Puzzled- fermentation not starting ??

I've done multiple beers, wines, all grains, malts, meeds....... with no problems. However, yesterday I decided to goof around and make a quick apple cider.

I took a gallon of cider, added maybe a pound of sugar (dissolved in warm water) and mixed in some wine yeast (can go to 18%)... mixed things up, measured an OG of 1.9, and put an air-lock on. Pretty basic...fructose, sucrose water and yeast. Okay....but 24 hours later, I'm getting no CO2, thus no conversion of sugar to ethanol and co2. ?? This is such a simple recipe and I was just something to mess around with for fun....I can't figure out what's going on. I know the yeast is good as I've got 15 gallons of various libations fermenting in the garage using the same yeast.

Ideas?

I've noticed my ciders and apfelweins are usually slow to get started.

Did the cider have preservatives? How much is "some wine yeast"? Dry or liquid yeast? How long has it been since you used this yeast? What temperature is the cider?

Interesting... I just had a similar problem but with ale yeast, no sugar added, but never had any issues before.

So I grabbed a travel mug, threw in warm cider and yeast, waited 3 hours and dumped it into the cider.

And no, I didn't sanitize so God alone knows what's going to crawl out of that bottle. I figured it was a lost cause.

Anyway, an hour later I'm getting pretty good activity visually (lots of bubbles) but haven't timed the airlock yet.