I brewed a batch of beer a few years back that turned out really bad. I mean this stuff would gag a skid row maggot. Anyway, I couldn't face my failure and just dump it out so I let it sit in the basement. Then last fall I got the bright idea of pouring it into my compost. I sprinkled a few bottles while I turned the stuff and man did that compost get hot! I tried it each time the pile dried out or needed turning and got the same results. I don't know about wine but bad beer can sure kick start a pile. Bene

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?

I think lindac is correct. The point of adding wine is essentially to bring in some acidity. You are not going to get the complex flavors of a great wine in your stew - it will be cooked and transformed. That's why great restaurants don't use great wine in their cooking. And if you're doing a reduction, taking a bottle of wine down to maybe a cup, there is no reason to use anything great. That's the reason I suggested something fairly tasteless. For example, if you are cooking some mussels with garlic and shallots and wine, and you were to use a really grassy Sauvignon Blanc from Rueda say, you may find notes of bell pepper and grapefruit, and if you were to use a muscat or gwertztraminier, you would have floral and fruity notes and neither would really be great with the mussels. Sauvignon blanc from the Loire is a classic wine to use in that dish, but most of those, from Sancerre say, do not have the pronounced green flavors that some of the others do. With red wine it's a little more complex because many red wines are aged in wood. That is generally not something that enhances the flavor of a dish. As a matter of fact, whenever someone has done a little study of the issue, the simpler, fruitier wines were preferred. But your information on wine is very mistaken. "Cheap" can result from many factors, which could include the relative strength of the economy where the wine was made. Consequently, we can find bargains in the US that come from Argentina, whereas if their economy were stronger, the wines would be more costly. Lightly tapping grapes to release juice? Each individual grape? I promise you that nobody in the world does that. Some wines are made via carbonic maceration, in which case the weight of the grapes in the container crushes a few and the juice starts fermenting. The grapes at the bottom of the tank start fermenting inside their own skins in some cases. The new Beaujolais is made like this and it's also used in other areas to produce light, fruity wines that aren't meant to age and that are in fact good for cooking. In other cases, the grapes are in fact crushed and allowed to macerate with the skins. The juice is then drawn off. This is what is called "free run" juice. If the mass of skins, etc., is gently pressed, there can be additional juice that is squeezed out. That is no longer free-run juice, but is is not low quality. There are many ways of pressing the skins. For example, you can have an inflatable bladder that gently presses out the remaining juice. Incidentally, one of the wineries that uses this charges over $100 a bottle for their wine. And yes, sometimes the stems and seeds are crushed too. Some winemakers feel that the tannins and flavors that are obtained that way add complexity to the wine. Guigal in the Rhone for example, uses whole cluster fermentation, which means that he does not de-stem the grapes before making wine. Then when the juice is pressed, you get some of the flavors and tannins from the skins and seeds. His la Landonne goes for about $270 a bottle and it's entirely whole cluster fermentation. Dropping 1/3 of the crop is called "green harvesting". in that situation, bunches are cut off while still green so that the remaining clusters ripen more evenly and supposedly have more concentration. People around the world do it and people around the world debate whether or not it's actually useful. The idea is that lower yields produce more concentrated flavors. Well, you can accomplish low yields in many ways, including the density of your planting. But don't assume that all expensive wines are from vineyards that have been green harvested. I assure you that is not true. As far as headaches - that comes from alcohol. Sulfur is present in the grapes themselves as it is a component of some amino acids. THere is no science whatsoever supporting the claim of sulfites causing headaches, although there is an urban legend that won't die. Since I cook almost daily and have been doing so for many years, and since I always have open bottles of wine in the house, we've been cooking with all kinds of wine. I promise you that if I use a white or a red in my spaghetti sauce, you will most likely not know the difference. As far as not drinking it and not cooking with it - that's not a bad rule. However, I would even hedge there. Someone gave me some Yellow Tail shiraz. I certainly wasn't going to drink it but it did make a great marinade with some soy sauce, star anise, ginger, honey, and garlic. Cheers!

Personally I wouldn't worry about replacing those glasses. Not to be insulting in any way, but they're fairly generic and you can find plenty of good glasses. Those $150 glasses referred to were probably Reidel. They are hand-blown and supposedly made for specific grape varieties. I am quite skeptical about those claims. The glasses are also extremely fragile. But they make many other glasses and so do other companies. Schott Zweissel is a German company that makes great glasses. They have a line called "Tritan" that isn't lead crystal but is supposedly stronger. So you can knock them over and they don't break, although if you drop them on the floor, they will. Great glasses. Also sold by Crate and Barrel under a proprietary name - "Loire". About $7 each and well worth the price and identical to the glasses sold under the "Forte" or other names elsewhere. You can also get glass as opposed to crystal, for even less. Bed Bath and Beyond has some decent ones for $2 each, which is about what the originals in the post cost. And Target has plenty. Good luck! The idea of a wine glass is to have a wider bowl that narrows towards the top. It gives the volatile gases a chance to evaporate and the narrowing rim concentrates them. Other than that, I don't believe much of the marketing for wine glasses that the wine mags talk about. But having used many dozens of glasses, I do like a decent stem. Here is a link that might be useful: Crate and Barrel