5" for stabilizing and sweetening details
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Yes, my last entry (April 18th, 2008) was a long one. It took me over 6 hours to write, and I actually wrote the portions on tesgüino before I wrote the portion on Bay Leaf Wine. Why? Because I was making the Bay Leaf Wine while writing the portions on tesgüino.

I knew when I wrote the Bay Leaf portion that I would get email about one aspect of it, and I did. Only one so far (thank you Jean), but I thought I would address the issue raised before getting any more email. It is much easier to answer here, once, than to answer several emails individually.

In my discussion about devising a Bay Leaf Wine recipe, I mentioned an off taste in the stronger infusions and discovered it was caused by cineole, an essential oil which has three reported side effects: "...it relieves gas (flatulence), is emetic (induces vomiting) and is diaphoretic (causes perspiration)." And so Jean in Montreal asked, "Why would you make a wine using a substance known to induce vomiting and cause excessive sweat?"

First of all, one needs to understand that a "reported" side effect is not necessarily the same as a "known" side effect. The innocent have been condemned more than once for guilt by association. A person might get sick eating something very familiar to their diet but which contains one ingredient they are not familiar with. It is perfectly understandable that they might blame the unfamiliar ingredient for their sickness rather than suspect the familiar of being tainted. Words have specified meaning and "reported" does not mean "known."

Second, some discussions will include every known or reported aspect of a thing. As I have warned in discussing making wines from plants that appear on various "toxic plant" lists, I have found instances where plants with leaves toxic to grazing sheep are on a list, while neither the leaves nor the fruit are harmful to man. If someone's horse fed on leaves of the Laurus nobilis and then threw up, it might get reported that the leaves were an emetic.

Third, the amount and manner of consumption makes a difference. In my WineBlog entry of April 6th, 2008, I mentioned some research by Dr. David Sinclair in which resveratrol extended life in yeast, a worm and a fruit fly, but he noted that a human would have to consume 1,000 bottles of wine a day to realize similar benefits. Similarly, if one searches for plants with emetic effects (see link following this entry), one will find wild ginger, papaw, most mustards, coreopsis, melons, broom, honeysuckle, alfalfa, bayberry, ginseng, apricot, elderberry, poke, cranberry and many other familiar, edible plants listed, but all need to be consumed in abnormal quantities to induce vomiting. And remember, if you need to induce vomiting you need only drink a glass of warm but very salty water, yet salt is also essential for human life. And, lest we forget, I am sure everyone reading this WineBlog has eaten many a stew or soup or gumbo or other dish that used bay leaves for flavoring. This ingredient is not an unknown. The point is that simply because something is identified as emetic doesn't mean it will necessarily make you vomit.

Fourth, the claim that it is diaphoretic (causes perspiration) does not concern me at all. I love hot chiles (jalapeños, habaneros, etc.) in many dishes, and all but the sweet ones (bell peppers, sweet banana peppers, etc.) are diaphoretic. Big deal.

My quandary in devising the recipe was in the amount of bay leaf to use, not the ingredient itself. My wine is now in secondary and the airlock is chugging away. In a few weeks I will taste it and determine if the aftertaste is acceptable -- if the flavor of the wine itself is not, I will give age a chance to work its miracle, as it does on so many wines that are undrinkable when new. But, if the aftertaste is unacceptable when young, I doubt it will improve with aging; in that case I will dilute the wine with Niagara grape wine.

If you are interested in making this wine, you may wish to wait until I next report on it to be assured the original recipe is sound. And yes, if the finished wine makes me throw up I will report this too.

The other email I received regarding my last WineBlog entry said, "I'll pass on bay leaf wine, but have a number of pecan trees still too young to produce nuts. Can I make wine from pecan leaves?" In a word, "Yes."

I am quite sure the American pecan (Carya illinoinensis) has been an important food source since man first stumbled upon it. I don't know how long it has been made into wine. The nuts themselves have defied every attempt I have made to make them into wine -- they simply go rancid and spoil the must. I have tried four times. But the leaves are another matter. Not unlike walnut leaves, they add an unusual but agreeable flavor to an otherwise neutral wine -- better than oak leaves.

I have seen two other recipes for pecan leaf wine, so the concept does not originate with me. This is, however, my own recipe, I made this wine before discovering the other two recipes.

• 3 cups pecan leaves, moderately packed
• 1-1/2 pounds demerara sugar
• 1 lb honey
• 11.5-oz. can Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 2 oranges (juice and zest)
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 6 pts water
• Montrachet wine yeast

Put the water on to boil. Meanwhile, collect the zest from the oranges and juice them. Put the zest in a primary with the washed pecan leaves and set aside the juice. When water boils, stir the sugar and honey into it until dissolved, then continue boiling 20 minutes. While boiling, skim scum from honey off surface. Remove from heat and pour water over leaves. Cover primary and set aside 24 hours. Strain leaves from water and stir in orange juice, white grape juice concentrate and yeast nutrient until dissolved. Add activated yeast starter and cover the primary. When vigorous fermentation subsides (5-7 days), transfer to secondary through strainer to catch zest and fit airlock. Put in warm place until fermentation completely stops. Rack into santitized secondary, add a finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, top up and refit airlock. Move to a cool place for six months, racking every 2 months and checking airlock occasionally. Stabilize and sweeten to taste if desired, bottle and age an additional six months. [Author's own recipe]

• Search Results: Emetic, from the Plants for a Future database
• Search Results: Emetic, this is Google's cache of the above search
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I've spent the past two evenings racking wines and cleaning up afterwards. I didn't realize how many wines I have in-progress. I have one batch in primary and 39 batches under airlocks. I really should count cases of empty bottles just to see where I am. And I'm down to around 80 corks....

