Old, old, OLD wine.

We have some wine in the garage that's home made. Apparently it was ready and we bought it with us when we moved house, and that was in 1994, so it's at least 15 years old. Possibly more.
Is this going to be a fine vintage, or should I chuck it for the demi-john? Should I treat it at all before tasting it?

Open it and smell it. From my understanding, home made wine is only good for about 10 years peaking at around 5 and tapering off from there.

Check the corks too, if they have been stored standing straight up, there is a chance the corks dried out.

If they did survive, you may have some really good stuff on your hands. Let us know.

If they didn't add any sulfites, it'll be shot w/in 2 yrs of production.

If it's no good, you could try making vinegar w/ it.

I doubt there is sulfites as it's still in the demi-john, not bottled, so where do I go from there? We opened some of the other old stuff we found and it tasted like Sherry. No idea what it was.

My best friends live in the same old house he grew up in as a kid. His father or grandfather was a wine maker back in the 50's. Last summer while moving stuff around to install some surround sound speakers one, we moved piece of furniture that turned out to be hiding this small rack of 50 year old wine homemade bottles...full.

Most of the had written labels were worn off, but one of them was labeled pear.

After chilling it for a couple days I came back and we sampled it. It was amazing...even though it had turned the color of raisin juice (probably since the may have used raisons as yeast) it was amazing...it was no longer like a wine, more like a pear brandy....Same color, same raisin and caramel notes, and really really smooth. It was intensly Pear like, like concentrated. It was a tad oxydized, but still amazingly drinkable.

I keep forgetting to get them to open more of them.

I don't believe necessarily that it has gone bad. It wont hurt you, and really, you'll know probably by sniffing it, or at least tasting a sip how it is.

I NEVER pass those opportunities up these days. You never know what magic you MAY find.