Product Description
Port and sharries, whites, reds, roses and melomels -- make your own wine without owning a vineyard!
If you can follow a simple recipe, you can create delectabletable wines in your own home. It's fun, it's easy-and the resultswill delightfully complement your favorite meals and provide unparalleledpleasure by the glass when friends come calling. You don't have tore-create Bordeaux in your basement to be a successful home vintner-you can make raisin wine and drink it like sherry, or use it to accent yourChinese cooking. Raspberry or apricot wine lend themselves to deliciousdesserts. And if you are interested in more exotic concoctions,rhubarb champagne is the ultimate treat.
The Joy of Home Winemaking is your comprehensive guide to:
- the most up-to-date techniques and equipment
- readily available and affordable ingredients and materials
- aging, bottling, racking, blending, and experimenting
- dozens of original recipes for great-tasting fruit wines,
- spice wines, herb wines, sparkling wines, sherries, liqueurs
- even homemade soda pop!
- a sparkling brief history of winemaking
- helpful illustrations and glossary
- an extensive mail-order resource section
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It has taken over 40 years for someone to write a better winemaking primer that C.J.J. Berry’s classic “First Steps in Winemaking,” and this is it. If you’ve never made wine before and would like to try it, this is the book for you. It is well written, rich in anecdotes, and easily understood. If you’ve made wine for years and think you know what you’re doing, I’m willing to bet you that “The Joy of Home Winemaking” will teach you much more than a mere thing or two.
Having been brought up through the ranks, as it were, on Berry’s “First Steps…” and having never found it insufficient as an instructional and recipe reference, it is almost painful to admit that someone has bettered the master. But Terry Garey clearly has.
“The Joy…” is thoughtfully divided into three sections — beginning, intermedient and advanced winemaking. Garey presents the basics, expands upon them, and then he expands some more. Not only is his presentation progressive, it is solidly educational. Best of all, the recipes are largely fresh, varied and inviting!
“The Joy…” is much more than a primer for making wine at home. The beginner invariably expects an identifiable relationship between the color, flavor and bouquet of the raw ingredients and the finished wine. While such a relationship exists, it is not the one that beginning winemakers expect. Garey goes where few have attempted to go before. He wants you to know what you will get, and that requires more than simply adjusting your expectations.
To accomplish this, Garey explains the principles and, to some degree, the chemistry that underlies the processes at work when wine is being made. He explains flavor extraction better than most, which spices produce which qualities, which fruits and vegetables complement each other when combined in the crock, which herbs and flowers work and which don’t, and so on. The result is not merely education, but firm understanding, and that is requisite to ex! perimentation and invention. It is this that he does better than Berry, and for that alone he should be read and reread by every winemaking hobbiest.
I still highly recommend C.J.J. Berry’s “First Steps in Winemaking” for the beginner, but I also highly recommend “The Joy of Home Winemaking” for the beginner and experienced alike. If you can only buy one, flip a coin. Better still, buy them both. The first is the classic. The second is destined to be.
I just bottled my first batch of Potatoe, Rasberry and Spiced Apple wines. To my surprise, it was really easy to make and turned out delicious even though it still isn’t fully aged. Garey was right, IT JUST TAKES PATIENCE!
The book is written with the beginner in mind (myself included), with a great sense of humor and includes really good tips and many recipes to choose from. I only wish that I made more than one gallon of the Rasberry Wine, however. I feel more adventurous and willing to experiment now that my first batch turned out after nearly 6 months. In short, I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to start wine making as an enjoyable hobby without breaking the bank.
This is a great book. I started making wine about 5 years ago and this book has all the instruction I needed. Garey takes the mystery out of wine making. I have bought several books since, but find myself returning again and again to this one. Everything you need to know to get started is here and there are enough recipes to keep you going for a long time. If you are a beginning wine maker, this is the book for you.
While the techniques in the book are mainly for the beginner, her recipies will give even advanced winemakers some new things to try.
Not written as a dry text, but full of her amusing experiences making many of the recipies in the book.
A great place to start, but once you get going, you may want to refer to other books that go into additional detail about yeast selection, using yeast starters and champagne production
This book is terrific for anyone thinking of trying winemaking. The author takes the beginner through the steps for a basic wine recipe, using few pieces of equipment. Then, for the brave who wish to continue, Garvey adds complexity to each successive recipe, leaving champagne-making for the end. Terrific book with great recipes and easy to follow tips. Just enough humor to encourage new winemaker, and plenty of recipes for the gardner with leftover produce — from rasberries to potatoes
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