Blackberry Wine - Second Bottle (B4), 15th-16th September 2013

My wisdom tooth has returned with a vengeance. It has always been there, of course, but is the last one of four and is showing its displeasure at the state of affairs. On Sunday night I dulled the throb with not quite half a bottle of blackberry wine whilst manfully struggling through a chicken roast dinner. This is another sign that autumn has arrived and one of the most welcome things about the season. By Monday I was on antibiotics and contemplating minor surgery. Therefore the last glass in the bottle was Claire's.

The blackberry wine was fabulous - better than the last bottle, which was already good.

A Medieval Depiction of Toothache

Quince Wine - Fifth Bottle (1), 13th September 2013

I remember the last bottle of Quince Wine being on the verge of 'horrid'. This, however, was also on a verge - but of 'rather good'. Yes, it is far too dry, but a syrup solution fettles that. And there is an exotic, perfumed taste. The clarity leaves much to be desired - my last glass had the consistency of a cloudy apple juice. But this bottle has removed the flavour from my 'Never Again' list.

We drank much of the bottle watching an sfdebris.com review of Torchwood Miracle Day, which is fair in its criticisms, though which I would like to be more scathing. The rest of the bottle was spent eating cauliflower cheese and apple snow.

Gooseberry & Elderflower Wine - Third Bottle (B2), 11th-12th September 2013

On the basis that I have too many bottles of this flavour simply to ignore it, I put a Gooseberry & Elderflower in the fridge for a post-WYSO midweek drink. I had expected it to be awful and, in fact, it turned out to be merely not particularly nice. I see this as a distinct result. There was not the ghastly aftertaste of the first bottle, and the overall effect was one of blandness.

Our first couple of glasses were after WYSO (where we started on the violin concerto), while watching The Great British Bake Off. The bottle was finished on Thursday after trios at Pat and Peter's. I have developed a mouth ulcer immediately opposite my pointiest tooth (for which I blame a particularly horrible solicitor I am dealing with at work) and it makes playing the bassoon painful. The wine was an anaesthetic.

I thought this a suitable illustration.

Apple Wine - The Making Of ...

I have made apple wine only once before, and that used a ridiculous quantity of fruit - 24 lbs of windfalls. This time my recipe is more sensible, but largely invented.

Apple wine was not one I had planned, but Julia required some emergency apple picking yesterday, Saturday 14th September. It was a balmy early autumn day but the forecast for Sunday was gales and rain. Therefore Julia had to get much of the fruit off her trees to avoid widespread apple catastrophe. As we had no plans for the afternoon, Claire and I went to help and inevitably my thoughts turned to wine-making as I filled sacks with apples. Julia has five apple trees, and I got some off each one, though I shall keep the russets for eating. Of the remaining four, one was a Bramley, one a John something and I do not know the other two. I will try to find out and put in a foot note later.

Five varieties of apple

The apples picked were mostly not quite ripe, and we probably got less than a third off the trees. In fact, the gales that were threatened have yet to arrive and there has been a good deal of sunshine today, so emergency fruit picking was premature.

I have loosely based my recipe on C J J Berry's, but it is a distant cousin. I chopped 6 lbs of apples into small pieces and put them in our largest pan. These were covered with 6½ pints of water and brought to the boil, then simmered for 15 minutes. Meanwhile I put 3 lbs sugar, thinly peeled lemon rind, juice from the lemon and 4 oz minced sultanas in the bucket.

Apples in the pan - 6 lbs with the water only just fit

After the apples had done their 15 minutes, I poured them and the water into the bucket and stirred to dissolve the sugar. In fact, some of the water missed and ended up over the kitchen floor, but probably less than half a pint. It turns out that the remaining amount of water was just about perfect - I have ended up with less than a quarter of a pint of extra liquid.  Anyway, I added the yeast (champagne variety), pectolase and nutrient on Monday morning, 16th September, and sieved the liquid into the demijohn on Thursday evening, 19th September. This took a long time as the apples had turned into puree and I had to be careful not to get the 'solid' (not that it bears this desciption with ease) into the demijohn. Instead, I got much of it over my shirt. Clean on today, too. Bah!

The wine is cloudy with just a hint of sunset to its colour.

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

Christmas Tutti Fruti - Ninth Bottle (A3), 8th-9th September 2013

This bottle of Christmas Tutti Fruti was rather better than I had remembered this batch to be. It was not as thin and had a richer, fruitier flavour. Perhaps it was the food that brought this out. Claire cooked two fabulous curries, one involving slow cooked lamb and the other with chickpeas and butternut squash, and we ate them with homemade pilau rice. As an added bonus there is still plenty in our fridge as left overs.

Even though it was a Sunday night, where drinking at least a bottle is de rigeur these days, there was still at least a glass left for Monday night. This was Claire's treat as I was out at Airedale Orchestra, struggling with An American in Paris  and Korngold's violin concerto.

Blackcurrant Wine - Second Bottle (2), 7th-8th September 2013

I opened this bottle after the first Music Club of the season. It is an event that marks the end of summer and always arrives too soon. There was some good music, though. The Bridgewaters are always a pleasure, but the evening's highlight was Dawn singing songs dedicated to joy and sorrow. It was only towards the end of the evening that I began to yearn for a glass of blackcurrant wine and a slice of chocolate beetroot cake.

The wine was its usual sharp, fruity self and is unmistakeably blackcurrant. We did not quite finish the bottle, leaving enough for a taster tonight, after trying small glasses of blackcurrant gin and blackcurrant vodka. The gin wins by an inch.

Rhubarb Wine - Fifth Bottle (B4), 4th-6th September 2013

WYSO has begun again, with a triple helping of Beethoven - Leonora Number 2, the violin concerto and his third symphony. Equally as good, we appear to have a double bass - something that WYSO has always lacked. We spent the evening on the symphony, and consequently I had that playing on my internal jukebox for hours on Wednesday night when I should have been asleep.

Once Claire and I got home we cracked open a bottle of rhubarb and, despite the late hour, caught up on The Great British Bake Off. Showing uncharacteristic self-control, we left enough in the bottle for Thursday (which I spent wine-making) and for a glass on Friday. I came home in a very bad mood and the remaining glass went some way to lifting it.

WYSO in uncharacteristic surroundings