The Art of Coarse Winemaking

I neglected to make any wine last year. Neither did I update any winemaking records. And I'm usually very particular about my records. There was no need, for not only did I fail to start any wines, I completely ignored the 23 gallons of various wines fermenting in a cupboard. No racking, no bubblers changed, nothing done. Forgotten about.

The first thing to do was change the bubblers. They were disgusting, full of dust and dead fruit flies and some were filled with a primordial soup. I'm certain had I left them any longer, new and unpleasant life forms would have emerged from the cupboard. While I was doing this I took tentative tastes of the wine and, surprisingly, most of them were drinkable.

But not this elderberry. Started in November 2017 it tasted unpleasantly musty and looked like watered-down blood. Down the sink it went.

This rhubarb was started in September 2018 and this is the first racking. It is good. I'm drinking a glass of it right now.

So, after a year of neglect, it seems not too disastrous. I intend to give a lot of this wine away. Although anyone who reads this account might not fancy it! Peter and Billy will give it a go. If you see this post guys, I have Beetroot & Berries, Strawberry & Raspberry and the good old Rhubarb 14 waiting here for you.

The rhubarb patch is showing signs of a revival. Here's to Rhubarbs 15, 16 and 17. Slainte!

Making Wine With Grapes

Peter landed in yesterday with a huge bucket of grapes from his granny's greenhouse. Haven't weighed them but there must be at least 8 pounds. So checking recipes for grape wine which is, actually, just wine and I've got enough and the method for mashing given in the first recipe I read is treading with the bare feet. So, if this stuff turns out to be drinkable it will be all for me for I'm sure no one is going to want to drink wine that has been trampled by my tootsies. Unless perhaps Jazzer who is game for anything and also likes wine.

Fermenting

Strawberry and Raspberry fermenting merrily

I had two lots of yeast to choose from last night. One, from VinClasse, smelled a little sour and is three months from its sell by date. The other one (Youngs) was fresher but there wasn't much of it and I wanted it for white currant wine. It might be a while before I get to Nature's Way in Belfast. So I asked Bert to sniff the VinClasse, second opinion and all that. Of course he was wreathed in pipe smoke and could smell nothing else but his aromatic tobacco which is like old woollen socks sprinkled with essence of vanilla.

Nevertheless he pronounced the yeast fine and I tossed it into the bucket thinking to myself, if it hasn't started fermenting by tomorrow I'll re-yeast. No need to worry for it was off and running by bedtime. I've used yeast with added nutrient for a long time now and it is always quick to get started.

I really wish we had a decent wine supplies shop close by. There is a place near Ahoghill but it's more about beer and every time I go there there is always something needed that they haven't got. Which is annoying.

Busy Day In The Wine Making Kitchen

Went and let the home made wines get out of control again. I have 23 batches on the go, 24 if I count the raspberry and strawberry one I started today. And there is still enough frozen fruit in my freezers to make at least another six batches.

Today I racked off four batches that have been sitting around since October last year. Two were blackcurrant. It has a good flavour but is a little on the sweet side which is a pity as I made it in bulk, five gallons altogether. I'm sure somebody will like it. Swisser definitely as she is fond of dessert wines and Jazzer, she will probably go for it too. I also racked two that I've never tried before. The first was gooseberry. Maybe a little sharp but not so your eyes would water. I like it. It's the first time I got to the goosegogs before the blackbird. We definitely need more gooseberry bushes. The other was beetroot and blackcurrant and it is rather good. The earthiness of the beetroot balances the acidity of the currants. Bert thought it tasted of cherries.

Strawberry and Raspberry Stage I, before yeasting

Then I started a new one, the strawberry and raspberry. Easy recipe.

Slightly over 3lbs of fruit, a gallon of boiling water (cooled) and a bag of sugar then a wee bit more. I used a yeast and nutrient mixture which was still in date, but slightly old. It might not work out so fingers crossed. Before adding sugar I squished the fruit up using my incredibly clean hands and tried not to think about how the strawberries looked and felt like slugs. And I dissolved the sugar in hot water before I added it to the fruit mixture.

