"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
"gavin" writes:
| "Rusty Hinge 2" wrote in message
| k...
|
| AFAIK there's precious little sugar in parsnips which is directly
| fermentable by wine yeast.
|
| You add the sugar for the yeast to ferment. Any sugar in the parsnips
is
| a bonus - probably.
|
| Correct! But as I said I think there will be little sugar in parsnips
which
| Saccharomyces cerevisiae can ferment.

Stick to your 'directly'. Yeast can also use starch, but the mechanism
involves quite a lot more complexity in converting it to sugar.

That depends on the strain of yeast. Years ago one of the home winemaking
supply producers used to market a yeast which would ferment a proportion of
starch and so was great for rice wine and similar.