The sad thing is that I really don't have anywhere to store newly bottled wine. My racks are full and I've run out of hidden places to stack cases. I guess I need to have a tasting party.

And there are still so many wines I want to make. A viewer wrote me recently asking for a recipe for bay leaf wine. I could not find a recipe, so I tried my hand at developing one. A fellow Texan wrote and asked what I know about Tesguino. I know a lot, actually, but have never made it. I'd like to. A lady in Colorado wonders if one could make blue spruce wine. I asked her to send me a pound and a half of new growth Colorado blue spruce bough tips and I would attempt to develop a recipe. She wrote back -- the boughs are on the way. And I have always wanted to try making a licorice wine.

I thought it would be a good idea to talk about how I go about developing recipes. I'll use the first two examples just mentioned to illustrate the way I go about doing this.

The woman who suggested this said, "I would love to have a go at this as I think it would taste like the Greek retsina." I'm wasn't so sure about the comparison, but thought it worth a try. If anyone out there has a proven recipe for this wine, please send it to me. I would like to compare it with what I did.

To begin with, I have no idea how many bay leaves would be required to make this wine. It so happens that I have a great quantity on hand, thanks to a dear friend who lives in the Sierra Nevadas of California and has a bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) growing on his property. Every few years I receive a box from him filled with prunings of new growth with young but hardened leaves. After I strip the leaves from the branches, I dry half in the sun, oven or dehydrator, depending on the circumstances at the time, and freeze the other half. Several hours ago I broke up 24 dried leaves and poured one pint of boiling water over them. Every half-hour for three hours I placed the pint in the microwave and brought it back to a boil (2 minutes on high). I can't tell you how wonderful the kitchen smelled -- and I do understand why the woman thought it might taste like retsina.

About an hour ago I began experimenting with my infusion of bay leaf. Into one wine glass I poured 20 mL of the infusion. Into a second I poured 20 mL of infusion and 20 mL of water. Into a third I poured 20 mL of infusion and 40 mL of water. Finally, into a fourth I poured 20 mL of infusion and 60 mL of water. I felt confident that one of these strengths would be adequate, or at least two of them would define a bracket with which to make further dilutions. I recognize the fault in this method -- that I am not working with a fermented base and therefore the flavor will not be true -- but my purpose was to gain some appreciation of the amount of leaves I will need for one gallon of wine. I can adjust the flavor of the final product through blending with Niagara or some other white wine.

And so I tasted each sample, beginning with the most diluted (3:1 water to infusion). I found it mildly bitter and tried to imagine it fermented with perhaps a can of Niagara frozen concentrate per gallon. After a few minutes, I tasted the 2:1 dilution. The bitterness was now pronounced and I knew I would not taste the remaining two samples (1:1 dilution and pure infusion). So I dumped those two samples and took down a fifth wine glass. I had the two samples with 40 mL of water and 60 mL of water, so I poured 20 mL of infusion to each of the three empty glasses and to one added 45 mL of water, to the next added 50 mL of water, and to the third added 55 mL of water. I arranged the samples from most diluted to least and again began tasting. I soon decided that the middle ground -- 50 mL of water to 20 mL of infusion -- best suited my taste. But, while washing and drying the wine glasses, the very distinct aftertaste lingered on. I decided I would not drink any water or other beverage because I wanted to see how long this would persist. The aftertaste was not initially disagreeable, but after 15 minutes it was as strong as ever and by then was quite disagreeable. This sent me to the computer.

The bitterness is caused by the essential oil of the leaf, the principal component of which is cineole, also known as wormseed oil or eucalyptol (C₁₀H₁₈ O), which exhibits an odor of camphor. Medicinally, it possesses three known (or at least reported) traits; it relieves gas (flatulence), is emetic (induces vomiting) and is diaphoretic (causes perspiration). After reading that, I drank an 8-oz. glass of Welch's Concord grape juice, which at least washed away the aftertaste from the bay leaf infusion.

Because I do not wish to introduce too much of anything that might induce vomiting and because the dilution I had selected left such a strong and disagreeable aftertaste, I decided to go back to the 3:1 ratio (60 mL of water to 20 mL of infusion). I remixed a sample at that strength and tasted it. A slight aftertaste was noted in the finish but did not persist beyond a minute. And with that observation I started a wine with the following recipe.

• 48 bay leaves *
• 1 lb. 12 oz. dark brown sugar
• water to one gallon
• 2 bitter oranges or clementines
• 1 11.5-oz. can of Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Wine yeast

* I can only attest to the bay leaves I have. Other bay leaves may be more or less potent in flavor and essential oil. Other thoughts: White granulated cane sugar can be used instead of brown sugar. You can also use 2 teaspoons of acid blend instead of the oranges, but I though the orange flavor, like the molasses in the brown sugar, might create a complexity otherwise lacking. Finally, I'm sure the wine will be too thin without the white grape concentrate.

