Making Wild Wines & Meads: 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers & More

• #20 in Best Wine Books

11 Reviews

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From the novice vinter to a more experienced hand, this book is one of the better ones I have seen. At the start, the author describes and explains the homewine-making process, the equiptment necessary, the "lingo", and gives a desent time-line for completion. The recipies are usually simple and are for one-gallon batches. Some are a little weird, but it does say "unusual" in the title. A definate recommendation for anyone who is avidly homebrewing wine or mead.

Wassail!

I got this book for my first winemaking book, and used one of
the blackberry wine recipes for my first batch. The recipes
are just recipes, without the minute detail, and it was hard
to turn back and forth from the recipes to the 'how to' intro
to get the general detailed steps, and there were a couple of
steps that I wasn't sure exactly what to do. Also, there are
tips I could have used, for example the siphoning; the book
makes it sound simple but it was very frustrating, and there
are tools available to start the siphon that I hope will be
very useful.

The book is very inspiring and the recipes are diverse and
interesting, I expect to use it again.

Many years ago when I started making my own wine, I had receipes for fruit wines including Pineapple, Strawberry and even a Strawberry/Vanilla wine. I lost that small book and went without for many years. If you have any interest in making fruit and herb wines (They Make Great Gifts!) then try this book. It will keep you busy for quite some time.

Very Very little in this boon on the how-to of wine making but if you're an experienced wine maker and you're looking for a recipe book for mead and wine this is the one to get. Tons of stuff.

From the title, I was expecting this book to be along the same lines as "Wild Fermentation," by Sandor Ellix Katz. It wasn't.

There are about three paragraphs in this book that discuss wild fermentation (i.e. fermenting wine with nothing but the wild yeast in the atmosphere), and those paragraphs contained several inaccuracies (for example, wild yeast exists everywhere, not just on the skins of grapes, and these yeasts will ferment anything containing sugar, not just grape juice).

This book wasn't by any means bad, it just wasn't what I thought it would be.

i have tried several. there is on occasion a question about a recipe, should something be covered, stirred but since i know nothing about the generalities i need to be let by the hand. i love that they are not the kinds of wine just anyone can buy at the corner store. great fun to talk about even with non wine makers.

I got this book for Christmas two years ago, and just bottled my first batch of apple melomel. I'm pleased with the end result, and there are some amazing-looking recipes in this book. Although it doesn't quite contain all of the practical information I would've liked to have starting out, and I wish there was more discussion of ways to make sulfite-free wines, it is a great book for beginners and I highly recommend it. Next project: Apricot wine.

This book is full of the most interesting and wonderful recipes for mead that I have seen so far. Simple, easy to follow instructions. No guesswork. Love it!

Great book with some very good recipes. As a beginner thats never made anything home brewed before it was useful as a starting point. Additional books about the brewing process are necessary if you plan to actually follow through and make your own wines, meads etc. It will give you a good place to start and a general idea of what you need to buy and how the process works. Its very well laid out and a good place to start.

WHAT A GREAT BOOK! A PLUS FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES TO EXPERIMENT IN THE KITCHEN ESPECIALLY WITH OUR "GOD GIVEN" FRUITS AND VEGETABLES OF THE WOODS...

While this book isn't really for the beginner it has plenty of good basic wine and mead recipies. I've tried several with mostly good luck. It's also one of the few publications that have workable mead recipies. My only objection to this book is it seems to treat aging as the most important step in all wines. While it is very important, it isn't all that makes a wine, and especially mead, great.