Shirley Smith's Mystery Wine (4) - 21st October 2017

When Shirley died in 2009, I found a demijohn full of dark liquid in her house. Lucy said I could have it, so I took it home and bottled it. There were no labels so I have no idea from what it was made. Having opened a bottle for this year's Wine Party (where it was joint winner, with an average score of 4 out of 5) I am none the wiser. I thought it was extraordinarily like port, whereas others thought sherry, Helen said 'Masala' and Claire wrote 'tastes of aged oboe reeds'. Despite Claire's opinion, I loved this wine. Dark, sweet and mysterious.

(This is an image I got for a google search of 'Dark, sweet, mysterious'. Shirley loved cats.)

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

I have made Rhubarb & Elderflower wine at least twice before. This year I am experimenting by adding mint into the cauldron. It could be delicious and it may be disgusting, but I would never know without giving it a try.

It has been a lovely early summer day today, 7th June. At times the sky has been cloudless and a deep June blue. I am still in just a T-shirt and it has gone eight. This morning, shortly after 10, Sooz and I set off to find elderflowers. It is early in the season and many trees are only indicating that they might one-day bloom. However, we found several trees in the two open green areas that straddle Potternewton Lane that had at least some clusters of elderflowers. Between us we picked about a third of a carrier bag full, and this was plenty for both this wine and Sooz's 'Dark & Lonely Water' flavoured vodka.

Elder Tree - Not in Bloom

Once Sooz was safely on a train to Newcastle I picked and chopped 2 lbs 12 oz rhubarb from our garden - making sure a good deal came from Shirley's plant for its colour. I then stripped elderflowers to make up three-quarters of a pint of blossom. As ever this was tedious, to the extent that I have decided not to make pure elderflower wine this year - which must be the first time in about eight years that I have not. The stripping process was helped along by Charlotte Green on Classic FM and a Dum-Tee-Dum podcast.

The Mint Plant

I picked a handful of mint from our garden, concentrating on one variety, but putting at least a leaf in from three others, washed it and put the leaves into the bucket with the rhubarb and elderflowers. I added 3 lbs sugar and boiled 6½ pints of water. When the water hit the ingredients there was a wonderful minty smell and though I only put in a small(ish) amount of mint, I fear this may dominate the flavour.

Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint in the bucket

I put in one teaspoon of nutrient and tannin (and possibly pectolase, but I don't remember) together with the yeast the same night. On Thursday evening, 11th June, this went into its demijohn. There was not quite enough liquid, but it was within half a pint. The wine's colour is a dark pint, and I could definitely taste the mint when I had a sip. I'm actually quite excited by this wine.

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

Rhubarb Wine 2015 - The Making Of ....

Our rhubarb plants, particularly that from Claire's grandmother's garden, are doing well this year. This is despite great sections of them having been put in pots in anticipation of the house move (which finally appears to be speeding up a little). It has been a dry, warm spring so far and all our rhubarb has flowered. I understand that this is a Bad Thing, but the flowers are pretty, in a vaguely alien, threatening way.

I pulled and chopped the first two pounds of rhubarb at the beginning of this month and stored it in the freezer. Today, Sunday 17th May, is our first full day back at home after a wonderful week in Suffolk and Claire's first gardening job was to prune the rhubarb. This produced another 2½ lbs, all from her grandmother's plant. Shirley's rhubarb is far pinker so I got most the remainder from that, even though it has put out less growth and I have seen both our cats pissing on it. I washed this rhubarb with care.

All rhubarb - 6 lbs of it - was cut into thin slices and went into the bucket. I reached for the sugar. There was a space on the shelf where the sugar should have been, which is poor planning. I poured 7 pints of boiling water into the bucket, dashed over to Sainsburys to get sugar, returned, put 6 lbs sugar into the bucket and the remaining 7 pints of boiling water.

Rhubarb in bucket with water and yeast (Champagne variety)

 I put the yeast and 2(ish) teaspoons of nutrient in on Monday morning, stirred twice a day until Friday 22 May, and then put the liquid into its demijohns. Using a collander as a scoop in the first stage made this a rapid job. Claire was going to sit in the kitchen and be companionable, but got bored during the sterilisation and rinsing process, so went to bed instead.

The rhubarb having a particularly frothy ferment

I could have used a pint less water for this wine. At this point it is its usual Barbie pink.

Rhubarb & Elderflower 2013 - The Making Of ...

Like everything else this year, elderflowers are late to bloom. It is 24th June and they are only just coming out now. Our rhubarb is starting to look a little old, so a couple of weeks ago I pulled several stalks from our two main patches - though mostly from Shirley's plant. These were weighed (3lbs 2oz), cut into pieces and shoved in the freezer. I removed them this morning and picked elderflowers on my way home from work.