And this is how I keep track of my wine making activities. The coloured entries are finished wines.

Click to embiggen. But you knew that.

Interesting Wines

212 views, 13th most interesting...

...but not as interesting as the completed wine, I'd wager.

1. A conglomeration of pome fruits. Middling to good. All drunk.
2. A rhubarb. Rhubarb is always good. All drunk.
3. Carrot and Raisin. Carrot is always good. This one was dry and delicious and is all drunk.
4. & 6. Rosehip, made from dried hips. Overly sweet. Still some left.
5. Orange and Apple. Made from fruit juice. Not very nice and wouldn't use juice again. Still drunk it.
7. Damson. Fabulous, delicious, sublime. All drunk.
8. Nectarine. Some of the fruit was over ripe and there was a slight mustiness to it. I liked it. All drunk.

All these wines were started in late 2012.

The piano they are sitting on? Chopped up. Late 2014.

Adventures in Cider Making

At primary school one of the stories in our Wide Range Readers was Johnny Appleseed. As I remember, Johnny was presented as a jolly hobo who wandered the length and breadth of America with bags of apple seeds which he planted everywhere for no reason other than benevolence. And this is how Johnny Appleseed is generally known. I never gave him another thought until I read The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan.

Pollan's work shows how people and domesticated plants have formed mutually beneficial relationships. His chosen plants are the apple – our desire for sweetness, the tulip – for its beauty, marijuana – which intoxicates us and the potato which nourishes us. Each of these plants has thrived through selective breeding and genetic engineering. It was a fascinating read which I'd recommend to anyone who takes pleasure in growing – anything!

The section I enjoyed the most was the one on our desire for sweetness and apples. Pollan had a lot to say about Johnny Appleseed or, to give him his true name, John Chapman. The tale I had from school was over simplified. John Chapman was a fascinating man. But he didn't just wander around the United States planting seeds willy-nilly. He planted nurseries of apple saplings and sold them to farmers. When a nursery was established he left it in the hands of a manager and moved on, planted another nursery and continued in this pattern. He made a decent living. Now an interesting fact about apples is that they don't grow true from seed. Indeed, if you were to take an apple and plant the several seeds that it contained, each seedling would be entirely different from the others. And most would be sour. Apple trees that produce sweet fruit may only be propagated by grafting. So the vast majority of John Chapman's trees would have produced sour fruit. So why did people buy them in such large numbers? Because sour apples are just what is needed to produce hard cider and applejack. Our reading book never mentioned that.

Which brings me to my own recent experiment. I've been wanting Bert to make a cider press for ages but he has yet to get round to it. So I was rather pleased when a friend sent me a link to a method of producing cider without using a press. I gathered my apples, a mixture of Bramleys, crabs and dessert apples. Mostly Bramleys as they are what I have at hand. They are not ideal for cider but it is just an experiment.

The recipe uses a juicer instead of a press and we happen to have a sturdy masticating juicer which makes it easier still.

Hard Cider From Whole Apples

What You’ll Need:

• Apples, pears, or crab apples (to be mixed with sweet apples.)  About 15 lbs. of fruit gets us about a gallon of juice.  Must be fresh and organic.  Try to include some crab apples or tart apples with your sweet ones for a better, more balanced flavour.
• A juicer. 
• A chopping knife and cutting board.
• A large sieve and a clean kitchen towel.
• Demijohns, a funnel, a siphon hose, rubber bungs and airlocks.
• Sugar
• Swing-top bottles

Method:

