Damson Wine 2020 - Second Bottle (4), 19th-20th May 2021

Well, this is rather splendid. There is a distinct damson taste, it has a fizz to it, the colour is glorious and it achieves a lightness that makes this wine an entirely pleasant drink. Now that I have a source of damsons I will make this one of my regulars. There was little of note to happen on Wednesday when we opened the wine. On Thursday I went for more blood tests to see if there is anything sinister causing my weight loss (Spoiler - there isn't). And it tipped it down both days. Oh for some sun!

A cactus is flowering.

Blackberry Wine - Thirteenth Bottle (A6), 12th-13th May 2021

Sausages, mash, onion gravy and blackberry wine - a winning combination. Claire's day involved five blood samples to analyse for a Covid 19 research project, and therefore most of a bottle of wine on a Wednesday was her reward. We shared the remaining glass on Thursday after I had returned from Madeleine's quintet. Though indoor restrictions end on Monday, they are currently still in force, so we played under Madeleine's car port for an hour, hoping the neighbours were forgiving souls.

Taken on 12 May in Gledhow Valley Woods

Jam Wine 2020 - The Making Of...

Many years ago I spotted that CJJ Berry had a recipe for Jam Wine. I filed this information away under the heading "Odd and Not Useful". Over the last few months I have watched our 'Home Made Condiments' cupboard fill to capacity and started to wonder whether I should dust down that recipe. Also, stored in the attic, were a collection of jars that we brought with us when moving house in 2015 and which have lurked there ever since.

Jars found in the attic

Claire was fully on board with this wine - it solved the problem of all those jars, but first of all we needed to play "Jam or Chutney". This involved opening each jar (more difficult than it sounds) and taking a taste - because of course only about half were labelled. This appeared to produce no chutney, lots of marmalade (which I did not use) and some sort of jelly with large pieces of garlic floating in it - also rejected.

A different view of the same jars
Notice the dust!

In the end I used nine jars in a variety of sizes and these were: Plum 2013, Strawberry 2013, Gooseberry 2011, Bramble Jelly 2013, Rowan Jelly 2005, Damson 2014, Crabapple & Chili Jelly, Fig, and Quince Jelly. The Crabapple & Chili was the nicest, the Rowan the worst.

Emptied jars

On Sunday 8th November, I tipped all contents into my bucket (together it looked like an enormous, disgusting blood clot) and poured over 6½ pints of boiling water. I gave it a good stir and left it overnight for the jam to dissolve. On Monday morning I added two teaspoons of citric acid and one of pectolase. Then in the evening (rather than 24 hours later as instructed by the recipe) I added 8 oz of minced raisins, 1 lb of sugar and a teaspoon each of yeast, nutrient and tannin.

Bleurggh

The yeast (which was a new tub and a different variety) did not take and I feared that this wine would have to be thrown out. On Wednesday I made a yeast starter, with the half teaspoon left of my old yeast, half a pint of warm water and half a pint of the jam wine. This started fermenting and continued to do so after adding a further pint of the wine, so I poured it into the bucket. Success!

I put the liquid into its demijohn on 15th November - which took quite a while. During this process I noticed large bits of onion in the solids that I was sieving out. "This appeared to produce no chutney" was a rash and inaccurate statement. "Jam or Chutney" is a surprisingly difficult game.

Jam wine in its demijohn

Orange Wine 2018 - Tenth Bottle (A5), 10th-11th November 2020

Hurrah! I'm not dying. My blood tests came back on Wednesday and everything is normal. The weight loss is down to additional exercise and no additional food. Therefore I need to eat more. That is my kind of remedy! I could pretend that we opened this bottle in celebration, but it was opened on Tuesday to accompany The Great British Bake Off - which is now in its closing stages. So, instead, we finished it in celebration - and I am relieved that I no longer have to take my blood pressure twice a day.

Taken on 10 November

Rose Petal Wine 2016 - Seventeenth Bottle (B4), 30th October 2020

I am starting to worry about my weight loss. At the beginning of Lockdown I was over 10½ stone (or over 147 pounds or 67 kilos). Seven months later I am around 9 stone 10 (or 136 pounds or 62 kilos). Probably this is down to increased exercise, but maybe it isn't. Also I have been feeling dizzier of late. Therefore, I made an appointment today to get some blood tests done. Watch this space.

In the evening I made a fabulous butternut squash risotto (chili oil being the magic ingredient) and we drank this rose petal wine, which was surprisingly good.

[NB - If you think the photos below are too personal or inappropriate, let me know and I will delete them.]

Me on 11 July 

Me on 31 October

Japonica Quince Wine - The Making Of...

2020, despite its myriad flaws, has been splendid for hard fruit. Our crab apple, pear and apple trees are laden. More unusually, so are all three flowering quinces. In past years they have put out two or three knobbly yellow fruits each. If used at all, these have been turned into jelly but mostly have been ignored. This year, though, each plant has tens of quinces, and that has made my wine-making thumbs twitch. I am not absolutely certain that Japonica Quince wine will work. After all, these are not the edible quinces. Neither, though, are they poisonous and there is only one way to discover whether they are suitable for wine.

Japonica Quinces on their bush

On 27th September I picked 4 lbs 8 oz of quinces, which is probably less than half our potential harvest. This was the bloodiest foraging that I have done: flowering quinces have fierce spikes and my left hand looks like it has done several rounds with an angry cat.

Minor flesh wounds

Back inside, after bathing my wounds, I checked recipes. The one requiring 20 proper quinces was out, leaving the one requiring 3 lemons and the other calling for 1 lb sultanas. I chose the latter on the basis that my previous quince wine was too dry and sultanas should help. Also, this is how I make apple wine.

My haul of quinces

I sliced all the quinces (after washing them) using the food processor and put them in my pan with 7 pints of water. I brought this to the boil and simmered for 15 minutes. Meanwhile I minced 12 oz sultanas (reducing the amount the recipe said, so as to preserve the delicate quince taste) and put these in my bucket with 3 lbs sugar. Once the 15 minutes was up, I poured the water and quinces (and thousands of seeds) into the bucket and stirred until the sugar was dissolved.

The quinces, once sliced

The next morning, Monday, I added a teaspoon each of nutrient, pectolase, citric acid and yeast. On Friday 2nd October I put the wine into its demijohn, which was a lengthy and tedious task. Japonica Quince wine appears to have 'sludge' as its main characteristic, and it was slow to drain through its sieve. Its colour is an attractive peach but there is much foam at the top and I fear it will make an attempt to escape the confines of its glass prison.

Taken the following morning, when the
sediment had sunk.

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

Elderberry Wine 2017 - Seventh Bottle (A5), 31st May - 1st June 2020

It was Sooz's birthday on Sunday and to celebrate we had a Taylor family Zoom meeting, though Andrew didn't make it - Zoom not really being his thing (I imagine). I haven't seen any of the Taylors since Christmas and it was lovely having an hour or so with them as we got gently sozzled on cocktails and then elderberry wine. Afterwards Claire and I ate lasagne but did not quite finish the bottle. That was saved for Claire on Monday, but the last half glass was rejected: the wine had developed clots that reminded her rather too much of the blood samples she receives at work.

Nascent pears - taken on 31 May

Apple Wine 2019 - First Bottle (3), 20th June 2020

I opened this on the day it was bottled because I did not want to sacrifice a third cork to this particular vessel. The first cork got stuck in my corking machine and the string snapped for my second attempt, so I gave it up as a bad job and put this bottle in the fridge.

The wine is too dry - I should have used sugar when racking, but with a dash of sugar syrup it is a pleasant, unremarkable white that tastes vaguely of apples.

Earlier in the day, I was chief witness to two cyclists being knocked off their bikes by a car. The result was plenty of blood and ambulances and one impressive black eye. It could have been much worse.

Actually, not all that much blood

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

Blackberry Wine 2017 - Fourteenth Bottle (B3), 1st January 2020

Our first bottle of the decade - and a good one to welcome in the 2020s. This blackberry wine is so smooth and tastes so much like blackberries that I think it is one of my best vintages. As usual we were in Cambridge and had a short-ish walk round Hemingford Grey. Cambridgeshire looks like it abounds with multi-millionaires, judging by the size of many of the houses that we walked past.

I spent much of the day being anti-social reading Bad Blood - given to me by Duncan, about a fraudulent Silicon Valley start-up dealing with blood tests: it was fascinating and gripping and told a story of ego, lies and misplaced optimism.

This was on the walk we went on

Blackberry Wine 2017 - Thirteenth Bottle (B4), 26th December 2019

Of the four bottles sampled on Boxing Day (two of which, I must point out, were leftovers and so not full bottles), this Blackberry was the best. It had a roundness and fullness to it, and the blackberry taste was overwhelming in an entirely good way.

Boxing Day Night consisted of leftovers, Christmas pudding with whisky sauce and measuring our blood pressures. Mine came out lowest at 106:74 with a heartbeat of 62. Despite my nascent cold, I am officially healthy!

Our Christmas Decorations

Rose Petal Wine 2015 - Final Bottle (C2), 7th-12th September 2019

The night that I opened this, Kato brought a dead wren into the house. The night I finished it, he presented me with a dead rat. This is the largest (and bloodiest) kill he has had and, of course, Claire was away. Our division of labour is that I deal with spiders and she removes anything that that cats catch. I had to be very brave on this occasion! Anyway, probably a good job that I had drunk a large glass of relatively poor rose petal wine.

The Actual Dead Rat

Orange Wine - Sixth Bottle (A2), 31st October 2018

Warning. Tenuous Connection Alert.

One of the two colours associated with Halloween is Orange. On the basis that I don't have a 'Black Wine', I opened this bottle instead. We finished it in one sitting - never a great idea for a Wednesday night. Claire had sent me a text earlier in the day saying that it had been 'Bloody'. By this she meant that she had received an overwhelming number of blood samples to analyse and did not stop for 10 hours. Hence an entire bottle of Orange Wine whilst distributing sweets to neighbourhood children.

Orange Wine - Fifth Bottle (A6), 8th September 2018

Saturday was one of those days taken up by wine making and chores. I put my blackberry into demijohns, racked my rose petal and picked elderberries. When not doing all that I was washing up, shopping for food and cooking fish pie. I fit in an episode of Doctor Who (all are currently on i-player and I am working my way through Matt Smith) and cut my finger badly when slicing a lemon. Plus we had a bottle of orange wine. So a thoroughly unremarkable Saturday and none the worse for it.

Rose Petal Wine - First Bottle (B6), 23rd-24th July 2018

I am pleased with this vintage of rose petal wine. It is lacking the bitter hint of 2016's batch and is light, refreshing and distinctive. A beautiful pale orangey-pink too. It being the summer with no regular orchestras, I opened it on a Monday evening and we finished it tonight. The summer is not without its music, however. On Sunday night we were playing a concert of Beethoven 3 (his best symphony) on remarkably little rehearsal. Josh, the conductor, got a nose bleed at the beginning of the second movement, which was more than a little distracting.

NB - I'm away now on my holidays, so there won't be a post for at least a week. Have a good one.

Xmas Tutti Fruti 2015 - Tenth Bottle (B5), 7th-8th April 2018

On Saturday night, I allowed myself only a sip of wine. This was because on Saturday afternoon I allowed myself a whole bottle. The bottle was an Italian red and the sip was Tutti Fruti. The bottle was better. I had been out for lunch with Rodney, and that always involves too much to drink.

We finished the Tutti Fruti on Sunday after a whole day of learning how to make lithographic prints using tin foil and coca cola. I hadn't been to an art lesson since I was 14 and it was surprisingly enjoyable. Claire concentrated on blood cells for her design, whereas my most successful involved rhubarb wine.

My lithograph

The image I worked from (but in mirror image)

Elderberry Wine - Final Bottle (A5), 18th March 2016

Ordinarily on a Friday night I have at least a gin & tonic more than half a bottle of wine. Tonight I have stuck to the elderberry and I suspect that Claire had a tad more wine than me. Tomorrow I need to be fighting fit. We have a concert and I am worried about it. Worried enough to do an hour's bassoon practice, and that never happens. The elderberry wine, though, was fabulous and chosen by Claire to accompany steak - brown on the outside, but bloody pink were it matters.

It is rare that we eat red meat and that makes the experience all the better. Elderberry is a perfect wine to go with it - and an aged elderberry particularly so - smooth, fruity and dark. Here is to no hangover tomorrow!

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2016 - The Making Of ...

I was furious when I bought ingredients for this year's Prune & Parsnip wine. The weather was miserable; the worst sort of February rain; and I was hungry. The picture framing shop was closed, which meant a pointless trip had been made, and there had been nowhere to park in Roundhay near the butchers. My usual place for buying vegetables had neither prunes nor parsnips. And there I was in Tescos, an unfamiliar supermarket, struggling to find what I wanted. Not a great start for this wine.

The raw ingredients

Once home, I ignored the fact that Claire was feeling ill with a heavy cold and insisted that she put all the shopping away and bring me coffee and cake. I think I am the world's worst husband.

Leaving wine-making until today, Sunday 7th February, was a wise choice. It has been much better: the sun has shone and I have spent the morning palying bassoon quartets and watching Chris Contrabassoon try to fix his car with bits of string.

Parsnips in a pan

In the afternoon I chopped 4 lbs of parsnips into small pieces, cutting myself just the once and getting only the smallest amount of blood all over the vegetable matter. I boiled the parsnip pieces in 16 pints of water for about 25 minutes. This was done in two stages - 2 lbs parsnips in 8 pints of water at a time.

Prunes and a very sharp knife.

I put 5 lbs 10 oz sugar and 1 lb prunes (actually 500 grams) into my bucket. The prunes were already de-stoned, and I chopped each one into two, three or four pieces depending on their size. