Jasmine Tea Wine - Second Bottle (1), 13th-14th February 2019

Jasmine Tea Wine is the very definition of a mid-week bottle. Drinkable but not delicious and certainly not a treat. It is far better than pure Tea Wine, but the tea-flavour is still too strong, which creates a drying effect in the mouth. If I were to make this again (which seems unlikely) I would use half the quantity of tea.

Most the bottle was drunk on Wednesday, but we had enough left with which to celebrate Valentine's Day. Who says I'm not an old romantic?

The Jasmine Tea Wine

Jasmine Tea Wine - The Making Of...

14 Februrary 2021 - Update. Loads of people are looking at this post today. Can someone drop me a comment to explain why? Thanks!

For several years I have been thinking about the letter J for my wine alphabet. I had rejected 'Jam' as a cheat, though there is a recipe and we have many jars of ancient and random jam in our attic. Jack-fruit comes in tins, is fibrous and has an odd, meaty texture. Much as I would like to turn Jerusalem Artichokes into wine, I don't think we are growing them in sufficient quantity. The solution presented itself at my wine party last week. Rodney suggested Jasmine flowers, which would be expensive and difficult to obtain. Liz refined this to Jasmine Tea, which is sold in Sainsbury's and works out at 10p a bag.

The ingredients, plus a gate-crashing orange

On checking my diary for Tea Wine, I noticed that I had written "Never make this wine again", or words to that effect. Advice is there to be ignored. Anyway, that was black tea, and this is Jasmine Green Tea, so it is bound to be different. I remember that my previous tea wine had too much flavour - it was cloying, strong and too sweet - so I have cut down the quantities of most ingredients.

Measuring the tea

It being the end of October and with me not having made any wine so far this month, I started the wine this morning, 29th October. This time I have used 1¼ oz of tea (which was 15 tea bags, ripped open and shaken out), 3 oranges (just the juice), 1 lb minced sultanas and 2½ lbs of sugar. I boiled 2½ pints of water and poured this over the tea in my bucket. This brewed while I squeezed the oranges and minced the sultanas (in the food processor). I put these in the bucket, added the sugar and then poured in another 5½ pints of boiling water. I can't imagine that adding the water in two stages will have made any difference, but this is what I did last time (and that was obviously such a success).

Stirring the tea

When I came to put in the fermenting aids on Sunday evening, I found my wine-making tin bereft of yeast. A quick Facebook message to Liz and a saunter down Bentcliffe Drive saw me returning with her tub. I added a teaspoon plus nutrient and pectolase. The wine went into my demijohn on Thursday evening, 2nd November. Currently its colour is an unattractive greeny-beige, and I fear this will taste awful. But now, at least, the alphabet is complete!

The end of the alphabet

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

Tea Wine - Final Bottle (2), 22nd-23rd May 2013

Claire has given me specific instructions to write 'Never Again' in my diary, so that when in the future I check how to make Tea Wine, I realise that it is a better idea not to. I suspect this was my last ever bottle of this flavour. It was a worthy experiment - repeated from 2006 (I think) - and having made tea wine twice, it can safely be removed from the list.

In fact, this bottle was an improvement from the last, but it is too sweet, cloying and strong - without being entirely unpleasant. It began life as a post-WYSO bottle. Amy turned up, which was lovely, and I was praised for a straightforward crescendo on a B natural while all around me people were playing fiddly semiquavers.

This evening I began drinking just as the vegetarian shepherd's pie was coming out of the oven and I was filling the kitchen with smoke by cooking aubergines on a hot griddle. I only now realise that I forgot the lemon juice. Bah!

Tea Wine - Fifth Bottle (4), 31st October - 6th November 2012

Tea wine seems to be one of those bottles that is not finished with any haste. This took a week to drink. That suggests some reluctance on the part of the drinkers. It was an eventful bottle, however. On its first night I went to play wind quintets in a house where the resident 16 year old was having a Halloween party. All I can say is that there was some competition for noisiest grouping, and having a trainee paramedic playing French Horn proved to be a Good Thing.

