Nectarine Wine - Final Bottle (3), December 2020 - 21st May 2021

I can't remember when exactly I opened this bottle (it was before Christmas), but it was a wine that both Claire and I rejected for being Too Nasty. Rather than do the sensible thing and pour it down the sink, I put a cork in the bottle and stored it in the porch. There it stayed until this week, and I have had a glass most nights. It is just drinkable and that is good enough for me. 

On Friday night I was very much out of sorts (see Orange 2020 for an explanation) and finished the bottle, knowing that I would wake on Saturday with a headache. I woke on Saturday with a headache.

A photo from earlier in the week. Orchestra is Back!!!

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2017 - Ninth Bottle (B2), 6th June 2020

I am feeling glum about my impending 50th birthday. Why, I'm not sure - it certainly has to do with the onward march towards mortality, but I think it also has to do with the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It wasn't as if my birthday would have been a big celebration anyway - I was due to play in an Airedale concert. But with social distancing, it is now going to be a quiet occasion.

We drank a bottle of Prune & Parsnip which helped improve my mood a little and I was persuaded to watch Pitch Perfect by Sooz, Jayne and Sally. Unexpectedly, I didn't loathe it.

Sage flowers, taken on 6 June.

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2020 - The Making Of...

This year I have decided to do a single batch of Prune & Parsnip, and consequently will do a double batch of Orange Wine next month. Whilst I am certain that I am not drinking less, it feels like I am drinking more proper wine, which means that the home-made stuff is accumulating rather.

The Fruit & Veg stall where I bought parsnips

I bought my parsnips on 8th February from Kirkgate Market. I was in town anyway because I had a WYSO meeting with Jude & Katie (which ended with me sitting in Leeds Town Hall listening to the BBC Phil rehearse the Romeo & Juliet Overture) followed by the last night of playing in the pit for Don Giovanni. So I went to one of the Fruit & Veg stalls and bought the 2 lbs of parsnips required for this wine. My server looked about 14 - and very probably he was. I think 14 year-olds are allowed to have Saturday jobs.

Prunes & Parsnips

Whilst I meant to make the wine on Sunday I delayed it until Monday 10th February, which I had taken off from work to recover from a week of Mozart. I cut the parsnips into small pieces and boiled them in 8 pints of water for 20 minutes (bringing the parsnips in cold water up to the boil rather than putting them directly into the boiling water).

Weighing the ingredients

I sliced up 8 oz prunes into three or four pieces per prune and put these into my bucket along with 2 lbs 12 oz sugar. Once the parsnips had finished boiling I poured the water into the bucket, leaving the parsnips to one side. Claire used a small selection of these to make a curried mashed parsnip dish, which was rather good.

Chopping the parsnips

In the evening, after an Airedale Symphony Orchestra rehearsal, I put in a teaspoon each of yeast, nutrient and pectolase and then pretty much ignored the wine until Saturday morning, 15th February. That was when I put the wine into its demijohn. As the only thing to sieve out was the prunes, I did not bother with a colander. It was not a long process. The amount of water used was just about perfect and I now have a demijohn full of the brownest of wines.

The brownest of wines

By racking on 12th April  2020, this had cleared beautifully and needed little additional sugar. I dissolved 1 oz in half a pint of water and poured this in.

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

Prune & Parsnip Wine - Second Bottle (B5), 6th April 2019

When I asked Mary what bottle I should bring, she asked if I had any parsnip wine. She remembers a relative from her youth making this. Prune & Parsnip was deemed close enough, so this is what I took over. It was the night before our Airedale Symphony Orchestra concert and we stayed over in Ilkley. It was an entertaining evening and all woke with headaches the next morning. Mary was particularly impressed with the prune & parsnip wine, which we drank with an Amaretto and White Chocolate cheesecake. As this was the last bottle drank, I blame it for Sunday's grogginess.

