Xmas Tutti Fruti 2019 - The Making Of...

This year I did not think that I had gathered very much extra fruit with which to make Xmas Tutti Fruti. I cheated on both blackberries and elderberries, picking extra after I had made those flavours of wine. The blackberries came from the new park, just north of here, rather than York Victorian Cemetery, and the elderberries were exclusively from trees on Bentcliffe Drive (I think). My quince was found one morning when I was walking to work; a windfall on the pavement. Otherwise (apart from the satsuma) all ingredients came from our garden.

The fruit, frozen in its bucket

In total I had 10 lbs 2½ oz fruit - which is rather more than I have had before to the extent that I have made a triple batch for the first time. My worries about not having enough fruit were entirely groundless. That fruit was made up of 2 lbs 3 oz blackberries, 8 oz quince, 13½ oz elderberries, 1 lb plums, 2 lbs 5 oz gooseberries, 1 oz damsons, 1 oz red gooseberries, 1 oz rose petals, 3 oz redcurrants, 1 lb 2 oz strawberries, 1 lb raspberries, 8½ oz blueberries and a satsuma weighing in at 4 oz.

The fruit once it had defrosted

I took the fruit from the freezer on Sunday morning, 22nd December, put it in my bucket, stirred it around so that it looked pretty (for this blog) and left it to defrost. On Monday evening - after a full day of work (the firm was officially closed for Christmas), I gave the fruit a good mash, poured in 8 lbs of sugar and covered it with 16 pints of boiling water, again giving it a good stir. I could have added at least another pint of water - but that didn't become obvious until I put the wine into its demijohns.

Giving the wine a good stir

This I did on Sunday 29th December - I am in that stage of Christmas where I have to concentrate really hard to remember what day it is. Towards the bottom of the bucket, the mixture became gloopy, meaning that it took quite some time to extract all liquid. I currently have 20 demijohns full of wine and am using all my air-traps. This wine has the scuzziest of them all, but that shouldn't make a difference to the end product.

By racking (on 10th February), all demijohns had cleared and none had a huge deposit. I fit in just over a pint and a half of water with (I think) 5 oz sugar dissolved. I have yet to bottle this flavour.

The three demijohns on 29 December.

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