1. Wash your fruit well with plain water. 
2. Cut your apples into quarters.  This is mostly just to check for bugs or other issues with the apples.  Discard or cut around any that have an infested core, and cut out major bruises. You don’t need to worry about coring or taking stems out– the juicer will do that for you.
3. Start juicing!  As your juicer pitcher gets full, pour it through a funnel into a sterilized demijohn.
4. Once you have juiced all of your fruit, taste the juice and add sugar.  At least a cup of sugar to a gallon of juice, more if you like sweet cider.  During the fermentation process, the yeast will eat the sugar (both the fructose from the fruit and the added sugar) and turn it into alcohol– so this step is both for flavour and alcohol level.  Those of you in the USA may not really need to add much sugar, as most of the apples there tend to be really sweet.  You can add more sugar later if the brew is turning out too dry or tart for your taste.
5. Put a rubber stopper and an airlock on your demijohn, and let it sit for a week.
6. Rack your cider– siphon it into another sterilized demijohn, leaving the yeasty sediment in the bottom of the first one, so you have a much cleaner cider in the new demijohn.  Taste it and see how it’s doing.  If it’s already tasting pretty dry, you can add some more sugar before you put the airlock back on.
7. For a sweet cider, bottle after a week. Three weeks or more makes a drier end product. Fermenting it this long means that it won’t be very fizzy in the end– but you can also add a little sugar just before bottling to regain some carbonation.  The next step is to bottle your hard cider.  Use the siphon hose to fill swing-top bottles. The type of bottle is really important, since it lets out small amounts of the pressure that builds up, so you don’t burst any bottles.

For those of you in Northern Ireland all the specialist equipment needed can be purchased at Hillstown Farm Shop near Ahoghill (and Randalstown) or Nature's Way in Belfast.

Carrot and Orange Wine

It's been ages since I've blogged about my wine making activities. The truth is I've been too busy growing fruit and vegetables to have time for making wine and, like last summer, I've rather neglected the wines already started. Five months and nothing racked, nothing progressed. I'm beginning to realise that. for me,  wine making is going to be an autumn and winter pastime.

Carrot & Orange

10/05/13

29/05/13

20/10/13

23/11/13

26/01/2014 & 7/04/2014

03/09/14

2nd R -heavy sediment/3rd R: Heavy albumin bloom decanted out topped with cider & water

Still, the freezer is full of peaches, all colours of currants, rhubarb and raspberries. The damsons look like they are going to crop well this year and the hedgerows are full of blackberries. It's been four months since I laid anything new down but, I promise, I'll make up for it.

And so it was I bottled the Carrot and Orange. Started in May 2013, racked 5 times and bottled tonight. It is drinkable already. Nellybert shared a couple of glasses tonight. Too soon but we are reckless fools.

Carrots always make good wine. My experiments with pineapples, pears, oranges and strawberries are over. From now on I shall concentrate on the fruit and vegetables that make dry and palatable wines. I know I used a dash of orange in this one but it was juice only, no rind. Wines with rind included tend to give me a headache so no more of that.

Sixteen months from start to bottle. Too long but the wine is yummy. A friend, Emma, gave me loads of sultanas today. Carrot and sultana wine coming up!

Racking and Bottling

The Banjos came over on Saturday night. Mrs Banjo brought her first ever wine for racking. It was a raspberry made from Asda's finest frozen fruit. To be honest I wasn't expecting much from it but it is coming along very nicely. A good ruby red colour, clear, tasty and alcoholic. Of course we judged this on the merest sip during the racking process but I will be looking for the recipe. I might need to use frozen fruit as we replaced our raspberry canes this year, and thanks to the very wet Spring they were late in getting into the ground.

Tonight I racked one of my elderflowers and a rhubarb. The elderflower was made from fresh flowers. I'd previously used dried flowers. The flavour is good but it is rather too sweet for my liking. I'll try it again this year but will go easy on the sugar.

Rhubarb. What can I say? It never disappoints me but looking back at my notes I see I was very adventurous with this one. I started it in February 2013 and used a pint of pineapple wine as a starter. Then, racking it in October I seem to have lashed a bit of birch sap and rhubarb into it. It didn't clear that well but is strong. Not one for entering in the County Show.

