Amateur Winemaking by S.M. Tritton

It was another one of those weekends where staying indoors was the thing to do. I decided to look at our book shelves filled with books on wine and try to find the oldest book we had. It was a 1865 book titled La Vigne written by A. Carrière, but it was published in French, so not a book to curl up and read, given my inadequecy in French comprehension. The next oldest book I found was a book written in 1956 by S. M. Tritton called Amateur Winemaking and this fit the bill on this blustery, cold day. I enjoyed looking at the photos from nearly 70 years ago on harvest, and grape stomping (a la I Love Lucy), types of presses and winemaking equipment. One phrase that caught my eye because this is what my husband and I really believe in was this, Tritton writes: Wine making really starts in the vineyard.
Also, I found it refreshing to read: "The finest white wines are made by selecting individual berries from the bunch." I subscribe to that! If I could, I would certainly select individual ripe berries by hand to make our wine, but alas, not very realistic or practical, but one can dream.
In this day and age of winemaking where there is a plethora of yeasts to choose from to yield specific flavors and aromas, this book also gives a list of preferred yeasts to use to accomplish the type of fermentation that was desired.
Towards the end of the book, Tritton gives a list of Do's and Don'ts of Winemaking which I tabulated, some "Don'ts" are really "Do's":

Do's	Don'ts
Do use sound fruit	Don't forget to wash your fruit
Do boil your fruit or add one or two Campden tablets if your fruit is over-ripe or unsound	Don't use metal containers for fermenting
Do remember to sterilize wooden containers	Don't forget to wash all utensils
Do remember to use the right amount of sugar	Don't forget to test the gravity of the adjusted juice
Do remember that the gravity of fruit juices varies	Don't forget to use a suitable wine yeast
Do remember to add a yeast nutrient to fruit wines	Don't forget to cover your fermenter during pulp fermentation
Do insert a fermentation trap	Don't fill your container full till the vigorous first fermentation has subsided
Do remember to have some spare wine for filling up	Don't allow an air space over any wine during secondary fermentation and maturing with the exception of sherry
Do give sherry wine plenty of air	Don't forget that flower wines need fruit juice
Do remember to add acid where necessary	Don't add sugar in the solid state, always dissolve in fruit juice or water
Do remember that adding sugar or syrup at intervals makes for stronger wines	Don't forget to rack your wine at intervals
Do top up your fermenter after racking, with water if no spare wine is available	Don't fine your wine unless it refuses to clarify after several rackings
Do stir up the yeast deposit to help your wine to clarify	Don't forget that racking improves wine flavour
Do remember that wines are stabilized by racking	Don't bottle your wine till it has been tested for stability
Do remember to add one or more Campden tablets to wines which darken on standing	Don't add a Campden tablet to wine which is to become a sherry
Do remember wine making requires patience	Don't despair, even poor wines improve on maturing

All in all, it was a good book to curl up to on a cold weekend, and I learned that some things never change, i.e. Do remember wine making requires patience!
When I wrote the blog, I thought about the puncutation of "Do's" and "Don'ts" so I had to look it up and am following the Associated Press usage on How to Punctuate Do's and Don'ts.