Joy of Home Wine Making (41 page)

(
STRAWBERRY AND SWEET CHERRY
)

Here in the upper Midwest, the high point for local strawberries is late June, when sweet cherries from other parts of the country are coming in. I had some of each leftover from batches of jam, and was delighted with this combination.

3 lbs. sweet cherries, any kind

2 lbs. sweet local strawberries

1 gallon water

2½ lbs. sugar or 3 lbs. light honey

1 tsp. acid blend or juice and zest of 1 lemon

¼ tsp. tannin

1 tsp. yeast nutrient

1 Campden tablet, crushed (optional)

½ tsp. pectic enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast

It isn’t necessary to stone the cherries. Stem and wash them well in cool water. Cherries are sprayed with pesticides, and they get dust and dirt on them. Stem and wash the strawberries for the same reasons.

Boil the sugar or honey in the water and skim if necessary. Put the fruit into a nylon straining bag. Wash your hands carefully, and squish the fruit from outside the bag. You’ll be able to feel the cherry pits as lumps. Don’t pound them with anything; just let them be. They won’t hurt anything.

Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and cover. When cooled, add the yeast nutrient, acid, and tannin, and the Campden tablet, if you choose to use one. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours after the Campden tablet, add the pectic enzyme. If you don’t use the tablet, merely wait until the must cools down to add the pectic enzyme.

Twenty-four hours later, check the PA and add the yeast. Cover and stir daily for a week or so until the PA comes down to 3 to 5 percent. Rack the wine into a secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock. Rack it twice in about six months, till fermented out dry. This wine is fine dry, but you might like it sweeter.

Use stabilizer and sweeten the wine with 2 to 4 ounces of sugar in a syrup. Bottle. Keep it for six months, at least.

WATERMELON BLUES WINE

(
LET’S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE
)

You never know when a winemaking opportunity will knock. I threw a party in the summer, and spent hours carving a watermelon into a peacock and seeding the fruit. Then I added some nice frosty blueberries to the watermelon cubes, for contrast and flavor. Everyone admired it. Said it was the nicest peacock watermelon they had seen all week.

No one ate it. After the party I stared at all the leftover watermelon and berries. People had mistaken the berries for seeds, it seemed.

Well, heck. On impulse, I threw all the fruit (minus the peel) into a nylon straining bag, added the usual suspects, and made wine. Six months later, I was bottling, and my goodness! A star was born!

I now make this every year. It’s a little unusual, but it can still be used as a table wine. If you are too busy during the summer, get a couple of melons when they are at their cheapest, and freeze the pulp for future use. You don’t have to remove the seeds.

Since the blueberries are more assertive than the melon, you don’t need many.

1 lb. fresh blueberries

3 lbs. watermelon centers

2 lbs. sugar or 2½ lbs. light honey

3¾ qts. water

2 tsps. acid blend

½ tsp. tannin

1 tsp. yeast nutrient

1 crushed Campden tablet (recommended)

½ tsp. pectic enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast

Wash the berries. Cube the watermelon. If you want to, you can get rid of the seeds by putting the melon through a strainer or feed mill, but it isn’t necessary. Put it all in a nylon straining bag, and with very clean hands, squish the fruit.

Boil the sugar or honey in the water and skim if necessary. Pour hot syrup over the fruit and cover. When cooled, add the yeast nutrient, acid, tannin, and include a Campden tablet. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours later, add the pectic enzyme.

Twenty-four hours later, check the PA and add the yeast.

Cover the must and stir daily for a week or so till the PA comes down to 3 to 5 percent. Rack the wine into a secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock. Rack it twice in about six months, till fermented out dry.

If you like, use stabilizer and sweeten it with 2 to 4 ounces of sugar in a syrup. Bottle. Keep it for six months, at least.

LIQUID SUNSHINE

(
CARROT AND APRICOT
)

This wine has to be good for you!

3 lbs. carrots

2 lbs. dry apricots or 3 lbs. fresh apricots

1 lb. golden raisins (optional but nice, especially if using fresh apricots)

zest and juice of 3 oranges

2½ lbs. sugar or 3 lbs. light honey

1 gallon water

2 tsps. acid blend or zest and juice of 2 large lemons

¼ tsp. tannin

1 tsp. yeast nutrient

1 Campden tablet, crushed (optional)

½ tsp. pectic enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast

Wash the apricots. There’s no need to peel them. If you’re using dry fruit, cut it into pieces and soak overnight in some of the water. If you’re using fresh fruit, pit it and put into a nylon straining bag with the citrus zests and the soaked raisins, if you are adding them. Put the bag in the primary fermenter.

SIMMER the sliced carrots just as you would for normal carrot wine. Remove the carrots and add the sugar or honey and dissolve, skimming if necessary. Pour hot syrup over the apricots and raisins in the fermenter and cover. When cooled, add acid, yeast nutrient, and tannin, including a Campden tablet, if you choose to use one. Cover and fit with an air lock. Twelve hours after the Campden tablet, add the pectic enzyme. If you don’t use the tablet, merely wait until the must cools down to add the pectic enzyme.

Twenty-four hours later, check the PA and add the yeast.

Cover and stir the wine daily for a week or so till the PA comes down to 3 to 5 percent. Rack it into a secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock. Rack it twice in about six months, till fermented out dry.

So you see, there’s no real trick to this. Just use your head and the recipes in part two to come up with your own interesting combinations. As always, you can make these wines in bigger batches if you like.

TUTTI-FRUTTI

In these wines, one or two fruits or general categories of fruits still dominate. You might mistake some of these for grape wines, but probably not. I tend to make them in five-gallon batches because I like them and it is usually less expensive to buy the fruit in larger amounts. I also feel that bigger batches of these wines let the fruit flavors meld together more, though it is easy to make them in one-gallon batches. All you do is divide the ingredients by five, except for the yeast.

REINCONATION CITRUS MELOMEL

(
FOR KAREN SCHAFFER
)

I’d been making wine for about seven years when I came up with this one. It wasn’t my first experiment, of course (see Mulberry Revenge).

This was first made from supplies left over from a punch that’s a favorite of some friends of mine; at the end of a big party we found that some of the backup fruit juices had thawed. On a bet, I recklessly used a ten-pound jar of local honey and made up the recipe as I went along, attempting to duplicate the punch in wine form. The idea was to serve the wine at the next annual party.