Place the leaves in a 1-quart pot with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer under a lid for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, use a grater to remove the zest of the oranges and then juice them. Add the juice to a primary and the zest to the simmering bay leaves. Add the brown sugar, grape concentrate, 5 pints of cold water, and yeast nutrient to the primary. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. When time, strain off the bay leaves and orange zest and add only the infused water to the primary. Stir and allow to cool until under 90 degrees F. Add activated yeast and cover primary. After 3 days, transfer to secondary, top up and attach airlock. After 30 days, rack, stir in one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, top up and reattach airlock. Repeat every 30 days (only add Campden tablet every other racking) until clear and no new sediments form. If you want to sweeten, stabilize, sweeten to taste with simple syrup, reattach airlock, and set aside 30 days. Bottle and allow at least 3 months before tasting. Will probably improve with additional aging. [Author's own recipe]

[Note: If your browser does not display the word Tesgüino correctly, you may wish to obtain an updated version, try another browser, or simply continue using the one you have knowing it does not display content fully and as intended; the word "tesguino" has two dots above the "u" to aid in pronunciation -- it is pronounced tez.gwee.noh, but the second syllable is sounded with the lips rounded into an O.]

Tesgüino is a mild alcoholic drink -- more of a beer than a wine -- made in every country where corn is an important crop. It is most identified with the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua, Mexico, but also with the Native Americans of the American Southwest -- the Apache, Navajo, Hopi, Yaqui, and Pima peoples. It varies in strength from 3 to 12% alcohol, with the average being around 4-5%. When made at the low end of the alcohol scale, it needs to be consumed within a few days or refrigerated, as it will certainly spoil if stored a week at room temperature.

Tesgüino is a slurry-like, non-clarified alcoholic beverage prepared by fermentation of germinated corn (maize) or maize stalk juice. The term tesgüino comes from the Aztec tecuin, meaning heartbeat, and refers to the importance of the drink to life. The Tarahumaras, who consume tesgüino at any excuse, differentiate among various types of tesgüino -- that prepared from maize stalk juice is paciki, that which incorporates the bark of certain species of Rubiaceae, as batari. The beverage is also referred to as sugiki. The Tepehuano Indians in Mexico refer to tesgüino made from germinated maize as navaitai and that made from the juice of maize stalks as vougadi navaitai.

I have a recipe passed down by the late Dorothy Alatorre (in her "Home Wines of North America"), but after researching the beverage and discussing this drink with a couple from Chihuahua I have decided that Dorothy's recipe is more closely that for traditional Tepache, another alcoholic beverage from Mexico (I am aware that it is popular today to make Tepache from pineapple skins and not corn, but the traditional drink was made from corn). But, with all due respect to the late mentor, I will first give her recipe and then a more traditional recipe as I have come to understand it.

• 2 lbs dried corn
• water to one gallon
• 1 orange
• 2 piloncillos *
• 3" cinnamon stick
• Wine yeast starter for one gallon of wine

* Piloncillos are cones made from the raw sugar crust remaining in the boiler in the processing of sugar; if not available in your area, substitute one cup of finely packed brown sugar for each piloncillo cone.

Shuck the corn from the ear and roast it in a shallow pan until it is pale brown. Then grind it and put it in the primary fermentor. Add the water, the juice and zest of the orange, the cinnamon stick, and the piloncillos, broken into small pieces. When the piloncillos have been stirred enough to dissolve them, add the yeast starter, cover the primary, and leave to ferment three to five days, stirring daily. Then strain, cool and enjoy. This beverage will finish between 5.5 and 6.5% alcohol. [Recipe from Dorothy Alatorre's Home Wines of North America]

Let me be clear about one thing. This recipe makes a beverage that fits the alcohol level indicative of wine. For that reason, some people south of the U.S.-Mexican border may not consider it to be tesgüino. So be it. I just hope they appreciate the method used in this recipe, as it is far truer to traditional methods than is Dorothy's.

• 3 lbs dried corn
• water to one gallon
• 1 orange *
• 4 piloncillos
• "catalyst" **
• Wine yeast starter for one gallon of wine

* Traditional tesgüino does not use an acid source, but I will follow Dorothy here and include the orange to make it more of a wine than a beer.

** In this context, "catalyst" does not mean what it means in chemistry, but rather is an additive that changes the flavor character of the drink. For example, in the first linked reference below, the authors go into great detail about catalysts: "The most common catalysts in the vicinity of Cannon Urique in Chihuahua are bark (batari) or kakwara (Randia echinocarpa, R. watsoni, and R. laevigata) and kaya (Coutarea pterosperma), which are chopped, ground, and boiled for many hours prior to being added to the tesgüino....At higher altitudes where pine trees grow, the catalysts used are leaves of roninowa (Stevia serrata), rojisuwi (Chimaphila maculata), and ubitakuwari (Datura meteloides); stems of basiawi (Bromus arizonicus), roots of gotoko, otoko, or goto (Phaseolus metcalfei and Plumbago scandens ); rawici kitakame or "mouse´s ear" (Hieracium fendleri); and two unidentified plants, one of the Graminea species, and the other a legume, gotoborisi." For the purpose of this recipe (and for those who are not botanists), the catalyst can be anything that adds flavor to the beverage -- anise seed, fennel seed, cinnamon bark, a few cloves, vanilla bean, some elderberry juice, backberry juice, blueberry juice, sassafras root bark etc. When adding juice, it must be factored into the total liquid quantity for the amount of tesgüino being produced.