Carrot and Apple Wine

	Started	Bottled	NOTES
Carrot	28/10/11	19/05/12	still very sweet on 3rd racking/ bottled – sweet and  clear, good colour, cork popped Sept, 12/1/13 drank 1 bottle, very fizzy, sweet but pleasant
Carrot and Orange	10/05/13		2nd R -heavy sediment/3rd R: Heavy albumin bloom decanted out topped with cider and water
Carrot and Raisin 1	28/11/12	04/05/13	Added nutmeg, cinnamon and pinch clove, needed a lot of topping up (water) when going into demijohn, 2nd R: dry, great flavor, Bert loves it
Carrot and Raisin 2	28/02/13	24/02/14	some parsnips in mix, used demerara sugar 2lbs, nutmeg and cinnamon. Bottled 5. Yummy.
Carrot and Raisin 3	03/12/13
Carrot and Sultana	13/12/12	06/11/13	using plastic container, 2nd r decanted into glass – light flavour 3rd R: dry, clear topped with nettle
Carrot, Parsnip and Sultana	24/10/13	02/03/14	made with Tam veg. Topped with young rhub at 2nd rack

That's a little section of my wine-making spreadsheet and it's all about The Carrot. As can be seen I've made wine from carrots 7 times. Two are still on the go and 5 have been bottled. Bert and I shared a bottle of carrot and raisin (2) last night and it was rather tasty.

The first time I used carrot I stuck closely to a recipe. There must have been a lot of sugar because it was almost too sweet. It was also fizzy which means it carried on fermenting after bottling. Not a good idea! Carrot and raisin (or sultana) and less sugar produced a far more drinkable wine. I also started using pinches of nutmeg and other spices which added flavour. By the time I was on my third carrot and raisin I had stopped using recipes.

Carrot (and parsnip) wines are made with the liquor from the chopped and boiled roots. The actual vegetable is discarded. Some recipes suggest they can then be used in cooking but as I don't like my vegetables with the life boiled out of them, I give them to the pigs. Using dried fruit means that chemical nutrients aren't needed. I rarely use additives now. Just bananas or raisins for added nutrients, lemon juice where acid is required and strong tea where tannin is recommended.

Rough Recipe for Carrot, Apple, Raisin and Date Wine

Roots are easy to prepare for wine but chopping the raisins is a bit of a fiddly chore. And that is where my new Veto slow juicer comes in. I found a recipe for carrot and apple wine on-line and adapted it. I boiled the 4 lb of carrots as always then made a litre of juice using apples, carrots, all the raisins I had in my baking cupboard and a few dates for good measure. I put a bag of sugar in my sterilised bucket and added the pulp from the carrots, apples and dried fruit. Then 2 litres of boiling water and stirred it into a thick sludgy brown syrup. Time for the carrot liquor which had cooled down quite a bit. By the time I added my litre of juice and topped it up to a gallon it was exactly the right temperature for the yeast. Quick stir, lid on and that was that. Did I mention that it looked like liquid manure? Smelt better though.

So there you are. Another rough enough recipe from Nelly.  I'm sure I must be annoying somebody out there by alternating between imperial and metric measures. If anyone wants me to make it more exact I will. But perhaps better wait a few months to see how it turns out.

Drinking It Young

Spring is here at last, a time for new beginnings and a new flurry of activity on the blog. It might still be freezing but the evenings are lengthening and I've been clearing the freezer of all last season's fruit to make way for this year's harvest.

There were a lot of blackcurrants in there. Since I last updated the Rough Enough Guide I have started 11 gallons of wine and six of them have been blackcurranty. Two plain old blackcurrant and the remaining four blackcurrants mixed with,

1. blackberries
2. damsons
3. apple
4. strawberries.

Way back in August 2011 the first wine I made was blackcurrant and it disappointed me. Dry, dry as a bone. I think that was why it took me two years to attempt blackcurrant again.

Then Jazzer presented me with the entire crop from her solitary blackcurrant bush and we had another go. We started it together and I continued the racking process myself. We used less sugar and Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound. It finished really quickly and, needing something bottled and Jazzer very keen to see it in bottles, we went ahead. We bottled five and polished off the last bottle from the flagon. It was surprisingly delicious considering it was only 6 months old. Jazzer wanted to get stuck into another one but I explained to her that it would not really be properly ready until next August.

