Thanks for the suggestions! I clipped both recipes, debated about the Sangria, but for now it just went into the freezer. Unfortunately I still have a couple more bottles in my wine fridge so I can try these ideas. (They came from someone who had cases of it left over after a failed business venture of importing wine. He blamed the failure on Italians being very difficult to work with. But I tend to think the wine that he was trying to import may have had something to do with the failure!) Westelle - Believe me, this wine didn't stand a chance of opening up! Jessy - Oh yeah, sediment city. Lyra - I like your line of thinking!

Lyra, Yesterday I was given (under the counter at a cafe where I know the staff well) an espresso cup full of homemade "hooch." 90 proof I was told. It was delicious and tasted perhaps of herbs but I have no idea what was in it, only that it was made by a Greek friend named Gus. This got me thinking. As you know I have a son and friend on a boat in the South Pacific. They are on a pretty tight budget and food and libations are astonishingly expensive. They occasionally splurge for some boxed wine and they are sometimes fed by locals in exchange for capable help but often they live on beans, rice, and any fish they catch. So alcohol is an infrequent treat. I was online with the Captain last night and I suggested they try making some homemade wine. They have access to an abundant supply of fresh mangoes and other fruit. I looked up directions for making homemade mango wine and they were fussy, purist, a bit arcane and required a year of aging and ingredients available in a wine store. Well, that won't do! So I looked up "jail house wine." That produced this: "Find any kind of cheap juice. I like cranberry. The way I do it is boil a few cups of sugar mixed with water until it becomes a syrup. I add this to about two gallons of cranberry juice. It sounds too sweet, but it evens out the sour taste from the cranberry. Then I'll take a cup of the juice, warm it up slightly in the mircowave, throw in a packet of yeast and let it sit until it gets a nice head on it. Then I throw that into the rest of the juice, mix it up real good and let set for about a month in a tight container with a small airhole so gas can vent. When the yeast activates, it eats the sugar as food, and the byproduct is alcohol. Its far from a fine wine, but its pretty simple. Its a loose recipe, so it may take some tinkering to get it the way you like it. And remember, the more yeast, the more alcohol. If you can get ahold of some bread yeast over there, that'll do the job, but leaves a slight "bready" flavor if you use too much. Juice+sugar+yeast+time=hooch" Crude but probably effective. There must be some middle ground. I doubt they can find wine yeast or other wine store specific ingredients but can surely find bread yeast and sugar and juice and other things in a grocery store on Bora Bora. Got any recipes or guidance? What do you suggest to Here is a link that might be useful: Will this be useful to send to them?

"1. Ridge Lytton Estate 2002 California Grenache/ Syrah 2. Château Souverain 2003 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 3. Merryvale Starmont 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley " Ridge is one of the great wineries in CA. Respected all around the world. That wine is, or was, only available to people who bought directly from the winery since not much was available. I never loved it as much as I wanted to, but it was nonetheless a decent wine and if your friend really loves wine, she'd be happy to get a bottle, esp as it shows a thoughtfulness, i.e. you can't just walk into any store and buy it. Souverain - not a bad wine for what it is. 2003 wasn't a great year in the area and it's a fairly widely available wine. Not special enough. Merryvale Starmont - a better year overall than the 2003, but still not special enough as a winery. A little too pedestrian for a gift.

I have a chocolate mint making now, for the first time. I have tasted it when racking and I think it's going to be fabulous! It tastes like choc mint tea with sugar, at the moment. How it will be as a dry wine, I don't know. I do like my wine dry. The regular mint wine is not ready yet. I would leave it at least a year before drinking it, so I can't really say how it will be. It's drinkable now, and I am drinking it, if you are used to the "green" taste, but I would have preferred to leave it awhile longer. Most of them take about a year to be ready to drink. Some, like dandelion, take two years. I don't know that I would make wine from spearmint or catnip, as I am not partial to the flavour of those in tea. I usually drink it as tea first, to see if I like it. I made a gallon of lilac wine last year and didn't really like the lilac flavour. I did drink all the wine, but it wasn't a favourite. I'm just glad I didn't make 5 gallons of it! lol! I don't plan to make more regular mint wine, either. I have tasted it when racking and it is ok, but not good enough to makae 5 gallons of. At the moment I have 5-6 gallons of the following making: rhubarb, strawberry, raspberry, rose petal, crab apple. I am collecting material to make 5 gallons of ground cherry and also hibiscus petal in the freezer. I might add a few rose hips to the hibiscus since they are ready now and there's not enough to do anything with.