simple wine that doesn't taste like crap?

Ok my SWMBO's father has been making wine for years - and he and his mrs can go through an average of 3-4 bottles per week.

on the other hand my swmbo and myself will occasionally drink 1 glass every now and then. When I talked with him about making my own wine, he said about getting one of the ingredient kits that makes 5 gallons, and blah blah blah....

All I could hear is 5 gallons! 5 gallons would last us forever and a day.

I was thinking of making something along a 1 gallon batch and bottle in smaller bottles as we NEVER can finish a whole bottle in one evening unless we have people over.

Is there any recipes out there that I can use to make some nice wine that doesn't taste like grape juice left outside for a month? She is mostly a white wine drinker (Reisling is our favourite)

This one isn't too bad when aged for ~1 year (from Jack Keller's website). Really easy to make as well:

WELCH'S WHITE GRAPE AND RASPBERRY WINE
• 2 cans (11.5 oz) Welch's White Grape and Raspberry frozen concentrate
• 1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
• 2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• water to make 1 gallon
• Lavlin D-47 wine yeast

Bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve the sugar in the water. Remove from heat and add frozen concentrate. Add additional water to make one gallon and pour into secondary. Add remaining ingredients except yeast. Cover with napkin fastened with rubber band and set aside 12 hours. Add activated wine yeast and recover with napkin. When active fermentation slows down (about 5 days), fit airlock. When clear, rack, top up and refit airlock. Wait 30 days and rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 30 days, stabilize, sweeten if desired and rack into bottles.

you say "top off " you mean with water?

It would probably not be worth it to make only one gallon of a grape wine. By the time you bought the grapes, crushed, pressed, adjusted the acid, etc, it would give very little wine for the amount of work, even if you could buy such a small amount of grapes and/or juice.

If you're willing to try a different type of wine, you could try making a wine out of another fruit. It won't be the same as a grape wine, but you can make some mighty good stuff! I make one gallon batches all the time of crabapple wine, banana wine, apple juice wine, etc. Or you could go with the Welchs as AZ_IPA suggested. If you buy Welch's 100% Niagara White Grape Juice, it makes a pretty good wine that can be sweetened to taste after fermented out and stabilized.

You can make wine out of just about anything- from carrots to zucchini and usually it's very good!

how does non-grape wine differ (as far as process - not taste)? I've had a green-apple wine that I thought was stellar once and I'm more than welcome to the idea of non-grape wine.

kunstler said:

you say "top off " you mean with water?

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Yes, or a similar commercial wine. You don't want any headspace in your carboy (or jug). A tiny bit below the bung is ok, but no more than an inch or so.

kunstler said:

how does non-grape wine differ (as far as process - not taste)? I've had a green-apple wine that I thought was stellar once and I'm more than welcome to the idea of non-grape wine.

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It's actually about the same in process- minus the crushing and pressing. I use a big mesh bag (available at the brewstore) for my fruit so it's a bit easier to deal with after the fruit becomes a big mushy mess.

6 gallons is about 30 regular wine bottles...just over 2 cases.

another option is to use the kit but bottle in half-bottles, which are only 375ml and roughly just 2 glasses of wine.

I did this with a 'cheap' frozen grape juice wine (not unlike the above recipe that was posted) and its what my wife uses for cooking when the recipe needs wine.

its totally drinkable too, but each half bottle cost about 50 cents so if it gets wasted, who cares.