When I say "dried corn," I mean corn on the cob from the past season that has been dried into seed corn. I do not mean dried cracked corn or deer corn. Shuck the corn from the cob and soak it in water for two days, adding water as needed to keep the kernels covered. Drain the kernels in a colander and place the colander on a cake pan or other device to catch drippings and place them in a dark place. Moisten and toss the kernels to turn them twice daily until they start to germinate. It is important they be kept in the dark lest the sprouts turn green and bitter. When the sprouts are at least 1 but not more than 2 inches long, remove them and grind them with a manual stone mill or powered metal mill, then boiled in water until the mixture turns yellow. This can take up to 8 hours to accomplish. The solids are strained from the liquid and the latter is mixed with the "catalyst" and poured into a primary where the piloncillos have been broken and the juice of the orange added. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cover until the liquid cools to room temperature, then add activated yeast starter. After two days, transfer to a secondary and attach airlock. Ferment to dryness. It is now tesgüino and can be consumed in its cloudy state or allowed to clear. Alcohol will be between 10 and 13%, so the tesgüino can be bottled and allowed to age, but don't overdo it. [Author's recipe]

• Cereal Fermentations in Latin American Countries, an incredible reference and trivia resource
• Maize as a Food, scroll down to "Maize As a Fermented Beverage"
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I hate income taxes. It's bad enough you have to pay them, but to have to wade through the virtual mountain of forms, schedules, work sheets, instructions, tables, publications, etc. required to figure and file a return is just torture. So, for some 18-20 years I have been using software to assist me. About every three years or so it seems something changes in our situation to really complicate the return. It isn't like the changes in my life are so unusual or convoluted in the human experience that the software maker wouldn't think of including them as possibilities, but rather that they all use this "interview" format and you have no idea as you go through it when, where or whether they will ever ask you the question that will break you out of the mainstream return and handle your situation.

The Help files with these programs used to be helpful. Now, at least with the one I've used for the past 5-6 years, you press Help and get a screen saying there are 29 or so ways you can get help -- just go to Help Central and do this and that. It really would be helpful if just one screen accessible through the Help menu had the words "Help Central" at the top so you would know you are in the right place. And remember when Help menus had a feature called an "index," or perhaps a "search engine" that actually searched the "help" references to find an instruction about the word or phrase you were searching? It's like they hire a new software design team every 2-3 years that starts over rather than building on the proven features of the existing program.

The good news is that I finally finished after two agonizing weeks, two phone calls to the company and hours of being on hold (the company representatives were NOT able to answer my questions). I then took the printed and signed returns to the post office at 10:00 a.m. Thursday and paid a small fortune to send them by overnight express mail to my wife to sign (she is in California, creating a couple of those complicating circumstances the tax preparation program was ill-designed to deal with easily). And, well, Murphy's law asserted itself -- it was NOT delivered the next day as promised and paid for, the tracking program the U.S. Postal Service uses is only updated every evening so I had to wait until after midnight on the 11th to learn it never even left San Antonio on Thursday and didn't arrive at San Bernardino until Friday evening. That's it. No further information. Thank you very much from the U.S. government and please stand by for another postal rate increase next month. And people wonder why I've had two heart attacks....

So here's a bit of friendly advice from someone who has had it with governmental inefficiency (oh, and you want to trust your health care to these people?): if it absolutely has to be there the next day, there are private companies that will deliver as promised and for less money, too. Also, if what has to be there tomorrow happens to be wine, remember that it is illegal to ship wine through the U.S. Postal Service, so by law you will have to chose a more efficient service provider. Good luck with that.

A reader wrote, "Is it fair to enter wine made from kits versus wine made from grapes or juice in amateur winemaking competitions?

"Let's see: with wine kits, a company sources good juice from around the world, the company gives you packets of yeast, Bentonite, Meta[bisulfite], and everything you need, and complete directions as to timing and when one should add each packet.

"Let's contrast that with wine made from Juice or Grapes. Now one has to choose the yeast, choose the fining agent(s), determine when to rack, how to cold-stabilize, as well as a multitude of other decision points.

"Now why should both of these types of wine (kit vs. juice/grapes) be judged against each other in competitions such as the WineMaker competition??

"I make both wine from juice/grapes, and wine from kits when I really like that wine. I would never enter a wine made from a kit into a contest because it would feel like entering a cake made from a Betty Crocker package into a home-made cake contest."

You have no idea how this question has perplexed competition organizers over the past few years -- especially since the kit manufacturers got their act together and started producing very high quality kits.

The San Antonio Regional Wine Guild has struggled with this same question. I was on the committee that had to resolve the issue. Our concerns went beyond those of the writer above because we have many members who grow their own grapes and can easily spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars a year producing a crop and protecting it from the birds, the grape berry moth, leaf rollers, and a dozen diseases. They too do not think it fair that their lovingly-made wines have to compete with those of the person who spends $79 on a manufactured kit with exacting instructions.

But the person who lives in an apartment or confined tract home has as much right to compete as the person who lives on the country homestead. There has to be an accommodation for each. Our concern in the Wine Guild was with increasing the number of categories. We already have 18, and if we added a category for kit wines in each grape category except native grape dry and native grape sweet, we would add seven categories -- red dry, red sweet, white dry, white sweet, rosé dry, rosé sweet, and fortified. There are good reasons for not wanting to do this, so we reached a compromise. As with most compromises, not everyone is happy. We will reevaluate this annually. We may just have to suck it up and create the new categories.

Our compromise? We require that for grape wines you indicate at registration whether the wine is from a kit or estate-grown grapes -- we rarely have members making wine from purchased juice. Wines made from purchased grapes are not indicated, as our concern was that estate wines not be judged with kit wines. If we have five wines in any category that are either estate wines or kit wines, they are broken out into and judged as a separate category. Otherwise, they are judged together.

