It doesn't seem to mention where one can purchase the wine. Perhaps it is just a ploy to sell T-shirts?

ewww

Why would anyone bother doing this if they can't even sell it? I think it might be a ploy to sell the T-shirts too.
I wonder how many worms it takes to make a gallon? The poor worms! Are they alive when he subjects them to this fermenting process? Do they get drunk? Where does he get all these worms? I think PETA would like to know about this guy! Nobody is thinking of the WORMS! Don't their lives matter?! Poor little worm, crawling around, living it's life, only to end up squished together with other members of it's family and friends, it's juices cruely pressed out of it and fremented then put in some bottle with a ridiculous cartoon picture on it. It's disgraceful! And I'm suppose to celebrate this barbarism by buying a T-shirt!
I THINK NOT!!! 😠 😝

It seems as though the sugar and other fermentables are simply added to the mixture. I doubt mashed caterpillars would ferment at all, but the way he describes it, this sounds like it would be workable. I suspect the site is real - but the mystery is why anyone would bother to try this.

He says on his site that he's not allowed to sell the wine, which I think would be true because you do need a license to sell alcohol. If he's just producing a few bottles of this stuff it wouldn't be worth it for him to get a license.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we call them tent caterpillars, and they're a major nuisance, defoliating trees quite quickly. I used to have nightmares about them as a child. But I still wouldn't want to taste them, let alone drink booze made from them. Ew. What's next? Cockroach coolers? Junebug gin? Vermin vodka?
I don't like the direction this is taking....ew, again.

Back in the day, I played The Blues for a living. I played at several joints around town, but my favorite was Smokey's Hotel. On the back bar, next to the register, they had a big jar of snakes and reptiles in alcohol. It was a BIG jar, 3/4 of a gal or so. I don't do metric, so don't go there. Anyway, there was no less than twenty-five reptiles in this jar, which was festooned with Chinese lettering and dragons and such. There were little newts, small and bigger snakes, little alligators, a frog, geckos,etc. all immersed in what I assume was grain or rice alcohol. Legend says some guys brought it back from Vietnam, and was left in a rented room (along with pictures of Henry Kissinger in the arms of Gina Lollabrigida, but that's another story) As far as I know, the jar wasn't there to sell the contents to customers. It was waiting there in case the owner comes back for it. That, and because it gave drunk chicks a thrill.

Hairy, that's just nasty. Do you think they still have it? I mean, what on earth would you do with something like that? YUK.
What instrument do you play?

Well, here's the deal. The owners of the Bar/Hotel failed to renew their liquor license a couple of years ago. It seem that their business fell off quite abruptly, somewhere around the time that I retired. Hey, I'm not implying a connection, but nothing brings 'em in like a good blues bar band. Anyways, they closed up shop not long after they lost the liquor license, and then failed to pay local real estate taxes. The place is now up for Sherrif's sale, in the next week or so, for the unpaid tax price of $25,000- that's twenty-five thousand dollars. That would be the minimum taken, I'd think. It's a big, three story old inn with eight or so rooms to rent, a bar, pool table hall, and a kitchen. Back to the snake jar. They have Sherrif's sale signs in the window, and the neon Bud light is off, but if you look thru the windows (it's right up against the sidewalk) you can see the Big Jar Of Snakes still sitting, all by itself, on the empty, dusty, bar. The best part about this place is the fact that it's right across the street from the train station. I played whatever I had to get the gig, GlamGrrrl. It depended upon who was available to play. A couple of the guys wouldn't play at the biker gigs, and some had significant others who objected if they played in THAT bar. So, you gotta be versatile to get the job done. If I had known that Smokey's was gonna close down, I would have asked for the Big Jar of Snakes for my retirement present. I'll just have to buy the bar. As if.

Sounds like a bargain. You could get at least $25,000 for a "haunted, fermented snake jar" on ebay! Don't you think? Might be worth getting your hands on that thing Hairy! I can't believe they didn't take it with them! What town is this place in anyway? What a creepy site that must be looking through the abandoned window at the jar just sitting there on the empty dusty bar. Can you get a picture of it?

I doubt the jar is worth anything. They are a dime a dozen in China, I've even seen them regularly in Chinatown and Chinese restaurants.

You are correct, G. They are quite common. But for those of us who don't live in China, or near Chinatown, or even near a Chinese restaurant, they are a rare sight to behold. We don't get out much around here. That's why my band was successful. The one eyed man is king in the land of the blind. King Hairy- that's me. We thank you for your comments. We stand corrected. You may go.

Harry, I have this song in my head:
Henry and Gina
Sittin in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R

Hey. You know that Boston Market on Rt 1 just East of Kennett?

I do, but I'm not Bill (if I correctly recall a Kennett person mentioned recently).

I've made alcohol (mead) and you need a lot of sugar, because that's what the yeast eat to produce alcohol. Bugs don't have much sugar. If he's getting alcohol, it's not due to the caterpillars, it's all the other stuff.

