Book Review: Wild Winemaking
Did you know you can make wine from store-bought raisins? Tomatoes? Butternut squash?
The very thought of drinking many of the wines in Richard Bender’s Wild Winemaking (aka Wild Wine Making) are alone worth the price of admission, even though I will fully confess I don’t plan on actually whipping up any plum champagne or limequat-kung pao.
For tinkerers who want to toy with fruit-based winemaking, though, Bender’s book is probably an essential. 148 recipes seemingly run you through every fruit known to man, proving that you can make wine from anything short of bananas, as long as it grows on a tree. Most of the recipes involve some kind of additional flavoring agent, in the form of things like green tea, ginger, chocolate, rhubarb, or (frequently) peppers. The bottom line: There’s plenty of variety here to keep you in homemade hooch for years to come.
While I didn’t personally cook up any of these recipes, I think the book is arguably worth hanging on to for the inevitable end of days. Who’s gonna be the envy of the block with his crabapple-mint vino? This guy.
B / $19 / [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]
Wild Winemaking
$19
