Exotic Tinned Fruit Wine - the Making of ...

The long Easter weekend always feels self-indulgent. It is four solid days of Sunday, where pottering about is as active as it gets. Today, 7th April, I have been out of the house once - to get the Guardian, and that mostly for the Araucaria crossword. Other than that I have been making soup and wine, and listening to the Classic FM 'Top 300 Pieces of Classical Music' countdown. Though I had to turn it off once it reached Walton's Crown Imperial, which must be the most dreadful piece of music ever written.

I decided that I would have another go at Exotic Tinned Fruit wine this month, and make it a double batch. I am a little worried, however, that I do not have quite enough fruit. There are 14 oz mangoes, 9 oz lychees, 8 oz guavas, and 8 oz combined Jack Fruit and Toddy Palm combined (neither of which I have ever even heard of) together with two pints of syrup. Actually that sounds really low on fruit. Too late now.

The tins of fruit with Claire in the background

I had to look up 'Jack Fruit' on Wikipedia, and other than seeing that it exists and is a large, starchy fruit, I am not really any the wiser. I had a small tast of both it and the Toddy Palm (which Claire pointed out looked worryingly like squid rings) and both were pleasant, tasting of generic exotic fruit.

Spot the Squid Rings

All - fruit and syrup - went into the bucket, I mashed it and then added 12 pints of boiling water and 4 1/2 pounds of sugar. This is less than I would usually add for a double batch, but each fruit came in its own syrup and the initial gravity reading of 1.090 is about right. I put in the yeast plus 1 1/2 teaspoons of nutrient, 1 teaspoon of pectolase and 1/2 teaspoon of amylase on Sunday morning after about ninety minutes of washing up. Ninety! Count them. (We had a splendid meal last night and Claire is busily making pork pies as I write.)

I put all this into its two demijohns on 11th April. It is all a fabulous colour on the borderline between yellow and orange. I suspect there will be a large deposit. The amount of water was not quite right - another pint and a half would have been perfect, but I shall fill it up next time I do any wine making stuff.