Ginger Wine 2021 - First Bottle (1), 7th-14th October 2021

I opened this bottle of ginger wine very quickly after rejecting a bottle of Apple & Strawberry as being simply unpleasant. This wine, though, is excellent. Perhaps it is just that little bit sweet, but the ginger flavour fights through that. It would be a fabulous base for a whisky mac.

The only reason that it stayed open for so long was that on the few nights we weren't out, we drank real wine. One of those nights was Book Group round our house where we discussed Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. Beautifully written and an overall Hit.

Taken on 7th October

Xmas Tutti Fruti 2019 (C2), 15th May 2021

I am so pleased with this Tutti Fruti. I obviously did something right when making it. Though it is clearly a red, it has a lightness and a refreshing quality that one would expect from a white.

Saturday was a gentle, undemanding day, in which I got caught in a downpour and lost to my mother at Scrabble (by only 7 points!). I said at the end of April that we were desperate for rain, and there hasn't been a dry day since. One day I'll be able to mow the lawn.

We finished the day by watching Bill with the Snarkalong Film Club - a comedy from the Horrible Histories Team about Shakespeare as a young man. I had expected it to be excellent, and it was merely amusing.

The downpour in which I got caught

Dandelion Wine 2016 - Third Bottle (5), 23rd April 2020

I should learn to temper my expectations. Rather than having a bottle of something wonderful, we had a bottle of something drinkable. This dandelion wine tasted heavy: there was too much going on in its flavours. I opened it on Shakespeare's birthday and we tried to watch the National Theatre production of Twelfth Night with Tamsin Grieg (an actress I like very much) as Malvolia. In the end we gave up on it. Possibly we had drunk too much dandelion wine, but the production felt flat and confusing. I went to bed with my intellectual pretentions crushed.

Taken on 23 April - a windmill

in the suburbs of Leeds

Dandelion Wine 2016 - The Making Of ...

On the four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death I found myself in a field on the edge of Gledhow Valley Woods picking dandelions for wine. A quick trawl of the internet tells me that Shakespeare never mentioned dandelions by name and only referred to them obliquely (if that) in Cymbeline: "Golden lads and girls all must / As chimney sweepers, come to dust." I was early enough in the season to catch them before the flowers became clocks and 'come to dust'. Indeed, 23rd April - St George's Day - is the traditional day on which to pick dandelions for wine.

My plan had been to collect flowers from the allotments off Harrogate Road, but all entrances were locked and since Julia died I no longer have access. I wandered around the adjacent park, where dandelions were sparse and mostly half-opened, and then down the hill to Gledhow Valley Road, where I saw an open area of grass dotted with points of gold. From here my spirits lifted and I picked six pints of flowers in the sunshine, feeling only slightly self-conscious as cars, joggers and pedestrians passed.

Back home, after all of Saturday's chores and a quintet rehearsal, I started taking the petals from the green base of each dandelion head. This was slow going and I had little time, so after doing about a tenth, I gave up and poured all flowers into the stock pot. I covered this with seven pints of water and put in 2 lbs 9 oz of sugar and the thin peelings of two lemons and an orange. This was brought up to the boil and I let it boil for either ten or twenty minutes (I forget). Meanwhile I minced half a kilo of sultanas and squeezed the juice from the lemons and orange and put these in the bucket. Once the dandelions had finished boiling I poured all this in too and let it sit overnight.

On Sunday morning I added a teaspoon each of nutrient, tannin and pectolase and sprinkled in the yeast.

After a very busy Thursday at work, getting everything done before a week's holiday in Cornwall and staying until 6:30, I put this into its demijohn. Its colour is a gorgeous mustard yellow and I get a good feeling about this wine.

The gorgeous yellow doesn't look quite as biege as this!

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

Clementine Wine - Second Bottle (1), 14th-19th April 2016

With cries of "That's disgusting" and "Did you make this from a gold-miner's drowned daughter?" Claire decided not to finish her glass. I admit that there is an element of bitterness to the flavour and that it is otherwise dry and unremarkable, but I think she is being a little unfair. I won't make clementine wine again, but in my opinion it is still drinkable. The bottle did stay in the fridge for five days, though. During this period I performed in the Messiah, had a first rehearsal of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony (difficult) and saw Northern Broadsides do The Merry Wives of Windsor. This was fabulous. I haven't laughed so much in the theatre ever. The two wives were particularly good and the physical comedy was superb.

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.

Crab Apple Wine - Eleventh Bottle (B1), 24th-25th February 2016

This bottle of crab apple wine was inexplicably better than the last. Crisp and full of apple taste. Maybe I was just in a good mood. I had particularly enjoyed WYSO - the bassoon part for Romeo & Juliet is satisfying: hard enough to feel like a job well done at the end.