Can I take it home with me?

You can take your two bottles if you think it's wise. 

Two bottles? But...

Her face fell.

Did you think it would be all yours? The deal is, and I do this for anyone who provides me with ingredients. If there are six bottles I keep three. For I do all the sterilising and racking.

She saw my point and she got her two bottles.

You know you should really keep them six months.

I'll drink one and keep one.

She drank them both and now she has the wine making bug, rang me tonight looking for a bit of advice on her first batch which she is making using frozen blackberries and raspberries from Tescos. Interesting. If she keeps this up she'll be in rehab before long.

I'll try to keep my three bottles of the Jazzer Blackcurrant until August but it is rather good. No doubt, next time she's here we will fall to it with gusto.

 Blackcurrant & Apple

Blackcurrant & Strawberry

Rhubarb Wine Update

The 4 pounds of chopped frozen rhubarb and the handful of blackberries were marinaded in 3 pounds of sugar and left for 24 hours. Last night I added around 7 pints of boiling water and gave it a good stir. This morning, when it was cool, I added a heaped teaspoonful of Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound. No need to add nutrients and it is supposed aid fermentation and clearing. This will be my first time using it so it will be interesting to see if it is an improvement.

Catching Up, Drinking Japanese Knotweed

I am afraid I have been very neglectful of this blog and up until very recently I have also been neglectful of my wine. You see Bert had made me a lovely cupboard to store my flagons in and when the cupboard door was closed I almost forgot they were there! I had quite the flurry just before I went to visit my brother in Vancouver but since returning had barely looked at it.

Until a few weeks ago. As I wrote in my other blog...

In the past three weeks I have bottled 5 gallons of wine (30 bottles), racked 21 gallons, poured one gallon down the toilet and started one gallon. It is almost like having a job. I also drank some and gave some away to delighted and grateful  recipients.

The minute I poured the last of the beetroot down the toilet I regretted it. The reason was it had flakey, cruddy bits floating in it. As the last of that strong, ruby red liquid disappeared around the U-bend I realised it was probably just a bit of dried stuff from its neck from when it was at the height of its fermentation. Oh well. Live and learn. It did free up a glass flagon for the start of the racking process. Most experts advise regular racking, but some of the stuff I had on the go hadn't been racked for 5 months!

I bottled everything I could. A dozen each of rosehip and orange and six of carrot and sultana. The rosehip is a bit on the sweet side, the orange should be good for mulling at Christmas. The best was the carrot and sultana. So all is racked and in shiny clean flagons and I don't have to go back to it for at least a week.

I started a batch of carrot, parsnip and raisin a couple of weeks ago and tonight I started a rhubarb. It is recommended that rhubarb should be chopped and frozen for at least 24 hours before freezing. It had been thrown it in the freezer unchopped several months ago. Tonight I let it partially defrost then cut it with the kitchen scissors. There are 4 pounds of it lying in a nice clean bucket and I've added 3 pounds of sugar and a handful of frozen blackberries that had fallen out of their bag. Lid on and that will be left for 24 hours then I'll add a gallon of boiling water and who knows what else? I'll check my various recipes and do what takes my fancy.

Tonight we are having a glass of Japanese Knotweed.  I made it in May 2012 and bottled it last January. We drank some in the summer time. This bottle has been lying around since then. It is actually very good. Note to self. Japanese Knotweed improves with age. Second note. Make some more in 2014. It is not as if it is hard to get and it is completely free!

Making Blackberry, Drinking Parsnip

I have been remiss. Almost two months since I updated this blog. This is some of what I've been up to.

Making a vegetable garden.
Learning to make curry.
Saying goodbye to my darling Bonnie dog.
Watching Game of Thrones.
Reading.

And a little bit of wine making.

