The Art of Making Wine

With more than 100,000 copies in print, The Art of Making Wine is by now the definitive step-by-step guide for the serious amateur or beginning winemaker. Experienced vintners Anderson and Hull provide more than fifty recipes for making any kind of fruit. For the adventurous winemaker, they give guidelines for endless experimentation. Table reds, whites, and roses, sparkling wines, sherries, and Madeiras can be made from grapes; while apples, pears, currants, blackberries, apricots, plums, and figs--even bananas and passion fruit--make delicious fruity wines. You can even experiment with dandelions, rose hips, honey, or herbs. The authors provide details on:

Starting your home winery without spending a cent--using easy-to-find household items;

Choosing and buying fruit, or using specially marketed concentrates or wine bases;

Making a yeast starter; do's and don't's of sugar, acid, and temperature control; measuring alcohol content;

Equipment for the more sophisticated winemaker, and all you need to know about bottles, barrels, corks, and racks;

Common problems--from musty-smelling wine to exploding bottles--and how to solve them.

Whether you are a traditionalist looking for new ideas or a beginner who has suddenly acquired a lot of fruit and needs to use it fast, you are certain to find inspiration here.

Stanley F. Anderson founded Wine-Art in 1959, and has written four books about wine and beermaking. He lives in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, Canada.

Raymond Hull was a playwright, television screenwriter, and author of many books. Besides The Peter Principle (co-authored with Dr. Laurence Peters), Hull wrote historical and how-to books (The Art of Making Wine, How To Get What You Want, How To Win an Election, How To Write a How-To Book), and was active in writers’ groups. His private papers are in the archives of the University of British Columbia library. He died in 1985.