Rhubarb Elderflower & Mint Wine 2020 - Third Bottle (3), 5th November 2021

A Friday night bottle. It being Bonfire Night, we spent our evening indoors reassuring the cat that all these loud bangs and fizzes did not mean that she was required to poo on the landing carpet (which is what happened last year). Instead I opened this bottle of Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower and cooked Tuna Surprise. The wine is a decent white, with elderflower being dominant.

A Google lion in our kitchen

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb Wine 2019 - Fifth Bottle (3), 4th August 2021

Despite Covid 19, we made it to Rydal this year, and I cannot express what a joyous week it has been. Playing again in an orchestra that I love and with my favourite group of people has just been wonderful. 

This wine was the first of three opened during the Rydal week, after a day of walking in brilliant sunshine with Claire and Judith - so there was an element of it feeling earned. Nick claimed he was allergic to mint so didn't have any, and Kirsty pulled a face, but otherwise this bottle was enjoyed.

Claire and Judith on a long, hot walk.

Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint 2020 - Second Bottle (5), 5th June 2021

The week has been a veritable social whirl: to York on Tuesday for Mom's 80th, Book Group on Friday (albeit virtual) and then a proper dinner party at Angie & Phil's on Saturday. Yes, we spent most of it outside, but that was because it was a lovely summer's evening rather than a Government Edict for the Protection of Society. It was a marvelous evening and felt so normal. Life will return to much as it used to be and we are on the first steps of that.

I took this wine at Liz's request and it is an excellent bottle. So much so that I may make a double batch this year.

Angie's recipe for Rhubarb & Custard Cake

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb Wine 2019 - Fourth Bottle (4), 29th May 2021

We have just returned from a fabulous weekend in Newcastle, and this wine was one of our Saturday bottles. Judith was effusive in her praise and rightly so! Elderflower, rhubarb and mint is a delight.

Much of Saturday had been spent driving on the hottest, sunniest day of the year so far in a car where both the fan and the air conditioning were broken. As First World Problems go, it isn't the worst. We had a lovely evening, however, with Bob, Judith & Sooz. It is so good to spend time together again.

Spending quality time with the in-laws

Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint Wine 2020 - First Bottle (6), 14th February 2021

Our Valentine's meal was sponsored by mint. Not only did we drink this bottle of wine, but we had gin & tonics with a mint garnish, Vietnamese Mint Chicken and Nigella's Vietnamese Salad, featuring mint. We must have had delightful breath after all of that.

The wine was excellent and I opened this vintage because Claire has been disparaging about the previous two years. It is zingy and light, and it is a shame that I have given a bottle to Liz!

Our Vietnamese Chicken was another Padian Food pack that we cooked along with Rachel & Duncan. (Who says Valentine's Day should be a romantic meal for two?) It was blistering hot but delicious - the correct level of sourness. Another lovely evening.

I also made cake - a nut meringue slice

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

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb 2019 - Third Bottle (6), 18th-19th November 2020

This week I have been Chief Cook and that is an unusual state of affairs. On Wednesday it was "Hot Tomatoey Garlicky Seabass" and on Thursday it was Lentil Curry (and this time I remembered the poached egg). Over the last eight months or so, where our world has narrowed, we have expanded our standard food repertoire beyond the usual five meals, and this is a Good Thing. The wine was also fine - a delightful colour and a refreshing taste. The current Archers' storyline of Alice's desperate alcoholism, done in the most traumatic fashion, only gave me slight pause before I opened this bottle.

A fabulous sunrise taken earlier in the week

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb Wine 2019 - Second Bottle (2), 26th September 2020

Saturday had the feel of 'Every Saturday' about it: rising later than a weekday, morning trip to the post office to send out the week's documents, afternoon shop followed by Scrabble with Mom. Nice meal in the evening, and then the Snarkalong Film Club: Heathers this week, which I did not much enjoy. Making the day slightly different was installing our new garden bench and christening it with coffee and cake. Also, drinking this bottle of wine (one of my rarer flavours), which I think is splendid but which Claire thinks has a touch of mouthwash.

