Crab Apple & Strawberry Wine - The Making Of ...

4 lbs of crab apples in a bowl

Since cracking open a bottle of last year's crab apple & strawberry in early July, this flavour has been on the list of wines to make this October. I have kept a pound of strawberries in the freezer for that purpose and I removed them last night, 20th October, to defrost. Some of the afternoon was spent plucking crab apples from our tree in the sunshine. It is a hard life.

This morning, after making bread and a vegetarian chilli for later in the week, I started the wine. There has been rather more negotiation of kitchen space than ideal. We have finally had the new fridge freezer that failed to work towed away. However, a new one (from a different retailer) arrived this morning, which means that we still have the old one sitting in the middle of the kitchen, its flex creating an entirely successful tripping hazard. With any luck, the new one will work this time (is that too much to ask?) and we can get rid of the old.

Anyway, I washed 4 lb of crab apples and blitzed them through the food processor. I added the pound of strawberries (which were looking less than pristine) and mashed them. This was covered in three pounds of sugar and I have poured over six and a half pints of boiling water, giving it all an enthusiastic stir. By the time I had returned from playing in a Yorkshire Wind Orchestra concert on Sunday evening (main piece: Pictures at an Exhibition) the wine had cooled sufficiently to add the yeast and a teaspoon each of pectolase, nutrient and citric acid.

The fruit in its bucket

I put the liquid into its demijohn on Friday evening, 26th October. As with crab apple, I started by scooping out the fruit with a plastic collander, which speeds things up no end. The amount of liquid I added was right. However, I should have left a gap in the demijohn. It is currently sat in the bath with red foam trickling down the plug hole doing its best impression of Janet Leigh in Psycho.

Janet Leigh

Oh - if you want to have a look at a fabulous website that deals with how to make wine, as well as beer, and has plenty of gardening tips, I can thoroughly recommend Two Thirsty Gardeners, which you can see if you click here. They have just done an interview with me, but this is not the only reason I am recommending them. Have a trawl through their archive, but don't leave me, never to return!

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If you want to see how the first bottle of this turned out, click here