This is not a perfect system, but so far it has worked reasonably well.

A reader from Eugene, Oregon asked me some questions about cranberry wine. In the course of answering him, I mentioned that cranberry is one of my favorite non-grape wines and tastes a lot like white Zinfandel. This comment resulted in the misunderstanding that I produced a white cranberry wine; I received the followed-up question, "How do you get white wine from cranberries?"

I replied that I do not. I get a blush, sometimes more red than blush, but never a deep red wine and certainly never a white wine. I said it compares in taste to a White Zinfandel (which is a blush, not a true white wine).

I'm sure you have seen white cranberry juice in the supermarket, sold in 64 ounce jugs. This is a blend of white grape and cranberry juice. I assume they crush the berries and draw the juice immediately away from the red skins to avoid any color. It does not taste like cranberry juice to me. I've made wine with it and it was very nondescript -- flavorless, actually. It would be a good white to blend with a white wine to dilute an overpowering flavor -- like a lilac or elderflower wine made with way too many flowers.

I received a deeply appreciated email of thanks that included the following: "My friends and I love the hot stuff. We're always putting habanero peppers in salsa, sausages, ice cream, etc. We thought, 'Why not wine?' It seems you've had some real success thus far with jalapeños, and I was wondering if you'd any ideas on making a wine with a little bigger kick to it."

Okay, I have six Habanero Wine recipes. With minor variation, they are essentially the same except for the amount of habanero chiles to use (they are chiles, not peppers). Personally, I like the taste of baked habaneros, but that taste is lost in the wine due to the heat and the fact that the taste comes from the baked chiles, not the fresh ones. So, for my wine, I have settled on 2 chiles per gallon but know someone who uses 15-18. To each his own. I use it only for marinading meats. For drinking, I fall back on jalapeño, New Mexican Hatch or pasillas. Chipotles (smoked jalapeños) also make a good tasting wine. So, in my mind it boils down to taste. The habanero wines really lack the taste of habaneros but not the heat, but if heat is what you want, then go for it. The recipe below will have better mouthfeel because it is essentially a Niagara grape wine spiced with habaneros.

• n habaneros *
• 1/2 cup malt extract (optional)
• 6 oz granulated sugar
• 3 11.5-oz. cans Welch's 100% White Grape Juice frozen concentrate
• 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet
• water to one gallon
• 1 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 sachet any white wine yeast

* n represents any number you care to use

Wear rubber or latex gloves when handling the habaneros, the must once the habaneros have been added, and the finished wine (when racking or bottling or checking specific gravity). If you are "Machoman" or just marginally intelligent, then don't wear them. Chop the chiles. Feel the texture. Great, huh? Now go use the restroom, touching only what you need to touch to do the deed. Feels good, doesn't it? Wear the gloves.

Chop the chiles roughly, finely, it makes no difference. Remove the seeds or leave them in; that too makes no difference, as we are waaay beyond subtleties with this chile. If you have an old jelly bag you can sacrifice or perhaps the foot of an old (but sanitized) pair of pantyhose, tie the chopped chiles in the bag (or foot) and toss into a glass or glazed earthenware primary (like the insert for a two-gallon crock-pot). If you have to use a plastic primary, I'd select one you never intend to use for wine again. Put everything except the Campden tablet and yeast in the primary, stir well until sugar and malt are dissolved, and cover with a sanitized cover. Wait 10-12 hours and add the finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet. Wait another 8-10 hours and add the activated wine yeast in a starter solution. Ferment about 5 days, remove the bag of chopped chiles and toss into the trash (or save and use for a second wine), and transfer the wine into a secondary. Attach an airlock and forget it for a month. Rack, reattach airlock and wait another month. Do this until one day, after waiting the obligatory month, you notice there are no sediments to rack from. If the wine is clear, bottle it. If not, wait it out or use your favorite fining agent. I cannot offer suggestions here because mine has always cleared; I have no idea why yours might not. Bottle when clear. If to be used only as a marinade, you can also blend with garlic wine and/or onion wine and then bottle it. [Author's own recipe]

• Rules for Competitions, San Antonio Regional Wine Guild
• Highbush Cranberry Wine, recipe, on my website
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

It is easy to get caught up in the hype about resveratrol, which I wrote about in my last WineBlog entry. None of us who enjoy a positive quality of life really wants to give it up to cancer, heart disease, stroke, or other life altering or life threatening conditions. The allure of a simple pill, or drink, as insurance against such outcomes is seductive.

I would like to have a nickel back for every dollar I have spent over my lifetime on specific vitamins or "supplements" that lacked USDA or FDA backing for delivering the benefit for which I was taking them. At one time I was taking things for reasons I had forgotten. I need to stay away from homeopathic, naturopathic and herbal-medicinal literature.

I have never bought into the healing power of crystals , magnets, pyramids or that sort of thing, but I'll admit to haven taken at one time or another alfalfa, aloe, beta-carotene, bilberry, coenzyme Q10, DHEA, evening primrose oil, flaxseed oil, folic acid, garlic, ginkgo, glucosamine....I'll just stop here before I embarrass myself. But for whatever reason I took these things, for the most part they were not constituents of my normal diet. I had to go out of my way to obtain them and they were ingested as pills, tablets capsules, or caplets. Red wine is quite different. I make it continuously and drink it most days. I do this because I like it. It would be nice if there were a health benefit thrown in for good measure.