Christening the bench with coffee and cake

Mint, Rhubarb & Elderflower Wine 2017 - Final Bottle (1), 28th-29th July 2020

This bottle has not improved on keeping. It was okay, but nothing more than, and I thought I detected a bitter note. The two days on which we drank it, though, were excellent. I had long walks in the Pennines on Tuesday and the Dales on Wednesday - and both were beautiful in different ways. The Pennines are grittier and bleaker somehow.

The Pennines

Coming back from the Dales the car made alarming noises, intermittently at first and then - 2 miles from home - continually. I called the AA and sat by the road until they came.

The Dales

Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower 2018 - Fourth Bottle (5), 20th May 2020

It was such a lovely evening on Wednesday that we ate supper in the garden. I cooked salmon with leeks, cous cous and a red pepper sauce, and we sat under the apple tree as the night darkened. Previously we had finished the apple wine (more than a third of a bottle) so finishing this bottle too was not the best of ideas. Certainly I regretted it Thursday morning. However, it is delicious and went so well with the food. Claire thinks that I need to start dialing back on the mint, but I'm not sure I agree. It was an excellent evening.

Our Rockery - taken on 20th May

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb Wine 2019 - First Bottle (1), 5th June 2020

It was our Book Group Party and Claire was nonplussed that I had not bought real wine for the occasion. My justification was that we had plenty of wine made from grapes on Tuesday night, and Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb is one of my better ones. This bottle did not disappoint - all the flavours were there and we managed to get through it quickly and efficiently.

The evening was fabulous - our theme was 'Doctors & Nurses' and everyone's book sounded worth reading. I am particularly interested in The Plague by Albert Camus. Certainly it sounds more than relevant to global circumstances today.

A yellow flower in our garden - taken on 5 June

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

Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint Wine 2020 - The Making Of...

It is with this wine that I say Adieu to my forties. They have mostly been very kind to me. At their start I was just finishing off my MA in Medieval Studies and now at their close I am in a job that I enjoy and I feel settled in my life. The decade has seen two redundancies, a published book, moving house, a dear friend dead, two new cats, a strange and frightening world order, two nephews and the current pandemic. Put like that, my forties sound far more traumatic than they, in fact, were. They have certainly not been uneventful. What better way to mark their close than (or, alternatively, as I had a free Saturday, how else should I spend it except by) making Rhubarb, Elderflower and Mint wine?

Our rhubarb is very much past its best, so I sent a message to Liz to find out if she had any spare. Happily she had plenty and brought round 2 lbs. I managed to get a further pound from our plants to obtain the 3 lbs required for the recipe.

About half the elderflowers came from the elder tree growing in the Synagogue hanging over our back fence; the rest came from trees on Bentcliffe Drive and the elder in Allerton Grange Field. Stripping these to get a pint of flowers was always going to be the dullest part of making this wine, but was enlivened by listening to Mark Steel's in Town on BBC Sounds.

Over the past few years my 'handful of mint' used in this wine has been getting larger and Claire thinks that this is to the wine's detriment. Therefore this year I have only picked a small handful - and mostly spearmint (rejecting those leaves with cuckoo spit on them).

I chopped the rhubarb into thin pieces and put this, the elderflowers and the chopped mint into my bucket with 3 lbs of sugar. I poured over 6½ pints of boiling water and left this overnight. On Sunday morning, 14th June (my 50th birthday), I put in a teaspoon of yeast, nutrient and pectolase.

I meant to put all this into its demijohn on Friday night, but instead had a Zoom meeting with Rachel and Duncan, where we drank a gin and tonic and then a bottle of (real) red wine. Doing anything productive after that was not going to happen. Instead, the wine went into its demijohn on Saturday morning, 20th June. It is a light pink and fermenting as it should.

