Elderberry wine. (Home Made Wine Recipes)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Home Made Wine Recipes
Date:	23/07/01 (14757 review reads)
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Advantages: the best wine you can make at home.

Disadvantages: elderberries are fiddly as hell.

I honestly do not understand the obsession with grape wine, and perhaps once you've tried elderberry, you will agree with me.

Elderberry trees grow wild in this country, and you cannot buy the fruit. I'll start by talkign about how to harvest, then go on to preparation and a basic recepie.

Elderberrys are qite distinctive - at their tallest the trees tend to be about 12-15 feet. They have green leaves shaped a bit like arrowheads, these leaves are paired down a thin branch (A bit like ash or rowan leaves.) The berries grow in large clusters, and when ripe are purpley black. When underripe they will be red or green. It's best to pick really ripe fruit. If in doubt, take a nature book out of the library and get a picture.

To harvest. It's no good at all trying to pick berry by berry - you will be there all day. Take a sharp scisors, small knife or garden implement with you, and cut the bunchs of berries. It's better not to rob any tree or area of fruit as the birds will also be wanting their share. Once you have as much as you want (or can carry) get it home. Ripe elderbrries will not keep for long even in your fridge, so you need to clean and prepaire them within the next 48 hours. This is a big job, you may need to enlist help.

Wash the clusters lightly, remove any insects and any rotten fruit. You now need to get the berrie off the clusters. Some people think that using a fork is best, I do better with my fingers. Either way you need a very light touch. Gather the fruit in bowls, weight.

Note, any equiptment used should be sterelised first - I recomend anything suitable for baby stuff.

Making the wine. Elderberry works well if you mix it pound for pound with sugar. You want about a gallon of water to every five pounds of fruit. (Versions vary.) You will also need wine yeast (Boots, or any brewing shop.) The water should be boiling when it goes on the fruit and sugar, wait until it has all c
olled down before adding the yeast.

Over the following week you should stir the fruit every day. Keep it covered and in a moderatley warm plac the rest of the time.

Straining the fruit is a hard job - you will need a fine muslin, or a bag (Again, Boots can help you out here.) Strain into saucepans, bowls and anything else clean you can find. This is a two person job one to hold the strainign bag in place, one to ladle liquid in. Don't squeeze the remaining fruit too hard our you will end up with a syrup rather than a wine.

Transfer (By means of a plastic tube) your liquid into demijohns, and seal with corks airlocks, very cunning plastic devices that hold water - go to your Boots (Again! or you could make a list and get it all first time round.) These will keep dust out of your wine, and allow you to see if it is bubbling (and therefore fermenting.)

Keep your fermenting wine in a warm, but not hot place - airing cupboards are great for this. Wait patently for months. Elderberry takes a long time, anything up to a year in fact. Wait until you are sure it has fermented because this is the worst wine I've found for blowing up. You may want to bear that in mind when storing it - don't leave it next to anything you value.

Bottle it up, being careful not to bottle up the sediment, of which there will be quite a lot.

Elderberry wine is best if left to mature for a long time - give it a year in bottles at the least, if you can wait, give it longer. My father kept a bottle for ten years and it was amazing.

This is undoubtedly the best wine you can make, ever. You may want to experiment with the sugar to fruit ratio as some people like their wine sweeter than others - a good wine book will give you a range of options for sugar based on the results youw ant.

A final note - I've seen a few wine books give advice for trampling your fruit. This is totally insane and should be avoided.

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