Strawberry Wine 2014 - The Making Of ...

I have been watching the weather forecast carefully this week, knowing that Sunday morning, 6th July, was really my only opportunity to pick strawberries. Saturday would have been useless. All roads to Wharfedale Grange Farm were closed because of the Tour de France. And next weekend is both busy and on the verge of being too late.

Wharfedale Grange's wares

All week the forecast has been predicting heavy downpours. Even this morning the woman on the radio talked darkly of showers in Yorkshire. It has been sunny all day, and I got to wear my Hat while picking.

Sunny all day and me in my Hat (after picking)

The Pick Your Own was relatively quiet, and they had strawberries in abundance. I had no trouble at all in picking a basket full of lucious fruit. This was hunter-gathering at its easiest. I needed 4 lbs of fruit and I came away with nearly five. One pound is in the freezer awaiting 'Strawberry and Crab Apple', so I have just less than 4 lbs strawberries in this wine. I have also added ten or so tiny wild strawberries from our garden.

While boiling four pints of water, I mashed the strawberries and added 3 lbs sugar. The boiling water went in and the bucket then sat for 24 hours.

Strawberries before mashing (obviously)

Strawberry wine's most tedious stage came next. On Monday evening I sieved the liquid into a demijohn, putting the pulp in a pan. I covered the pulp with two pints of cold water and let it sit for around half an hour. I then drained this into the (cleaned and sterilised) bucket, throwing out the pulp, and poured the liquid in the demijohn into the bucket. This all took far too long. I added the yeast (which is champagne variety because I have run out of everything else) and a teaspoon each of tannin, pectolase and nutrient.

On Thursday evening, immediately after work and before the Yorkshire Icon Orchestra concert (which I was dreading) I put the wine into its demijohn. This was a rapid job, and the colour is as red as I have seen it.

If you want to see how this wine turned out, click here