The wine and Kato

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

Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower Wine 2018 - Third Bottle (6), 31st December 2019

As has been our practice for the last several years, we spent New Year's Eve in Cambridge with Rachel and Duncan. And continuing the tradition we had all gone to bed before midnight. This year I'm not sure that we made it up much past 10:30. It was a lovely evening, though, and this bottle of Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower was one of the three drunk. Claire thinks that I need to dial back a little on the mint, to avoid any more of a mouth wash feel. I think that I have it about right.

Duncan, Claire and Rachel cooking on New Year's Eve

Elderflower, Mint & Rhubarb Wine 2019 - The Making Of...

Weather-wise, June has been a terrible month. The last June that I remember being this wet and cold was the year we got married - 1998. It has been continuous grey skies and hardly a dry day. Whilst some rain is good for the garden, sun would be helpful too. This is all a long winded way of explaining why, for this wine, I was not able to use only rhubarb that we had grown.


 For this recipe I needed 3 lbs of rhubarb and only 1 lb was available. (This year, mostly our rhubarb has been stewed and in porridge.) Happily, Liz and David have a monster rhubarb in their garden and did not object to me stealing many butch stalks on Sunday morning, 16th June.

Liz and David's Monster Rhubarb

The elderflowers mostly came from the elder tree in the Synagogue, overhanging our back fence. This is the first year that I have noticed this, and it is a tree to be encouraged (unlike the enormous sycamore which keeps our garden in shade). However, I needed more so walked up and down Bentcliffe Drive, taking at least one head of elderflowers from each elder that I passed (all four of them). I stripped the flowers from their stalks outside during a rare break from the rain and ended up with about a pint (and a black thumbnail).

The mint came from our garden and was a handful of pepper- and spearmint combined.

In the kitchen I sliced the rhubarb into thin pieces and put it  into the bucket with the elderflowers and the mint, roughly chopped. I poured over 3 lbs sugar and 6.5 pints of boiling water. It is always a good perfume when the boiling water hits these ingredients.

The ingredients before the water hit them

The mix had cooled enough by the evening to add the yeast, pectolase and nutrient (a teaspoon of each). I made intermittent attempts to remember to stir this through the week, until Thursday evening, 20th June, when it all went into its demijohn. This was the usual method: colander first to fish out most the solids, followed by funnel, sieve and jug into the demijohn. My backing track throughout was Cardiff Singer of the Year on Radio 3. The resulting wine is just as pink as the pure rhubarb.

The ingredients after the water had hit them

By racking on 20th July, the wine was still just as pink and had mostly cleared. The taste was promising and it did not need much additional sugar. I added 1 oz, dissolved in half a pint of water.


I bottled this on 7th March and I am just a little disappointed with the end result of this wine. It has not cleared entirely and isn't as splendid as previous years. Claire thinks I have overdone it on the mint.

If you want to see how this flavour came out, click here.

The wine in its demijohn

Mint, Elderflower & Rhubarb - Fifth Bottle (5), 9th November 2019

I opened this bottle for my 2019 Wine Party, where I decided that I would serve some of my best wine. My expectations were that this wine would come second only to Damson. In fact it came fourth, with blackberry and blackcurrant above it. Aaron, who I had never met before (who came with Laura, who I had only met once) described this wine as 'Exceptionally Drinkable'. He can come again.

Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower Wine - First Bottle (3) 8th June 2019

Yet again, this flavour is fabulous and proves that I should make it every year. It has a freshness and lightness and is very drinkable indeed. There is a hint of mint that Claire believes should not be any stronger - it would be unfortunate to have a toothpaste-flavoured wine. I think it is more subtle than that, but will take her advice and not increase the mint in this year's batch.

We drank the wine in York, where my parents were surprised by our arrival. I had told them a couple of weeks ago, but crucially they had not marked it on the calendar. Despite, or maybe because of, the surprise, it was a lovely evening.

Spearmint

Mint, Elderflower & Rhubarb Wine - Fourth Bottle (6), 24th May 2019

Mark came round on Friday night, bringing a bottle of his Breakfast Wine with him. He needs to restock his pond after it had an encounter with an enthusiastic Labrador, and our pond is teeming with plant life (plus frogs, possibly fish and certainly snails - but he isn't having any of those).