Several nights ago on ABC television Barbara Walters presented a special called, "Live to Be 150... Can You Do It?" It covered a number of strategies for prolonging life, and one of them was resveratrol. Dr. David Sinclair, a founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals and a professor at Harvard Medical School, was featured in this segment. Dr. Sinclair is no stranger to resveratrol, having published findings of its role in extending life in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Nature, Sep 11, 2003), the worm Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (Nature, Aug 5, 2004). However, he says a human would have to consume 1000 bottles of wine a day to realize similar benefits. Dr. Sinclair told Walters he has created a "miracle" pill containing resveratrol that will have the same effect of 1000 bottles of red wine daily.

I can't blame Dr. Sinclair for trying to cash in on resveratrol. I would too if I had the wherewithal. I long ago realized that if you want to make a lot of money, introduce yet another product that claims you'll look younger or lose weight. But for Dr. Sinclair to say he has created a "miracle" pill containing resveratrol which, by the way, he said isn't on the market yet, seems a bit over-reaching to me. Almost six months ago (just before Thanksgiving) I was scanning the vitamins and supplements section of my supermarket pharmacy and saw a rather large, gray plastic bottle labeled "Resveratrol." I didn't look twice because I was in a hurry. I haven't seen it since but really haven't looked. But unless that was Dr. Sinclair's product and it is on the market now, he has simply created another pill containing resveratrol.

The truth is that none of the claims made for resveratrol have been proven in adequately scaled human trials. That doesn't mean they won't eventually be proven, but there are mixed results in the literature that receive few headlines and no air time on ABC.

Only two months ago, researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital reported a study on thirteen human volunteers to test whether red wine differed from other alcoholic drinks in affecting heart health. What they found and published in the February edition of the American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology is that red wine and alcohol consumption were found to have virtually identical impact on health. Indeed, one drink of either substance helped to reduce the work rate of the heart but after a second drink of either the heart rate and sympathetic nervous system activity all increased.

Admittedly, the small population in the study is troublesome, but the results are equally troubling. This study does not address resveratrol per se, but drinking a lot of red wine daily clearly is not good for your heart. A dear friend recently told me his doctor, who may well have read this study, advised him to limit his wine consumption to one glass daily.

Red grapes are but one of the foci in a flood of studies. Blueberries, strawberries, bilberries, pomegranates, mangosteen, acai, raspberries, noni, and many other fruit are being studied as rich sources of polyphenols. We know these compounds as potent antioxidants -- phenolic acids, tannins, flavonols and anthrocyanins. A compound found in blueberries - pterostilbene - is similar to resveratrol and could be as effective as a widely used synthetic drug in reducing cholesterol. But the truth is that a cocktail of these compounds, not just one in isolation, may hold the ticket to better results.

In results presented at the Society for Integrative Oncology's Fourth International Conference last November, researchers at the University of California, Irvine reported positive synergistic effects between many grape compounds, not just resveratrol alone. The effects were observed in blocking a cellular signalling pathway (the Wnt pathway) linked to more than 85% of colon cancers.

Dr. Randall Holcombe, lead researcher on the study, said this "...suggests that substances in grapes can block a key intercellular signaling pathway involved in the development of colon cancer before a tumor develops."

Holcombe's group recruited colon cancer patients and randomly assigned them to receive a resveratrol pill (20 milligrams per day, which may be too low) or a beverage of grape powder in water in either 80- or 120-gram strength per day. Patients receiving just the resveratrol supplements demonstrated no effect on colon tumors, but patients receiving the low dose grape powder drink showed significant reductions in Wnt signalling. Curiously, no effects were observed among those receiving the higher dose beverage.

The point is that we truly do not know all the answers. Until we do, let's not go overboard. Enjoy a glass of berry juice in the morning, a glass or two of red wine in the evening, continue reading the literature, and...could someone send me some of that red grape powder?

In a forum thread, a member asked if high specific gravity (1.150!) could contribute to his must not fermenting. After several exchanges, he asked, "Should I assume that the max alcohol rating of the yeast that I choose translates into the max sugar content of the must...?"

I replied that you should. Many, many yeasts will start in musts far sweeter than their ability to ferment to dryness. A few will not. It really comes down to the individual yeast strains. I have no chart or look-up table to guild you, but the alcohol limits mentioned on my site should constitute the limits of the initial potential alcohol (PA) of the must. If you want to add additional sugar later to sweeten the wine, just remember that some yeasts will continue making more alcohol than is normal for the strain. It is best to stabilize the wine first to prevent this.

Why too much sugar makes a difference has nothing to do with the PA of the yeast, but rather osmotic pressure. If the must in which the yeast live is too dense, the yeast can take in water and nutrients and sugar and convert them into energy for themselves and alcohol and CO2 as waste products, but they cannot expel the waste because the pressure outside is too great for them to overcome. They die of a sort of constipation.

And on that happy note I'll close for today.

• All Herbs and Supplements, one of the more reliable references, in Medline Plus
• Live to Be 100: Can You Do It? Part 1 of 6, see listing in right column for all six parts
• One drink of red wine or alcohol is relaxing to circulation, but two drinks are stressful, University Health Network article
• Low dose grape powder linked to colon protection, Food Navigator USA article
• Strains of Wine Yeast, on my website
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

Not too long ago I was asked if there was any new research on the health effects of red wine. Well, with as many health and wellness publications, web sites and blogs as there are, there is always something new out there, but whether the substance is new is another matter. Another blog entry on the French paradox would not be worth my time. But in truth there have been a number of new developments. I just haven't gotten around to writing about them.

