Pumpkin Wine

My first batch of pumpkin wine has just begun fermenting. I hope. My kitchen is a mess, the counters are covered in simple syrup, and there is a trail of pumpkin guts from the dinning room table to the kitchen sink, but I have three hollowed out fermenting pumpkins. In two weeks, give or take a week or a few months, I will hopefully have some drinkable pumpkin wine. For this first foray into winemaking, I dispensed with recipes, winemaking equipment, or even standard winemaking ingredients. I'm using a whole lotta granulated sugar, nine packets of dry active yeast, and lots of water. As I mentioned, I'm fermenting in the pumpkin instead of using a large food grade plastic tank. Fermentation will start in my kitchen for a few days as a sort of jump start, after which I plan to move the pumpkins to my storage area to slow down the fermentation in the hope of encouraging greater flavour development. My biggest concern is that dry active yeast, principally used in making bread, may have a low alcohol toxicity (the percent alcohol at which the yeast will be killed off due to alcohol poisoning). If this is the case, I may end up with some very sweet vaguely alcoholic (5% or so) undrinkable swill. Even if it reaches the 11-15% that I'd like, it may still be undrinkable swill, but at least it won't be too sweet. I hate sweet wines that end with a cloying finish, and I doubt that pumpkin must has the acidity to balance much, if any, residual sugar. To this end, I am going to procure some acidifier from a local wine making store for my second batch, and I will also be using real wine yeasts that are already on their way via UPS. But I still have high hopes for my first batch.