The next night's glass was drunk after a long drive, before which we had been celebrating Ellis's second birthday. He is a charming toddler and never walks but runs, in the way two year olds do.

The rest of the bottle was unexceptional.

Tea Wine - Fourth Bottle (6), 5th-15th August 2012

I opened this bottle of tea wine in the dim and distant past for reasons I cannot now remember. Probably we wanted to drink some wine. That is usually the reason. It was the Sunday before I left for the Olympics and I fully expected it to have been finished on my return. However, when I got back the bottle was still in the fridge - Claire had entertained herself with sweet German white wine in my absence. And whenever there was a choice of 'tea wine' or 'something else', Claire chose the latter.

I manfully struggled through the remainder of the bottle - which oddly had not deteriorated over the time it had been open. There could be an easy explanation, involving the words 'Not', 'Much', 'Further', 'To' and 'Go' but in fact I thought it was okay, and Claire's shunning of it a little harsh.

Gooseberry & Elderflower Wine - Third Bottle (3), 10th August 2012

I opened this bottle for Book Group in preference to the half bottle of tea wine left standing in the fridge for nearly a week. We were discussing The Help by Kathryn Stockett - a story of domestic racism in 1960s Mississippi. On the whole it was a 'Hit', with Claire and I being the most reserved. It is immensely readable, rattling on at a pace, but we both felt it was writing by numbers, clearly written for book groups to discuss with the rather simple message 'Prejudice is Bad'. It is not our generation's To Kill a Mockingbird despite the back cover blurb.

Book Group was a little down on numbers, but both Richard and Jenny had half a glass each of the wine and enjoyed it. Rachel stuck resolutely to the rosé. Her loss.

Tea Wine - Third Bottle (1), 28th-29th June 2012

This has been the nicest bottle of Tea Wine so far. Though sweeter than ideal, and swampy in both colour and texture towards the end of the bottle, the taste is good. It has lost the bitterness of this flavour's first batch. Halving the amount of tea in the recipe was the correct thing to do.

Claire started the bottle on Thursday evening, whilst I was at Pat and Peter's playing trios. For the first time in well over a year I played the flute. This caused havoc with my bassoon playing for the remainder of the evening and reminded me why I don't get the flute out more often.

We finished the bottle on Friday evening, much of which was taken up with putting my Gooseberry & Elderflower into demijohns, which was a tedious process, and bottling the Quince wine, which was not.

Tea Wine - Bottle 3, 18th-21st March 2012

I returned home on Sunday night from a terrific concert in Ilkley. The Airedale Symphony Orchestra played 'The New World' Symphony and bits of tuneful ephemera, and we played them well. I knew I would find an open bottle on my return, and was surprised Claire had chosen 'Tea'. This is not one of her preferred flavours - it is both too sweet and too bitter, but only slightly in each case. I had a glass to bring me down from that feeling of having perfomed, which is one of energy and joy and not conducive to sleep.

The remainder of the bottle was drunk slowly over the next three evenings - mostly by me as Claire has declared it nasty. By the end of the bottle the clarity had deteriorated into a brown sludge, but the taste was no different. I suspect this batch will be Tea Wine's last hurrah.

Tea Wine - Bottle 5, 4th February 2012

Tea wine was my reward for a nerve-wracking evening. Leeds, along with most of the rest of England, had had its first snow of the season. This coincided with Music Club where I was both playing in the orchestra and performing a Beethoven trio. Ordinarily, when there is even a suggestion of snow, Music Club is cancelled. This time, whilst the snow was falling at its heaviest, I found myself driving slowly and precariously (with the occasional wobble) to Lawnswood. There, the attendance was low but we played and it was mostly alright. However, I got lost in the trio's third movement and had to wait impotently until we reached a bit I recognised. All very frustrating.

Half a bottle of wine once I had battled my way home was welcome. And the wine is Not Bad - certainly better than my last attempt at this flavour. It is on the foothills of Good.