Elderberry Wine - Seventh Bottle (A3), 20th January 2019

This was a post-concert bottle. Airedale Symphony Orchestra played Roman Carnival by Berlioz, Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony in Saltaire. The concert went well, but for me it will be remembered as 'The one where I had a coughing fit'. I was trying my best to supress a cough during the violinist's cadenza and ended up turning purple, nearly choking with tears streaming down my face. It was awful. Anyway, back at home I restored myself with a bottle of elderberry wine - which is particularly fine, and a venison sausage and red cabbage casserole.

A view from the stand, during the rehearsal

Blackcurrant Wine - Fourth Bottle (B6), 13th January 2019

This bottle of blackcurrant wine rounded off a splendid weekend. Saturday was a many-pleasure day, involving viola master-classes, art galleries, dim-sum, the twenty-first floor of a hotel and cocktails in Harvey Nics. Dom (the bar manager there, and also Ros's son) extended our range from Margaritas to Cosmopolitans and Negronis, and I will visit those again.

Sunday we were back in Leeds and had an afternoon rehearsal with the Airedale - shortly after which I opened this bottle and sank gently into the evening.

A Negroni and Cosmopolitan at Harvey Nics

Rhubarb Wine - Fifth Bottle (C6), 21st October 2018

I opened this bottle on Sunday night after returning from a terrific concert in Leeds Town Hall. We were playing crowd-pleasing patriotic guff and the 1812 Overture (though no actual cannons) and the audience loved it. A great cheer arose as we finished - and I think not a cheer of relief. My parents and Nancy Voynow were in that audience and returned to ours for a meal. Nancy asked for a glass of white wine so I gave her a glass of rhubarb without telling her what it was. When she was several sips through I confessed all - though rhubarb (oddly) is quite close to real white. Nancy said she enjoyed it - and let's face it: what's not to like?

The interior of Leeds Town Hall - a ridiculous wedding cake of a building

Blackcurrant Wine 2015 - Twenty Second Bottle (D3), 31st August - 3rd September 2018

This started life as a Friday night bottle, but on the basis that we had cocktails and the remainder of a bottle of Prune & Parsnip to finish, it would have been disgraceful to empty it. We were two inches away from Disgraceful. But blackcurrant wine is so drinkable.

It was Monday when Claire finished this wine. I was at the Airedale's first rehearsal of this season bashing my way through patriotic nonsense written by Elgar & Walton. It was only ever so slightly disappointing to find the bottle empty on my return.

Rose Petal Wine - Seventh Bottle (B1), 21st January 2018

Drinking three bottles on a Sunday night between four is excessive. I felt croaky the following day, blaming a nascent cold, but knowing that alcohol had its part to play. However, we had just come back from an Airedale Concert, where Brahms' 2nd Symphony went particularly well, and we were entertaining Rachel, Duncan and Ruth. So, I have my excuses.

The Rose Petal followed a bottle of Prosecco, and was a good wine. It is Rachel's favourite of mine and I think this vintage is as interesting and tasty as any I have made. Still, I should really have stopped there.

Strawberry Wine - Fourth Bottle (2), 2nd July 2017

No more concerts until November. In the last eight days Claire has played in four and I have done three. All have been excellent, though. Tonight's was Airedale and we played Laura Rossi's score to a film shot in 1916 recording the Battle of the Somme while the film played behind us. During rehearsals I was able to watch some and the experience veered from exhilarating (a crash of percussion as cannons fired) and moving (all those young men, many of them shown dead). We came home to a bottle of strawberry wine and the season finale of Doctor Who. The wine is wonderful - full and rich and stuffed with strawberry. Doctor Who was confusing. I'm often left at the end thinking "What just happened there?".

Xmas Tutti Fruti - Fifth Bottle (B2), 24th-25th June 2017

A two-concert bottle. I opened this Tutti Fruti after we had returned from WYSO's annual Prom Concert at Pontefract Castle. My adrenalin was on high alert and sleep was not an option. It had been a beautiful evening, the orchestra had played well and the audience was the largest I have seen - approaching 2,000, including five pirates. Each year I have a musical highlight and this was probably it for 2017.

Then, on Sunday we returned equally late from ASO's Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony concert, which again was tremendous. Wine felt like our due rather than a treat (and it would be stretching things to call this vintage a treat).

