Do my homework minions!

[hellziggy]

OK, time to tap the LJ Hive Mind.

We're doing product design right now and I'm going to do wine for my project. It's going to have a mad scientist Jekyll/Hyde theme. The inspiration was my dad's cranberry wine.

In the mad scientist vein, there won't be any grape wine, it will be wine made from other things. Maybe dandelion wine, strawberry wine, blackberry wine, etc.

Have any of you had a non-grape wine? What was it? Was it good?

Comments

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Apple wine, and it was DELICIOUS.

[felisblanco.livejournal.com]

I haven't had dandelion wine in years (my stepdad used to make it) but from what I remember it was good. Looks very much like white wine.

[davedujour.livejournal.com]

I hated the dandelion wine that I had from the Amana Colonies. That was about 15 years ago.

[jenwolf.livejournal.com]

My uncle is a vintner (winemaker), and I've had all kinds of non-grape wine. He's made strawberry, blueberry, apple, pear, plum, pineapple, cherry, cranberry, blackberry and raspberry.
The weirdest one he ever made was white pine. He harvested the new, succulent needles from a white pine tree and made wine from them. Interestingly enough, it tasted nothing like turpentine or gin. It had a lightly green flavour, but also slightly sweet.

Oh, I've visited a winery in Iowa that made wine from all kinds of things, too. Garlic, jalepenos, raisins, carrots, elderberry flowers, and rhubarb.
Their website is here: La Vida Loca

[lexinatrix.livejournal.com]

I've tasted dandelion, strawberry, cran/raspberry and rice wines.

I liked the berry-based ones... the others were not so good.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

I have tasted elderflower wine. but can't really recall what it was like; at the time I was a child and didn't have any expectations.

[machinegirl.livejournal.com]

Blackberry wine is yummy, as is honey wine (mead)

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

I don't care for grape wine much, but love a good fruit wine. Strawberry and raspberry are nice, orange and cherry are delicious, the silver birch wine was too dry for my taste. Blackberry and elderberry are rich and fruity, elderflower is much lighter - often a sparkling wine. Apricot/peach is good. Iain's red jam wine (made from leftover home-made jam) was excellent - very sweet. And I just bought a bottle of black beer and raisin wine, which is rather like drinking treacle.
Not fond of ginger, so I've never tried ginger wine, but it's available. There's more I've not tried, like rhubarb wine, apple etc.

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

one of the porters at the university library where I worked (all irrelevant info so far) brought in some blackberry wine (that's the relevant bit) which he'd had under the stairs for *years*

It was *awesome*

[scubagrrl.livejournal.com]

Had mead and made plum wine. The mead was kind of ... artificially flavored. I'd like to try making my own.

The plum wine I made and other than not being sweet enough, is decent.

[genevra.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that grandpa made lilac wine once. Apparently, mom & dad tasted it too early - tasted like perfume. But then they let it sit much longer, and mom said it was the BEST. I don't know what it tasted like, but you could ask them.

[lablynne.livejournal.com]

I had some fabulous cranberry wine at Christmas.

[kirkmona.livejournal.com]

I've always thought someone should try a maple syrup wine. It might be horrible but I wonder if anyone has ever tried. Certainly plenty of sugar.