Keeping yeast going?

[Satanta]

I am not sure what it is called. Friend that got me into wine making said monks somewhere keep the same yeats going for hundreds of years.

How is this accomplished? Seems extremely time consuming altho before one could just buy it in the packets I imagine it was 'do it or drink juice'.

Can one freeze the yeast packets and if so how long are they viable?

 

[Yooper]

Freezing the yeast will kill it, unless you take special steps (like freezing liquid yeast in glycerin) to protect it.

The yeast have been going for generations simply by inhabiting the wine and the fermenting vessels. Many of the best wild yeast strains are specific to a certain region, so the wines from those regions tend to have the same strain.

I've heard a tale that early brewers had a "beer stick" that they used to ferment their beers. Of course, they didn't why it worked, but stirring their new wort with that stick started fermentation. Apparently, the stick carried the yeast along with it. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'd like to think so.