My wife likes to cook. No, she loves to cook. It's her hobby/obsession. She has a zillion cookbooks and it seems like she watches every show produced on the food network.
Being more into science than food, I found the only cooking show I enjoyed watching with her was Good Eats. So one day we're watching an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown (host of the show) is making beer! I'm watching this and say to my wife (girlfriend at the time), "Hey, I'm pretty sure I can do that without blowing up your kitchen!" She likes the idea that I have a food hobby that doesn't intrude on her cooking every meal, so she buys me a homebrewing kit from a local shop for my birthday. It all went downhill from there.
Once I made a bunch of extract beer batches and moved on to all-grain, I figured I wanted to try other fermented beverages. I made ciders first... pretty easy to make a good hard apple cider from juice. Then, I bought a bunch of honey and started making meads.
We enjoy taking spend 2 or 3 weekends a year in Paso Robles wine country, driving from winery to winery trying and buying wines. The wine kits were the last foray into the hobby because both my wife and I were skeptical that we'd get anything out of a bag of grape juice that could compare with a well-crafted bottle of wine. It's easy to make beer better than Budweiser, especially when you can source the same (or better) ingredients... but it seemed like wine required fruit from proper growing conditions, barrel aging, etc... Despite our reservations, it seemed like a cheap experiment to make a batch and see. Also, I was just too curious to avoid it. LOL
So we started with a cheap white for my wife to use as cooking wine. At worst, we lose $60... at best, she gets 30 bottles of cooking wine for $2/bottle instead of $5 at the store. Well, it turned out that first cheap kit made cooking wine comparable to what she bought. So, I made a couple upscale white kits next. After a few months of aging, they turned out to be pretty good wines and I think they are every bit as good as most of the whites I'd buy for quite a bit more.
After that, I bought a chocolate raspberry port kit. I totally mangled that kit when my wife tried to help. She insisted on downloading the "newest instructions" from the website in case they changed. What neither of us noticed in time was that she downloaded instructions for a normal 6 gallon wine kit. So I'm starting to add water when I realize the port is only supposed to be 3 gallons and there already seems to be about that much juice in the pale. I stop, but I've already added about a gallon. I tried to fix it with some sugar and such. It ended up too sweet, but I fortified it with some brandy to counter that a bit and called it a day. Anyway... despite my horrid botching of the kit, the port still turned out pretty good. Other people tried it when they came over and enjoyed it. I wound up giving it away to friends because they asked for it. LOL
I'm not a big white drinker. Big meaty reds are my thing. So, I've made an Outback Shiraz that is aging now. I can't wait to try it. I have another kit I bought at the same time that I need to get going. The jury is still out on those, but if they turn out like the port I'll probably be pretty happy.
After my current kits are finished (among other mead/cider/beer batches on the horizon), I want to try making a wine from fruit.
and we've enjoyed every minute of it! We're going on year two and I think we just racked our 14th or 15th batch of wine 
![[Upgraded] 9Pcs Tree Root Growing Box with Drain Holes, Half Transparent Plant Rooting Propagation Ball & Metal Core Twist Ties, for Fast Propagation Plants (Size M)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514MWQxtWOL._SL500_.jpg)