I finished the bottle on Thursday night while Claire was out playing string quartets, taking the opportunity to watch The Night Manager. This is a luxurious adaptation of a John Le Carré novel, and expertly done by the BBC. The cast is amazing and it looks fantastic.

Crab Apple Wine - Tenth Bottle (A6), 3rd-5th February 2016

Crab apple wine has turned into a default mid-week bottle when you want to drink something that isn't horrid. There are a few other flavours that meet this description, and this vintage of crab apple is the most flawed of all. It is rough and ready - not necessarily qualities one seeks in a wine.

We started the bottle post WYSO (A Midsummer Night's Dream continues to improve, Richard III has yet to grow on me). I finished it on Friday evening before Book Group. We had been promised a lift from Ros but at the last minute Stumpy, her cat, started behaving oddly, so I drove, trusting that any after effects from the crab apple wine had long since worn off.

Elderflower Wine - Third Bottle (4), 13th-15th January 2016

This term, WYSO is playing music inspired by Shakespeare. On Wednesday night we came home having played Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet Overture and much of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream. All good stuff - and a glass of elderflower wine hit the spot nicely. I'm sure that if Oberon and Titania could choose a wine it would be elderflower.

I finished the bottle on Friday night after we had returned from the Playhouse to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It is a ridiculous musical but was done brilliantly. Once I had turned off my cynicism setting, I sat back and let the fun wash over me.

Blackcurrant Wine - Sixth Bottle (B4), 29th - 31st October 2015

What a lot I managed to fit in whilst this bottle of wine was open. I chose it on Thursday because Katie was here for a WYSO committee meeting, and these are her blackcurrants. She said the wine tasted like that she had made, which is probably a Good Thing. But I opened it to celebrate exchanging contracts for selling 14 Carr Manor Mount - we complete on 11th December. Then on Friday Bridget was here and we had a wonderful evening catching up (it has been two years since I last saw her) and eating curry. I had my final glass on Saturday night after coming back from The Grand, where we saw Kiss Me Kate done by Opera North. It was terrific, and I feel that my Shakespeare has been entirely Brushed Up.

Blackcurant Wine - Third Bottle (B2), 8th August 2015

Claire and her parents drank this bottle while I was in St Dogmaels Abbey playing incidental music to the Tempest. They opened it because the gooseberry wine tried earlier in the evening was unspeakably nasty. Blackcurrant was a suitable choice because Bob and Judith had been hard at work in our garden picking fruit for this year's batch. I conclude that this wine was rather better than the gooseberry by the fact that the bottle was empty on my return, rather than a quarter drunk and in the fridge.

Crab Apple Wine - First Bottle (B4), 3rd-4th August 2015

I carried this bottle in a suitcase all the way to Pembrokeshire. It neither smashed nor exploded and I was able to share it with Sue (my lovely, lovely host) immediately before a dress rehearsal for The Tempest. This meant that I was somewhat tipsy for my walk down the steep hill into St Dogmaels village and for the play, but I did not blow into my bassoon at inappropriate moments.

The play (like the wine) was well done - I particularly liked the four Ariels and the Ferdinand & Miranda scenes played for laughs.

Blackberrry Wine - Sixteenth Bottle (B), 2nd-6th August 2015

Claire writes:


Ben has gone to St Dogs for the Abbey Shakespeare again, so I am in control of the wine diary. I wanted something nice to help with the post-Rydal gloom, so chose this - but I think it might be the one-litre bottle which:
a) I hope doesn't get me into trouble; and
b) had probably take me several days to finish.

After a few hours doing the garden at Bentcliffe Drive, I came home and made myself a crumble as part of the post-Rydal coping strategy.

Elderflower Wine - Eleventh Bottle (A6), 7th-9th August 2014

I shared this bottle with Sue Jones in St Dogmaels, over grilled mackrel caught the day before. It was a lovely meal and elderflower goes well with fish. I had spent the day at a beach near Cwmtydu, some of it being swept up and down by turquoise waves.

The wine did not affect my playing of incidental music to The Merchant of Venice which was performed in the grounds of St Dogmaels Abbey. Nor did it affect my ability to down a quick pint in The White Hart afterwards.

Being on holiday is excellent.

The beach with turquoise waves

Blackberry Wine - 18th Bottle (D2), 3rd-5th August 2014

Well hello wine diary! Claire here. Ben is away in St Dogmaels playing in The Abbey Shakespeare and I have control of both diary and choice of wine. And what a good choice this is: clear ruby red, hint of fizz, fruity taste and perfect level of sweetness. An excellent wine and one that I richly deserve because I have just found out that I passed my grade 8 viola with distinction! Well done me.