My phone rang two nights ago and an acquaintance pointed me to a web page just hours old that reviewed a study published in the latest edition of Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology in which our old friend, the antioxidant resveratrol, was found to have specific benefits in fighting pancreatic cancer. It was not until yesterday, however, that I was able to dig out more details. I'm glad I waited, as more details poured in all day as I received 7 more reviews and web references to this study.

Resveratrol (3,5,4'-trihydroxystilbene) is a polyphenolic phytoalexin. It is a stilbenoid, a derivate of stilbene, and is produced in plants with the help of the enzyme stilbene synthase, or stilbenase. It's function in plants appears to be as an antitbacterial and anti-fungal protective. It is an antioxidant, but probably not an important one. In vitro, resveratrol effectively scavenges free radicals and other oxidants, which is what antioxidants do, and inhibits low density lipoproteins (LDL) oxidation, but other antioxodants do these jobs much more efficiently - vitamins C and E, flavonoids, glutathione, melatonin, and caffeine.

Resveratrol is found most abundantly in the roots of the Japanese knotweed but also in peanuts and in the skins and seeds of muscadine grapes but also in the skins of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Shiraz and Pinot Noir. It is also found in blueberries, bilberries and cranberries the natural juices and wines of these berries and grapes, but its amount varies according to the cultivar, its geographic origin, its growing conditions, and exposure to fungal infections that trigger its production. The amount of time a wine spends in contact with skins and pulp during fermentation is an important determinant of its resveratrol content. Some white grapes also produce resveratrol, but because they are not fermented on their skins very little of it finds its way into their wines.

Although resveratrol's presence in red wine has stimulated much interest in the area of cardiovascular disease prevention as an explanation for the French paradox -- that the incidence of coronary heart disease is relatively low in southern France despite high dietary intake of saturated fats -- currently there is no convincing evidence that resveratrol has cardioprotective effects in humans, especially from the amounts present in 1-2 glasses of red wine. This does not mean there is any scarcity of research being conducted and reported, of which the Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology article on research conducted by Dr. Paul Okunieff et al. is but the latest.

The Okunieff study is simply the latest of many investigating the inhibitive effects of resveratrol on a variety of human cancers, including breast, prostate, stomach, colon, pancreatic, and thyroid. These many studies have found that resveratrol does indeed inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells when added to cells cultured in vitro --outside the body - but there is very little work done in vivo -- inside the body.

To say it is "simply the latest of many" is not to denigrate the study at all. It makes a major contribution in identifying a new effect and explaining the mechanism for the effect observed. This is not always achieved. In this case, the bottom line is that Dr. Okunieff and his group from the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center showed, for the first time, resveratrol helped destroy pancreatic cancer cells by reaching to the cell's core energy source, or mitochondria, and crippling its function. They showed that when the pancreatic cancer cells were pre-treated with resveratrol and then irradiated, the combination induced a type of cell death called apoptosis, a critically important goal of cancer therapy. The cancerous cells became more sensitive to radiation and normal tissue became less sensitive. The result is that radiation therapy zaps the cancerous cells but not the healthy cells surrounding them.

These findings are critical because the mitochondria, like the cell nucleus, contains its own DNA. Like the fuel pump in an automobile, it has the ability to continuously supply the cancerous cell with energy when it is functioning properly. Stopping the flow of energy (apoptosis) theoretically kills the cancerous cells.

In the study, cells either were or were not treated with resveratrol. Those treated received a high dose of resveratrol -- 50 mg/mL. The study claims that red wine can contain concentrations as high as 30 mg/mL. I have not found these concentrations reported anywhere. Indeed, the highest concentration of resveratrol I have seen reported in wines is in muscadine wine - 14 to 40 mg/L (approximately 2 to 6 mg per 5-ounce glass of wine) - as opposed to very low concentrations in Pinot Noir (0.40 to 2.0 mg/L).

There is more to the study, of course, and I invite you to read some of the reviews, if not the study itself. The latter is in the latest edition of Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (cite 2008;614:179-86, "Anti-cancer effect of resveratrol is associated with induction of apoptosis via a mitochondrial pathway alignment", Paul Okunieff, et al.). A couple of reviews are referenced below.

So, you've read all of this and more and have decided you want to make some red wine and maximize the amount of resveratrol in it. What to do?

First of all, get to know and love the lowly muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia). Its wine contains 7 to 20 times as much resveratrol as Pinot Noir wine (14 - 40 mg/mL vs. 0.40 - 2 mg/mL). Secondly, do not introduce heat to the grapes or must, as heat greatly reduces its concentration. Thirdly, whether the muscadines are red or white, ferment on the skins until the cap sinks. Both tannins and resveratrol will steep from the skins and seeds

Since resveratrol is now available as a "nutritional supplement" (buzz phrase meaning it is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for any purpose), should you "supplement" your wine with it? I can only say, it's your body. You decide.

Reports suggest that some aspect of the wine making process converts piceid -- a stilbenoid glucoside -- to resveratrol in wine, as wine seems to have twice as much average resveratrol concentration as do the equivalent commercial juices. And that heads off the otherwise ridiculous question of whether it is better to drink the raw grape juice or ferment it into wine. And with that morbid thought fresh in my brain, I'll close....

• Resveratrol, the Wikipedia entry
• Resveratrol, a very nice article from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, LA
• Resveratrol, a great review article from the Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University
• "Red wine antioxidant may kill cancer cells", Laura Crowley in NutraIngredients-USA.com
• "Cheers! Red wine kills cancer!", at Life & Style In MSN
• Help Keep the Winemaking Home Page a Free Website, a self-serving plea for support

I'm bad when it comes to email. I have some 80 or so emails -- some 9 months old -- I have never answered. Of course, they arrived while I was hospitalized or convalescing from a heart attack, but still, I should have sent these people some sort of explanation when I was able. But I didn't.

On the other hand, I have tried (and failed) to answer all I have received since my recovery. I discovered over two dozen still awaiting my acknowledgement. One of these arrived while I was on my Christmas-New Year vacation in California and I simply overlooked it upon returning. I will here and now address the two recipes requested in that email, with sincerest apologies to the woman who requested them.

"Like my father, I have made a certain type of wine for years. It was the only kind he made (every year) and it is delicious. I have made it myself and after moving numerous times I can not find it. It is an extremely simple recipe with only 4 ingredients which are as follows:

• Indian Head corn meal
• Sugar
• Fleishman's Dry Yeast
• Water

"My problem is that although I can never forget the ingredients, I do not recall the quantities of each. I do know that after putting everything into a large blue and white speckled pot I would fill it up with water and allow it to ferment for no less than 7 days. At the end of the fermenting period we would dip it out by the cupfuls and place into bottles and tightly cap it. If I can get a recipe for the 'corn meal wine' which is delicious I would greatly appreciate it."

The Indian Head corn meal recipe is indeed simple -- much more so than the corn meal wine recipe I have. Since hers lacks so many ingredients mine includes, they will not look anything at all similar. I will leave it up to her to leave out things. I simply cannot in good conscience omit them as they are all there for a reason. The grape concentrate, for example, adds body, sugar, nutrients, acid, etc. My recipe makes 3 gallons of wine.

• 3-3/4 lbs corn meal
• 4 lbs 10 oz granulated sugar
• 3 medium lemons (juice only)
• 4 Valencia oranges (juice only)
• 1 tablespoon acid blend
• 1/4 to 3/8 teaspoon powdered grape tannin
• 4 11-oz cans 100% white grape juice frozen concentrate
• 1-1/2 teaspoons yeast nutrient
• Water to 3 gallons
• Wine yeast [I used SB5 Hock)]

Dissolve the sugar in 3 pints of boiling water and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Allow to cool and combine all ingredients except the yeast in the primary. If you are adding "water to 3 gallons," the volume should be exactly 3 gallons. Add one additional quart of water, stir, and add yeast in a starter solution. Cover and set aside, stirring daily. When vigorous fermentation subsides (2-3 weeks), rack into a 3-gallon carboy and attach an airlock. After 30 days, rack again. If not clear, add 1-1/2 teaspoons amylase (a starch enzyme) and 5 days later add an equal amount of pectic enzyme, stirring well each time. Wine should be clear in additional 30 days. Either rack into a clean carboy and bottle it a week later or very carefully rack into bottles at this point and wait 2 months to sample. [Author's own recipe]

Yes, I know this is very different than what the writer and her father did. One may modify my recipe as one will, but I can only guarantee that this one works.

The same woman asked if I have a recipe for honeydew melon wine. I have a generic "Melon Wine" recipe posted in my Requested Recipes section, but I have tweaked it several times for honeydew and I like the following iteration best. I have also posted it in my Requested Recipes section because it is quite different from the generic one.

• 4 lbs very ripe and sweet melon flesh
• 1-1/4 lb granulated sugar
• 11 oz can 100% white grape juice frozen concentrate
• 6-1/2 pints water
• 2 tsp acid blend
• 1/8 tsp grape tannin
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Champagne wine yeast

Put the water on to boil. Meanwhile, cut the melons into wedges, discarding seeds and peelings, and cut wedges into thin slices. (If weighing the sliced flesh to get 4 pounds is too much of a pain, weigh the melons when you buy them and their total weight should be 5-1/2 to 6 pounds to get the correct amount of flesh.) Put the slices into a fine-meshed, nylon straining bag, tie the bag closed, and put it on the bottom of a primary. Crush the melon with your hands. When the water boils, stir sugar into it and continue stirring until it is completely dissolved (water will be perfectly clear). Pour this syrup over the bag of melon, cover the primary with plastic wrap, and wait several hours for the must to cool to room temperature. Add all ingredients except yeast. Check the specific gravity and add sugar if required to reach an S.G. between 1.085 and 1.095. Recover primary (a sanitized piece of muslin will do) and set it aside 10-12 hours. Add the activated yeast starter and recover the primary. Squeeze the bag gently each day to aid in juice extraction. When specific gravity reaches 1.020, remove bag and allow it to drip drain without squeezing, returning all drained juice to the primary. Allow to any solids to settle overnight and then rack into a secondary, attach an airlock, and set aside. After two weeks, rack again, top up and refit airlock. When wine clears, stabilize with 1/2 teaspoon dissolved potassium sorbate and one finely crushed and dissolved Campden tablet, sweeten to taste (probably between 1.004 and 1.012 will suit most people) with a Grade A (Fancy) honey, wait 30 days (to be sure fermentation does not restart), and rack into bottles. Age 6-12 months and serve chilled. [Author;s own recipe]