Our Audience on Saturday Night

Mango Wine - Fourth Bottle (1), 22nd-26th January 2017

Having returned from our Airedale Concert on Sunday night and finished up the Prune & Parsnip, we wanted something else to drink. I fished out this bottle of Mango from under the stairs as something that would not be so nice that we would want to finish it. In fact, it suffered greatly as a direct comparison to the Prune & Parsnip: far drier, thinner, less interesting. Not finishing the bottle proved not to be a problem. This task was completed on Thursday night after discussing money with our financial advisor - never the most interesting of subjects. At least this bottle has removed 'Mango' from my list of possible flavours for this April.

Prune & Parsnip Wine - Ninth Bottle (A2), 21st-22nd January 2017

On both Saturday and Sunday nights, when drinking wine from this bottle, there was a sense of relief of a concert having gone rather better than it ought.

Saturday was Music Club, when I played with Pat & Peter - trios by Tim New. The composer turned up (which added to the stress somewhat). We played far better than I had expected and as well as I had hoped, and Prune & Parsnip (another double P) was drunk in the adrenalin come-down.

On Sunday it was the turn of Airedale - where each of the pieces (including Beethoven's Fifth) was under-rehearsed. We got away with it, though, and another glass of Prune & Parsnip went down the hatch.

Orange Wine - Tenth Bottle (A3), 14th-15th January 2017

I had not meant to open this bottle when Rodney & Helen came for a meal, but somehow I found myself with corkscrew in hand, encouraging people to try my orange wine. We needed something to drink for the soup - cream of lemon - and the first bottle was already empty. Fig would have gone badly, so the natural choice was orange wine. I think our guests enjoyed it, though it was the only one of the four bottles that we did not finish. Helen said that she thought it was sherry-like, though I do not get that.

Claire finished the last dribble this evening, after a less than satisfactory afternoon Airedale rehearsal. We are badly prepared for next week's concert.

Elderberry Wine - Eighth Bottle (A5), 13th November 2016

I gave Claire her free pick of reds and she chose Elderberry. We had just returned from an afternoon Airedale Symphony Orchestra concert and needed a drink. The concert was mostly very good, with Dvorak's violin concerto the highlight., but too long. We could easily have done without the Polonaise and Waltz from Eugene Onegin and no-one would have gone home thinking that there was just not enough music.

The wine was excellent - elderberry gets smoother with age - and was partly drunk to a beef cobbler and partly drunk sat in front of the stove, where I finished my book: The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine.

Prune & Parsnip Wine - Eighth Bottle (A1), 6th November 2016

Prune & parsnip wine seemed the natural choice to accompany rabbit stew. There was a subtle sweetness to both food and drink, and I don't think I could have had a better match.

The day has mostly been spent at Airedale Symphony Orchestra, rehearsing for next week's concert. I don't think the orchestra has sounded better and for once I am genuinely looking forward to the performance. The more I play Schumann's First Symphony the better I like it. Having believed Schumann to be the most overrated composer, I am now have second thoughts.

Blackcurrant Wine - Eleventh Bottle (C5), 19th-20th March 2016

What a fabulous bottle of wine. This was packed with healthy vitamin C and is therefore officially Good For You. Fact. Every now and again I make a bottle of wine which I would drink in preference to a good red - and this was one. I opened it immediately after a WYSO concert, which went surprisingly well. We had had a poor rehearsal, where pieces fell apart and the Mendelssohn was particularly ropey. This ensured that the orchestra concentrated all the way through the concert and I think it paid off. The Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet Overture was the highlight. It has been a weekend of concerts, though, and this bottle was finished after the ASO concert where my overriding memory will be of being far too hot throughout. It did nothing for my tuning.

Ya Ya Pear Wine - The Making Of ...