Since last updating I started Peach & Banana, Carrot & Orange, a Dandelion and a Rhubarb. The Peach & Banana was made from some frozen fruit languishing in the freezer. The fruit for wine I'm starting tonight also comes from the freezer. There were 4 pounds of blackberries taking up room and a little peck of raspberries. I'm aiming to get a dozen bottles out of it.

The method I'm going to use is roughly based on a Beech & Pollard recipe. It is supposed to be a dry rose.

4 lbs (1800g)blackberries + handful of raspberries, completely optional
Tsp nutrients
Tsp enzyme
2 Campden tablets
4 and half lbs (2 k) white sugar
Yeast
Water

The fruit is frozen so I have started by adding 4 pints of very hot water. When that cools I shall squish the berries with my very well-scrubbed hands. Then I shall add 6 more pints of water, nutrients, enzyme Campden tablets and sugar.

Tomorrow I shall yeast.

On the fifth day I'll strain it and make the volume up to 2 gallons (8.5 L) then I'll decant it into two flagons. After that I shall see how it goes. This is a rough guide after all.

And in other news, wine making means wine drinking. We finished the very first parsnip I made last night. It was yummy. I need a field of parsnips. What I don't use for wine, I'll roast and what isn't roasted will be given to the pigs. What a marvellous vegetable the parsnip is.

Not Fit For Pigs

The nettle wine is over a year old and I have been loath to sample it. The reason being that it has been over sweet at every tasting. Sweetness is a problem that is not going to improve no matter how long the wine is left. I am not sure what went wrong. My notes tell me that if was very frothy and exuberant to start with so I expect it fermented out before the sugar was used up.

Perhaps I should give it to the pigs but that would be against the law. It is not that pigs are not allowed to drink alcohol - it is that they are not supposed to eat or drink anything that has passed through a kitchen, just in case it might have become contaminated by pork products. And I make my wine in the kitchen. Of course no pork product will ever gave tainted my wine as I am scrupulous about hygiene. But the law is the law -  not that pigs care.

If I ever take up making cider using the old-fashioned method I shall definitely have to take care that the pigs never get wind of it because it was not unknown for the traditional cider makers to throw a lump of bacon (or a dead rat) into the brew to give it body. I'm sure that would never be allowed now. Bit of horse maybe - for sure isn't that in everything!

Blackcurrant, Birch Sap and Rhubarb

We drank the last bottle of blackcurrant during the week. I started it in August 2011 and it had been in the bottle exactly one year. The colour was gorgeous, it was strong and it had legs. It also had flavour - but, unfortunately, that flavour was rather acidic. Sadly the birds ate all my blackcurrants last year so there was none made in 2012. I found a pound or so of currants in the freezer so I might try again soon only this time I'll add blackberries and use a very different recipe. this time i don't care if it is a bit on the sweet side as long as it doesn't have that vinegar thing going on. No prizes at the county show for the 2011 Blackcurrant.

Dave came up trumps with the birch sap. We started it last week. I got it into the flagon and it is fermenting away nicely. there was an extra half gallon and as I don't have a half-gallon jar I plunged into the depths of the freezer and came out with a bag of rhubarb and another of crushed peaches. that should do nicely. They'll be started of and I'll add the birch sap to it. I told you I was a rough vintner!

Tonight we are drinking rhubarb. It was only bottled last month but had popped its cork. That's God's way of telling you to drink it. It's pleasant enough. Lacks interest.

Birch Sap Wine

It was Dave's idea that we should try birch sap wine and he sourced the birch sap. Being a responsible sort of chap he took very great care not to damage any trees and he plugged up all the holes he had drilled.

Andy Hamilton writes on birch sap wine, "Any birch tree can be tapped, but ensure you tap an older tree of at least 25–30cm in diameter: any smaller and you risk damaging the tree before it has had a chance to grow."

The recipe was very simple. Boil the birch sap, let it cool down, add the juice of two lemons, sugar, a pound of chopped up raisins, a cup of strong black tea and the yeast and nutrient.

