Yeah, there definitely is a trick to home wine making. The favorite one I've made so far is made out of welch's grape juice and bread yeast (I make stuff that I think is better, but that one is always well-received and it's dirt cheap, so....). I do have to add sugar to it to make it palatable since the bread yeast still manages to consume all the sugar in just the grape juice. It takes a bit of tweaking to get it right and you MUST get it off the sediment as soon as active, bubbly fermentation is finished to avoid getting odd flavors in the mix. Also, if do include any crushed fruit in the carboy, make sure that is processed down enough that it can't plug the valve - there's nothing like having 6 gallon carboy blow its top open.

That said, I've had some experiments that weren't as good as others. One batch of hard cider turned to vinegar. A batch of Riesling had a good flavor, provided you allowed it to air out first - if you didn't, it was rather pungent. A batch of fruit mead continued a secondary fermentation in the bottles because I forgot to kill the yeast and about half of them blew their tops. I've also had a lot of trouble with sediment, and still don't always quite get it all out (that stuff is bad on the flavor and tends to look rather nasty as well). But I'm getting the hang of that.

I've considered selling wine, but it's such a pain to get all the various permits and whatnot that it simply isn't worth it. The winemaking part is easy, but keeping up with all the government rules makes it untenable to even try.

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Pissing on the host in the middle of the living room with guests present is a pretty good reason for the host to forcibly remove one from the scene, in my humble and correct opinion. - Jack_Crabb