Winemaking - a beginning

I am very new into the world of winemaking.  I like to drink wine, so my darling husband thought I might like to make wine.  He then bought me books so we could learn.  I now have several recipe books.

Our first batch was apricot. I made 3 gallons of wine from apricots picked fresh from our tree.  It was in.cred.ible!!  Sweetened just right, it was light and fresh.  We gave a bottle to friend for him and his wife to try.  They gave great reviews.  I had 16, well 15 now, bottles of liquid gold in my cellar.  This was in the spring

Imagine my surprise when the thermostat started to rise and we found 12 of our 15 bottles had popped their corks.  I was devastated.  I took the other 3 bottles in the house.  2 of them had bulging corks so I went ahead and opened them, they fizzed and foamed.  The 3rd bottle we sent home with a friend who happened to be here and told him to get it in the fridge. 

Out of 3 gallons of wine that made 16 bottles, I only got to drink 2/3 of a bottle.  It was sparkly though, almost like a bottle of champagne.  Apparently when the temps started to go up, the sugars started fermenting again.  I wish I would have know.  It was such a waste of good wine to have it all over my cellar floor.

The next batch of wine that we started was peach.  Another 3 gallons. This time these were fresh picked from a friend's orchard.  This wine has been racked several times and we are now just waiting for it to clear.  It has been sitting in it's carboy for almost a year now.  Sweetened and stabilized, we have our fingers crossed that we figured out what we did wrong last time.

In the meantime, we started another batch. 3 gallons of blackberry. YUM! It is a beautiful color. We have several months yet before we know how it turns out. 

The husband and I finally agreed on a name.  It is really hard to combine his hobbies and interests with my hobbies and interests to come up with a name.  We did get it though - eventually.  The name of our little winery is Wild at Heart.  Still working on the label.  I have an idea in my head, but getting it in a picture is not working so well yet.

I do have several other wines that I would like to try to make

• cranberry
• pomegranate
• blueberry
• rose
• strawberry
• watermelon
• raspberry
• apple

Lucky for me (or maybe not so lucky), I only have two 3 gallon carboys and three 1 gallon carboys.  So I guess I will work on my list slowly.