Fig Wine 2015 - The Making Of ...

It is a Tuesday evening, 8th September, and I am discombobulated. We put our house on the market yesterday.* Someone has put in an offer today. That wasn't meant to happen. I needed to get used to the idea first. We were meant to be closer to having a house to move into. I'm adept at being disconcerted by what should be good news. At least I have wine-making to distract me.

An aerial view of some figs (and my feet)

The fig wine that I made last year is a surprising 'Hit', so I am trying to repeat that success. Claire and I were in York this weekend where my parents have been collecting and freezing figs from their tree. Mom has built a tool - a long stick with a hook on the end - with which to pick figs. She uses it to grab a branch, pulling it in towards her 5 foot 2 stature, and then plucks the fig from the tree. I wouldn't have had her down as an inventor.

By Sunday I was able to take away 6 lbs or so of figs. Those that were fresh from the tree needed a couple of days to ripen, hence starting the wine tonight. I weighed 5½ lbs of figs and cut these into four pieces per fruit. Those that had been frozen were extremely soft. They went into the bucket and I mashed them into a pulp. I added 3 lbs sugar and 6 pints of boiling water and gave it all a stir. It was a thick, soupy mixture at this stage.

Chopped figs in the bucket

On Wednesday morning I put in the yeast and a teaspoon of everything (nutrient, pectolase, tannin and citric acid). By the evening our buyer had withdrawn, but this turned to be a Good Thing. On Sunday we had another offer. And I thought that our house, with all its stuff and colours, would be a difficult sell.

Figs during fermentation

That evening, 13th September, I transferred the liquid into its demijohn, which I overfilled. The wine made its bid for freedom over night, but I think it is now safely contained. It is a pleasing light purple colour.

*This link will take you to details of our house for sale, until contracts have been exchanged - at which point I imagine the link will no longer work. (Actually, I think it still does.)

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