I opened a bottle of Mint, Elderflower and Rhubarb on the basis that it is one of my best and we drank most of it in the garden, pretending that we were warmer than we were.

Elderflower, Rhubarb and Mint - Sixth Bottle (2), 28th April 2019

We have not had a Parents' Evening for an age - many years - and for this one I wanted to treat the ancestors with some of my best wine. Therefore, we started with a bottle of Elderflower, Rhubarb and Mint (if one does not count the Cosmopolitans). It continues to be an excellent bottle: there is a freshness to it, with I think must be the mint. By the time we reached the dinner table, the wine was mostly gone, so I fished out a blackberry from under the stairs.

We are so lucky to have four parents between us, who we like enormously and who get on fabulously well with each other. It is the very opposite of a soap opera.

Mint, Elderflower & Rhubarb Wine - Third Bottle (2), 10th November 2018

Having most of the Rydal Committee visiting, I decided to open what is probably my best white. Everyone enjoyed it, though there was some discussion about which flavour came through strongest. I think it is clearly elderflower but Jane argued for mint.

Because four people were staying over, each needing a separate bed, we put Matt on the sofa-bed in the dining room. Except, when I folded it out, it was clear that it either was, or had recently been, home to a mouse. Areas were chewed over and it was covered in droppings. I briefly considered turning it over and pretending all was fine. Luckily, Matt had brought an air mattress so disaster was avoided. I suspect that we will not be getting a 5-Star Rating on TripAdvisor.

Mint, Elderflower & Rhubarb Wine - Second Bottle (4), 1st September 2018

I took this over to York as a Saturday evening bottle. Pop was cooking mackerel so I wanted something white. Both parents loved the wine and one of them (Mom, I think) said it was the best of my wines they had tasted. It really is an excellent white wine, even by objective standards.

We had a lovely evening with my parents, not doing anything in particular, and that makes a dull tale. However, there is much to be said for comfortable and companionable co-existence that creates a happy and worthwhile life. God, that sounds smug. It isn't meant to!

Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower Wine - The Making Of ...

Quiet weekends are a marvellous thing. Whereas last weekend was a whistle-stop tour of Newcastle and family, this weekend has had nothing specific planned. A perfect opportunity to indulge in some wine-making. And, in fact, Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower is one of those wines which requires much of the day to be set aside. I didn't help myself by also deciding to bottle 3 demijohns of blackberry wine. Rinsing and sterilising 18 bottles is perhaps not the speediest or most interesting aspect of the wine-making process.

And elder tree in bloom

On Saturday, 9th June, early afternoon, I set out to Allerton Grange fields with plastic bag in hand. The elderflowers are a week earlier than usual and gave off more pollen than I remember seeing before as I picked them. I concentrated on the blooms with a hint of citrus yellow and only took a few per tree. This bit of the elderflower process takes no time at all and I came away with less than half a bag full.

Not quite a pint of elderflowers and rhubarb sticks

It was the next bit that was tedious in the extreme; stripping the flowers from their stalks. I did this outside so that the tiny flies could roam free (and not end up covering our windows) and it took me over an hour. Even at the start I was not particularly careful about avoiding the thinnest bit of the stalks, and by the end I cared not a jot. This produced a little less than a pint of flowers, which is Good Enough.

Spear mint from our garden

I plucked just over 3 lbs of rhubarb stalks from our garden, sliced these up - they are starting to get woody - and put these in the bucket. I added the elderflowers and a medium sized handful of mint - both pepper and spear (but not water-mint which is unpleasantly bitter) - which I shredded.

The main ingredients in the bucket

I poured in 3 lbs of sugar and 6½ pints of boiling water, gave it all a stir and left it over night. On Sunday morning I added the yeast and a teaspoon each of pectolase & nutrient.

I put this into the demijohn on my birthday (Thursday) whilst drinking pink champagne. The wine will not be suitable for vegans. It has a number of black specks, which I assume are tiny drowned flies. Still, it is a pretty pink colour.

The end result