Inca Berry & Raisin Wine - First Bottle (4), 18th-19th January 2018

I had feared the worst for this wine. It was made only tick off a letter and there was no way that it would even be drinkable. Therefore, it is with some astonishment that I can report it is actually really rather good. Inca Berry & Raisin is a dark golden colour and has a solid wine taste (I suspect that will be the raisins). Claire is less enthusiastic, describing the wine as 'Inoffensive' and 'One step below nice'. We raised our glasses to Adam, for the idea, and drank to lamb chops and chips. I cooked - and the food (if I do say so) was excellent. The lamb was marinated in olive oil, a crushed clove of garlic, a teaspoon of sea salt, a good deal of ground pepper and a dollop of chilli paste. Claire insisted that I make a record of what I did. Behold the record!

If you want to see how I made this wine, click here

Blackcurrant Wine 2017 - The Making Of...

Though you would not think it looking out of the window this last week, we have had a proper summer this year. Whole weeks of long hot days with no rain clouds to be seen. It has resulted in early ripening fruit. I don't think I have ever made blackcurrant wine in July before. And the majority of currants were picked on 2nd July in Lindsay's garden. She was having a clear out and needed someone to store the WYSO percussion - a snare drum, triangle and tambourine. In return for this duty I was paid in blackcurrants - about 4 lbs - though I provided some of the labour in picking.

Lindsay's blackcurrants were stored in our freezer whilst the blackcurrants on our bushes ripened, which they did in stages. Every few days I would go out and collect another 4 oz, until my grand total (on Thursday 20th July) was 6 lbs - enough for a double batch.

I put the blackcurrants in my bucket and enlisted Adam, who happened to be staying, in the mashing duties. He is (much) younger and (much) fitter than I am and is planning on an army career. Meanwhile, I measured out 5 lbs 8 oz of sugar and poured this into a pan holding 12 pints of water. It took an age to dissolve this and then a further age to boil it, before I poured it over the (expertly mashed) blackcurrants.

Adam mashing blackcurrants

Next morning, when adding the yeast and a teaspoon each of nutrient and pectolase, I realised that I had missed a box of blackcurrants. My wine is 12 oz short of fruit - that is an ounce a bottle, and describing it in those terms it doesn't sound too bad. I'm still cross about it, though, and I hope it makes little difference to the wine.

More mashing action

On Wednesday 26th July I put the liquid into its two demijohns, straining out the fruit first with a colander and then a sieve. It turns out that I could have used more water - about half a pint. The wine is its usual attractive light aubergine colour and is in my bathroom bubbling away quietly to itself.

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

Rhubarb Wine - Fifth Bottle (C6), 22nd-23rd July 2017

Our only weekend bottle (unless one counts Friday) and thus unusual. I opened this wine after depositing Adam in Holmfirth to watch his father's Madness Tribute Band (we heard a sound check that was painfully loud). Earlier I had taken Adam to see the Arlom graves in Almondbury - I'm sure every 16-year-old's idea of a good time is visiting their great great great great grandfather's tomb.

Back at home we drank warm rhubarb wine (not quite as good as cold) and read our books. Claire is on a Dalziel and Pascoe kick and I am enjoying A Desert in Bohemia by Jill Paton Walsh. The remnants of the wine were finished on Sunday before we went to a concert in the Rawdon Friends' Meeting House in aid of Amnesty International. It was bassoon and flute trios played brilliantly by the Meltemi Trio, and a good night out.

A Special Kind of Madness - the said Tribute Band

Strawberry Wine - First Bottle (2), 21st July 2017

Adam was very enthusiastic about this bottle of strawberry wine, and rightly so. It is a classic strawberry - on the right side of dry and full-bodied. Extremely easy to drink - I needed to make an effort not to treat is as lemonade. Rachel is also staying and between the four of us we got through this, a bottle of Cava and huge steak & onion pie. I'm not sure whether Adam was more impressed by the wine or the pie - he had the lion's share of the latter, which is right & proper for a growing 16 year-old. Whether or not plying him with booze was a responsible thing to do remains open to debate.

If you want to see how this wine was made, click here.

Rose Petal Wine - First Bottle (B3), 20th July 2017

We have been invaded by visitors. Rachel has a meeting in Leeds and no longer has a house, so she is staying in the large front bedroom. Adam, my 16 year-old first-cousin-once-removed, has come to paint walls, so we have put him in the attic. Our first bottle on Thursday evening (I fear I am a Bad Influence for the teenager) was Rose Petal, and this batch has turned out nicely. The colour is an attractive light red and it has a dry, substantial taste dominated by rose. Claire thinks this may be the best rose petal I have made - and if it is, I think that is down to using sultanas rather than grape juice.

If you want to see how I made this wine, click here

Inca Berry & Raisin Wine - The Making Of...

An Inca Berry (or Physallis) (or Cape Gooseberry)

Back in April last year, at the Extended Family Do, I was complaining that it was difficult to find a fruit that began with the letter 'I' for my wine alphabet. Adam, being a modern-day technologically connected teenager, pulled out his phone, did a quick search and discovered both Inca Berries and a place that sold their seeds. Now, I know this fruit as 'Physallis' and others call it 'Cape Gooseberry'. However, that the seed packet said 'Inca Berry' is good enough for me to tick the letter 'I', leaving only 'J' and 'Z' to go.

Inca Berry seedlings - taken to Cornwall

We planted the seeds in mid-April, sending a pack to St Albans for Lou and Adam to fail to grow, and took the seedlings with us to Cornwall for a week's holiday in May.

Inca Berry Plants in Summer

By July the plants were putting out flowers - an attractive yellow and brown mix, and by September these had turned into green lanterns surrounding the nascent fruit. This is really where it started to go wrong. Our summer was not hot enough and the autumn not dry enough for the lanterns to turn brown, crack open and reveal a small yellow globe. Some did, but on the whole the lanterns and their fruit inside stayed resolutely green.

Over time Claire and I harvested what we could - even bringing three of the plants inside (this helped) and this weekend, 15th January, I harvested everything that had not gone rotten. Overall, this produced only 1 lb 8 oz of fruit in various stages of ripeness. This is not enough for a batch of wine, but I couldn't waste what had grown, so I have made do with 'Inca Berry and Raisin Wine'.

I mashed the Inca Berries in my bucket (and they made a satisfying 'pop' as I crushed them) and added 1 lb 8 oz of minced raisins. Raisins have their own sweetness, so I added 2 lbs 8 oz sugar (which is half a pound less than I usually add to a wine) and poured in six and a half pints of boiling water. The Inca Berries are perfumed, which gives me hope that this won't be the blandest wine ever made (I think Ya Ya Pear may get that particular prize).

I left the mixture over night and added the yeast and a teaspoon each of nutrient, pectolase and tannin on Monday 16th January. I had earmarked Friday to put the wine into its demijohn, but by the time I returned from practising bassoon pieces with David on the piano, Claire had started a fire, downloaded an episode of QI and opened a bottle of wine, so I left it until this morning, 21st January.

The wine is exceptionally brown, and Claire says it suggests a bad attack of cholera. Yum!

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