Fig Wine - The Making Of ...

My parents' fig tree ...

 Ever since I began making wine I have been watching the fig tree at my parents' house with interest. Every year it has produced a disappointing number of figs. That is until this year, in which we had no winter to speak of and a hot summer. The tree has been abundant with fruit and there was plenty with which to make wine.

My father has been collecting figs since late July and putting them in the freezer. He rang Claire one evening to check if bird-pecked figs would be acceptable. She assured him they would and who am I to argue?

... with abundant fruit

So today, 29th August, I collected 5 lbs 6 oz of figs from York and have brought them back to Leeds to make wine. I do not have a recipe, so have made it up. The number and weight of figs looked plausible, so I have cut them into pieces and put them in my bucket. Despite being mostly green on the outside, figs are surprisingly purple inside and I am reconsidering my choice of yeast accordingly.

Figs: green on the outside ...

I mashed the figs a little, poured over 6 pints of boiling water and added 3 lbs of sugar. On Saturday morning, 30th August, I put in the yeast (a red wine variety) and a teaspoon each of nutrient, pectolase, citric acid and tannin - which is basically every chemical I own.

... but purple inside

I transferred the liquid into its demijohn on Tuesday 2nd September, which is a little earlier than I would normally have done, but this week is proving to be a busy one. Over the last few days I have noticed a thick near-soupy texture to the wine when stirring. Guessing (correctly) that this would make the straining process long and tedious, I began by fishing out the figs with a plastic collander. This saved me some time but the whole sieving experience took longer than I had wanted.

The wine has an unusual colour - dark pink with a hint of brown. It does not have a great taste at the this stage. There is a nutty trace that bodes ill. Still, I can now tick the letter F off my alphabet.

Fig Wine in its demijohn - 4 days after straining. The 'hint of brown' has gone

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