Claire, if you asked her, would say that she is Long Suffering. She has to put up with wine bottles in every room, fruit in the freezer and demijohns in the bath. All because one year she bought me a wine-making kit for Christmas. On Saturday, 19th March, Claire proved that, despite all this, she does actually love me. She asked whether I had yet ticked 'Y' off my wine alphabet (I haven't) and told me that she had seen something called 'Ya Ya Pears' for sale at Noshis. Now, I have made pear wine before, and that was disgusting, but I was really struggling for the letter Y. Apparently there is an edible plant called Yarrow, but I don't know where to find that, and Yam Wine sounds fraught with peril. So Ya-Ya Pears fit the bill nicely (though when I have looked them up on Wikipedia it calls them 'Ya Pears').

I hot-footed it to Noshis and found the pears selling at five for a pound. Fifteen came to about 5 lbs in weight, so that is what I bought. They are pale - a yellowy-greeny-white skin that is speckled with faded brown dots, and rounder than European pears.

On Sunday morning I cut each pear into small pieces and put these in the bucket. I tried a piece and the overall taste was bland with a hint of pear, so I don't hold out too much hope for the resulting wine. I added 2 lbs 12 oz sugar and seven pints of boiling water.

The afternoon and evening were spent in Ilkley practising and then performing Brahms' Tragic Overture, Elgar's Cello Concerto and Dvorak's Seventh Symphony. On my return the liquid had cooled sufficiently to add the yeast and a teaspoon each of pectolase and nutrient.

I left this until Friday evening, 25th March, though stirred it once or twice a day. Putting the liquid into its demijohn was a quick job, and mostly done during a traumatic episode of The Archers, where the domestic abuse storyline with Helen and Rob must surely be coming to a denoument. The wine has an undead look to it, as if made by ghosts.

I racked this on 4 June, which is a bit later than I would ordinarily rack it, and I tried to video myself doing this, to show how the racking works. Unfortunately, for some unfathomable reason, the video decided to stop after a minute and sixteen seconds. I have no idea why, and it remains a tale half told. Anyway, here is the video.

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

Orange Wine 2016 - The Making Of ...

Nasty 1960s pebble-dashed garage (RIP)

 After a long, dark, wet winter, it felt like Spring was upon us this weekend. The sun shone all of Sunday, 13th March, and now the ghastly 1960s pebble-dashed garage has been taken down, our garden gets a good deal of light. It was a shame that Sunday afternoon was taken up with an Airedale Symphony Orchestra rehearsal, but Claire managed to spend much of the morning in the garden.

I spent the entirety of Desert Island Discs thinly peeling 12 oranges and not doing a particularly good job of avoiding the pith - so I predict a bitter aftertaste to this wine. I covered the peel with two pints of boiling water and let this sit around until Monday morning.

This year the oranges were selling at seven for a pound and appear to be good quality. On Sunday evening I squeezed all 24 of them, changing hands every two and taking a slight break every four - mostly to feed the cats, who continue to insist that they want something to eat. This produced nearly four pints of orange juice and bits, and all of this went into the bucket.

On the basis that 2015's batch of orange is so good, I followed the quantities for that vintage, so I put in 5½ pounds of sugar and 9 pints of cold water. It being cold water, I added the yeast immediately along with a teaspoon each of nutrient and pectolase.

On Monday morning, before leaving for work, I added the water that had been covering the orange peel and threw the peel away.

I left all this in its bucket until Friday night, 18th March, when I put the wine into its two demijohns. This was a quicker job than many wines, made all the duller by Any Questions on Radio 4. Still, just as I was finishing, the news came in that Ian Duncan Smith has resigned and his cuts of £30 per week to those on Disability Living Allowance have been reversed (or, at least, delayed). This is genuinely heartwarming.

Orange Wine in front of where garage used to be

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

Orange Wine - Tenth Bottle ( A5), 24th January 2016

This bottle finds me returned from an Airedale concert in Saltaire. It has been a long day, and one where a bottle of orange wine is well deserved. We played lots of loud, difficult music - and I can't decide whether The Three Cornered Hat or  Francesca da Rimini  was the loudest and most difficult. It all went well, though, and I returned on a high.

We drank much of the bottle in front of the stove, aprreciating the silence (apart from the occasional turn or a page and a purring cat). The sharpness of orange wine should bring clarity to the day, but in fact it has done the opposite.