It went into the demijohn at the beginning of April 2012 and I bottled it last November. Dave and I split the bottles between us, three each. Unfortunately a couple of his bottles popped the corks. Possibly because they were stored in the kitchen and it was too warm. He lost a bit but drank what remained. I gave him another bottle at Christmas to make up for his loss. That left two bottles and we drank one tonight.

To start with it was fizzy. Why it hasn't popped I do not know but it is  delectable and, by far, the loveliest wine I have ever made. I wish I had a crate of it. Two crates even. It is a wine so delightful that you wouldn't even care if it wasn't alcoholic.

I can only hope that the late, cold Spring means that the sap has yet to rise so that I can make some more. And I think Bert should plant a birch wood.

Happy Easter

I do like to spend part of a festive day progressing my wines. Today I racked (first time) the blackberry and raspberry that went into the demijohn on Saint Patrick's Day. I had a bit of difficulty with this one which I began on the first day of March. The first yeasting went nowhere. It fermented nicely on the second attempt. I noticed today that there was a lot of sediment so made racking a priority.

The wine is a good, bright colour and has little sweetness left in it. For the first time ever I added sugar. Just two tablespoons, dissolved in boiling water and cooled down to blood heat. I also added a dash of white wine left over from last night.

Fourth Racking Blackberry Wine

Tonight I am drinking one glass of blackberry wine. I made two batches of blackberry from the fruit I picked in September and October. This one was made with 1lb of fruit and the second with twice that amount. I racked it this evening and there was a glass left over. It is dry and has a great flavour.  One to look forward to.

A post from my other blog on picking blackberries.

After a few fine, bright days the rain came back. I had made the most of the fine weather gathering blackberries and rose hips by day and making, progressing and tasting country wine in the evenings. Wednesday was a very productive day for I was out in the fields for hours berrying and listening to Nelson Mandela's 'Long Road to Freedom'. The reading was so engrossing that I probably stayed out longer than I had intended.

Nearly twenty years ago, and after a few failed attempts, I finally passed the driving test and got my driving licence. Within weeks I decided that I'd make the trip to visit my sister in Kerry. It was quite a journey back then, as roads were not as good and there were many little towns and villages that could not be bypassed. I was over ten hours on the road and by the time I got to the sister's house, ten miles west of Dingle, I was completely exhausted. It was good to get to bed that night. The only problem was that every time I nodded off to sleep I woke with a jolt, my hands on a steering wheel and the dusty road ahead of me. I've never had such an experience before or since - until Wednesday night.

That day in the fresh air and the evening sterilising, racking, stirring and tasting had me ready for a good night's sleep. My only problem was that each time I drifted off I was jolted awake, my hand stretched out to pick just one more juicy berry...

Postscript: Bert has just informed me that blackberries picked after the 29th September are 'no good.'

Who says so?
Alan Titchmarsh. He says that after the 29th September they are as bitter as gall.
Why?
Because the devil spits on them.

Carrot Wine

Tonight we are drinking a bottle of carrot wine started in October 2011 and bottled last May. It is a beautiful colour, ever so slightly fizzy and on the sweet side. After this there is just two bottles left. I see from my notes that a bottle popped its cork four months after bottling and one that I gave to a friend at Christmas popped last month.

Really instead of drinking I should be making for I've only started one batch this month. Time to look in the freezer to see what is available. And carrots are cheap.

Making Rhubarb Wine

Rhubarb wine is, without doubt, one of the easiest wines to make and to drink. Rhubarbs 1 and 2 are finished and both pleased us. Rhubarb 3 is ready for bottling and tonight I racked the most recent batch, Rhubarb 4. It is a month in the demijohn and the flavour is already amazingly delicious. It tastes like a yummy rhubarb tart with only one little thing to bring it down - it is maybe a smidgen too sweet. Then I checked my notes. I started this wine off with a pint and a half of surplus pineapple wine. What a combination! A new project for the summer time - rhubarb & pineapple wine. Apparently they work well in a crumble too.