Elderly Rhubarb

My not-quite-four-mile walk has a section through woodland, and I cross Meanwood Beck then walk along a path adjoining a field. It is a delightful journey and partly (though only partly) the reason I don't catch the bus. And there are elder trees dotted all over.

On my walk to work

This evening I picked a few in the woodland and some along the patch, but I planned mostly to get them from the field. I knew the field had horses, in much the same way I knew it had buttercups. After climbing over the wall I noted the horses were all under one elder tree so I made my way to the other some distance away and started picking. There was a definite sound of trotting behind me and it was getting closer. I turned to find three surprisingly large horses running at me enthusiastically. I think they were hungry. Making 'Good Horse' noises and patting one particularly insistent one on the nose, I continued collecting elderflowers. Until I felt my backpack being nibbled. I made my apologies and withdrew.

A field with buttercups, elderflowers and horses

 At home, half an hour's stripping of flowers left me with half a pint, and I put these in the bucket with all the rhubarb, 3lbs sugar and 6½ pints of boiling water. I left it all over night and put in the yeast and a teaspoon each of pectolase and nutrient the following morning.

A mix of rhubarb and elderflower in its bucket

 I sieved out the fruit and flowers, putting the liquid into its demijohn on Friday night, 28th June, after having spent an evening drinking beer with Matthew. The wine is in a brown glass demijohn, in an effort to preserve its candy-floss pinkness.

A brown demijohn preserves the colour

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

Rhubarb Wine 2013 - The Making Of ...

It has been a busy Sunday. Technically Claire and I are still on holiday, having returned from a fabulous week in Gloucestershire only yesterday. However, today - 12th May - has been industrious. I have made bread, done the weekly shop, washed more dishes than is reasonable, practised the impossible fourth movement of Britten's Sea Interludes, started my dandelion wine, bottled 2012's crab apple wine, made onion gravy, dug some of Julia's allotment and still had time to start this year's Rhubarb Wine.

Julia's enormous rhubarb patch

Julia has an enormous rhubarb patch and she encouraged me to take lots. I pulled up several stalks, mostly remembering to grip from the base so that they made a satisfying 'pop' as they came away from the root. This way I got four pounds of rhubarb, and Claire harvested me a further two pounds from our patches at home. I don't think she trusts me not to destroy our plants. There is one stalk from her grandmother's patch and three from Shirley's (which is the pinkest of the lot).

I sliced each stalk thinly and put them all in my bucket. I have covered this with fourteen-and-a-half pints of boiling water and will leave it just over 24 hours.

When I got home from work on Monday evening, 13th May, I added six pounds of sugar, the yeast and two teaspoons of nutrient. Then on Friday I transferred it all into the demijohns, sieving out the rhubarb while listening to Michael Tippet's First Symphony on Radio 3. This was a long, sticky process but has produced a delightful candy-pink liquid. I have not filled the demijohns to the neck as I suspect the fermentation will be violent.

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

Rhubarb Wine - The Making Of ...

I was planning on starting my rhubarb wine next weekend, but Julia rang today, 2nd May, to say that all her rhubarb plants were flowering and therefore next Saturday would be too late to harvest the stalks. As I had just put a bottle of Rhubarb 2010 in the fridge, this fitted in nicely. I made arrangements to meet Julia at her allotment gates at around four, and continued with my afternoon. This mostly consisted of continuing with 'The Lacuna' by Barbara Kingsolver. The more I read, the better it gets, which is what one wants in a book of 670 pages. It is extremely good at relating historical events from a personal point of view: Trotsky's assassination was brilliantly written and remarkably tense, even though I knew that this was his fate (but virtually nothing else at all about him). The rest of the afternoon was spent on the internet, reading and watching the news about Bin Laden's capture and death. Obama's address to the nation (and therefore the world) struck me as measured, intelligent and pleasingly free of triumphalism.

Anyway, plucking 6 lbs of rhubarb from Julia's allotment was quick work, and we spent most our time putting fleece over her strawberry plants in anticipation of Tuesday's predicted frost. Claire dug up some horseradish, which currently sits in our fridge awaiting culinary transformation.

Once at home I washed the rhubarb and cut the stalks up into slices of about half an inch, making sure that we got some from both Claire's grandmother's plant and the one given to us by Shirley. I put this into the bucket and pured over 13 pints of boiling water. The next morning, I added six pounds of sugar, a sachet of yeast (Champagne variety) and one and a half teaspoons of nutrient, though no pectolase.

I put this all into its two demijohns on Saturday, 7th May after a day of playing Wind Quintets in Kirkgate market (I'm now on YouTube !) followed by gentle pottering. Sieving out the rhubarb took longer than expected, even after trying to take out most the rhubarb floating on top of the liquid using the sieve as a scoop - a method suggested in a blog I am following on the blogosphere (Beekeeping and Homebrewing). I should have added an additional pint of water (at least) in the beginning stages. Demijohn A is dark glass, and I have wrapped demijohn B in silver foil.