Now, caterpillars would have some protein, and maybe they add a certain je ne sais quoi to the taste. But I'd rather not try it myself, because I don't know where the line is between "fermented caterpillars" and "rotten caterpillars."

>>>after all, they eat leaves.<<<

Well, so do koalas, but I don't think you could make wine from them either....

I don't know a lot about brewing, but I was pretty sure the basic material had to be vegetable in nature.

Glamcat, if you had ever seen a dozen or so of these worms (we call them webworms around here) infesting and destroying the trees in someone's front yard, you wouldn't have much empathy for them either. Imagine a web the size of a football, dripping hundreds of squishy green caterpillar-things. You have to set fire to the webs to get rid of them.

Well, Bill lives just South of rt 1 on Sills Mill Road. Say Hi for me. Say Hi to those nice Wyeth boys, too.

Are you closer to Concord Pike, or Route 100?

Hoorah to that, Barghest! In southern NJ, we called them 'tent catarpillars', and pretty much the same in western PA. I did fire battles with them in Maryland, too. These pests deserve nothing but to burn and DIE! The only ecological good they do, is to provide a few, scarce species of birds with some lively food. But I have seen them completely strip a formerly productive fruit tree in two days. The trees die.

Stork- I can't remember... What was the worm/caterpillar infestation in NJ,PA,MD,etc about ten years ago? I just can't remember the name of that bug. The cacoons were everywhere.

You DO know I was kidding about the PETA thing? right? I say BURN THE BASTARDS!!!! Make gallons of wine out of them! I don't give a shit!
:coolgrin:

"Well, Bill lives just South of rt 1 on Sills Mill Road. Say Hi for me. Say Hi to those nice Wyeth boys, too.
Posted by Hairy Houdini on Fri Jan 28, 2005 at 11:40 PM"

My cousin's (Frolic's) neighbors - I moved to Sillydelphia.
We put tape on the trees to keep those legless wormy creeps at bay. A friend of a friend told us it worked.

I think you've got the date about pegged, Hairy H. We moved up to western PA about 9 1/2 years ago. The area had just gotten done with a terrible 3-yr long gypsy moth infestation that killed thousands of acrea of forest. And then wild fires broke out in numerous areas of the mountains (that would be the eastern Laurel Highlands area), fed by all the dead wood. Reasearchers from Penn State finally solved the problem by releasing millions of sterilized parasitic black flies that killed the gypsy moth caterpillars by laying their eggs at the base of the caterpiller's brain stems. The eggs didn't develop, being unfertilized, but the gypsy moths couldn't survive pupation into adults with the fly eggs there. So, kill two birds with one stone - the gypsy moths died, and the black flies did, too; pretty good science, huh? The following summer there was an explosion of tent caterpillars that stripped another hundred or so thousand acres of PA forests, orchards, and home fruit and decorative trees. I almost burned down a flowering Japanese willow in my yard one evening while trying to burn out their nests. Make wine with them? I still can picture scraping them of the bottom of my sneakers, coming in from the yard! DIE - You evil alien haunted demon BUGS!!!

Given the additives this vintner admits to using (sugar, water, yeast, yeast nutrients, etc.), you could make wine (or at least an alcoholic beverage) out of shoes, lug nuts, or just about anything. The worms or snakes or baby octopuses or whatever floating around in the bottle are irrelevant to the fermentation going on. To claim that you have real army worm wine, it seems to me that army worms should be the only, or at least the main, ingredient. After all, regular wine is made entirely of grape juice with nothing added but (sometimes) yeast.

Well, the guy is in Minnesota, he probably had a lot of time to think something up while he was locked in his house all winter. Now, this is what he drinks to keep warm.

I don't know anything about this caterpillar wine, but I've tried the snake stuff and the 5 penis wine before(although that was more like brandy then wine). The stuff I had in campodia was just stoly vodka with a cobra inside. It tasted skunky and make my buddy sick for days. A friend of mine keeps a bottle of the snake baijio at his place and we crack into it everytime we're pissed. Makes for nasty hangovers.

Yeah, GYSPY Moths. Why that named escaped me, i don't know. All those black flies didn't croak, though. I live in North Central Pa., and we get them in such numbers that it looks like Amittyville sometimes. And then we got these chinese ladybugs a few years back. They hang year round and they stink. They'd make a bad wine, to be sure.

>>>You DO know I was kidding about the PETA thing? right?<<<

Well then congratulations, you trolled me. Someone help me get this hook out of my mouth...


Having seen the webby little worm bastards up close and experienced their disgustingness, I have no desire at all to consume any part of them, no matter how divinely delicious the wine in question might be. I simply cannot bring myself to fancy a sip of hooch made from one of nature's very plagues upon our green earth. I would not drink locust cider or bubonic daiquiris, either, Sam I am....

Listen up here people. This is Ray, the maker of AWW and this stuff is REAL and good. Come on over if you want to try it. I'll pour you a glass. I am thrilled to see America's workforce debating the merits of army worm wine and so forth. Your bosses must be so proud of you all! I love this country...

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