Gooseberry Wine - Second Bottle (3), 2nd August 2014

Claire drinks beer at Rydal. Therefore on our first night home we traditionally open a bottle of wine. This is despite my weak protest that I have spent the week drinking too much. Tonight Claire asked for a sharp white, and gooseberry fits the bill precisely. It is a good bottle - dry with a hint of fizz. Now I need to start thinking about tomorrow. I am off for a further week of hedonism, but this time in Pembrokeshire and playing in an open-air production of 'The Merchant of Venice'.

Crab Apple & Strawberry Wine - Third Bottle (3), 19th-20th March 2014

Thursday was a long day. I spent much of it in London at a conference for lawyers working in house-building. That sounds remarkably dull, but really it wasn't. The talks were all well done and mostly both useful and interesting. The thrill, though, was being in London - and I do feel like the wide-eyed country boy in saying that. But I saw St Paul's, Tate Modern, the Globe, the Old Bailey and Tower Bridge. Despite my northern prejudices, it is an amazing place.

By the time I got home I was exhausted, but not so much that I refused a large glass of crab apple & strawberry wine. This has a slight fizz, is a wonderful colour but is just a little too dry. Still, it was welcome after a busy day and a crowded, hot train journey.

Spiced Beetroot Wine - Final Bottle (6), 3rd November 2013

There is something very English about cheap fireworks. They blaze for a few seconds at no great height and then go phut, returning to darkness. Bonfires, however, are far more satisfying. They flame and glow and heat a cold autumn night.

Spiced Beetroot wine seemed like the right choice for a bonfire party. It has a warming taste of cloves that goes well with standing around outside in hat, scarf, gloves and five layers of clothing.

Earlier in the day I had helped Julia build the bonfire, and as it was formed by Julia, it was as much Art as a pile of wood for burning. She created a stage in homage to Opera North's production of Beatrice and Benedict, complete with poppies, a flaming arch and a nun on a bicycle. Catherine wheels gave an illusion of movement before fire asserted its authority and the whole thing burnt. It was a memorable evening.

Blackberry Wine 2013 - The Making Of ...

It is Blackberry time of year again. I have been watching them ripen on my daily walk to work over the past few weeks. Whilst there is about a month of picking left, this weekend straddling August and September was the most convenient for us. Pop was keen to help out but was busy Sunday (our traditional day of picking blackberries), so we went to York Victorian Cemetery on Saturday afternoon, 31st August, with baskets and plastic bags. Keith and family were also visiting, so came along. I didn't see Keith, Jaki or Ellis once we got to the grave yard, but based on the blackberry-coloured smears round Ellis's mouth it looks like he enjoyed himself.

I forgot my camera. This is a photo from a Google search

Before Pop and Kai arrived I struck up conversation with an old man who was also picking blackberries for wine. We met at the grave of Robert Burton (1830-1904), whose fruit was particularly lush, and swapped notes. Other graves providing blackberries included Walter Rymer, Amos Howe Harris, Walter John Underwood and Eliza Jane Dunkley. We will drink a toast to them when the time comes.

Claire picked 6 lbs 4 oz blackberries, I picked 6 lbs 1½ oz (with help from Pop and Kai) and Mom got about 2 lbs. This was plent for the 12 lbs of fruit needed for a triple batch, with a manageable quantity for the freezer.

Blackberries picked by Claire

I started the wine on 1st September. Weighing the fruit is a messy job and produces hands that Lady MacBeth would find distasteful. I did not wash the blackberries, though I picked out the mouldy ones and got rid of as many grubs as I found.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand

I crushed the fruit in its bucket and poured over 15 ½ pints of boiling water. Later that evening I added 7 ½ lbs sugar, and the next morning I put in the yeast (burgundy) and two teaspoons each of nutrient and pectolase.

The blackberries before crushing

On Thursday night, later than I had wanted - mostly due to a large pile of washing up - I transferred this all into three demijohns. For some reason blackberry wine takes the longest of any wine at this stage, and Claire had to remind me that I was enjoying myself. I have left a little space at the top of each demijohn as the fermentation is at the assertive stage and I have kept some wine back in a bottle for topping-up purposes.

If you want to see how this wine turned out, click here (and see me get a drenching)

When will we three meet again?

Celery Wine - Second Bottle (6), 6th-10th May 2013

Celery wine was not popular. I brought it with me on our holiday in a Gloucestershire cottage. In company where bottles of wine have been emptied in seconds, this took five days to drink. Claire declared it the worst wine I have ever made and Duncan pulled remarkable faces. However, it did have its defenders, who described it as only disappointing.

On Friday night, when all other options for alcohol had been drunk, Nick suggested that he and I finish off the Celery, rather than pour it down the sink. It seemed like a sensible suggestion at the time, and in fact age had not withered it. If anything, it was slightly more palatable, and we had a pleasant half hour chatting about prehistoric man.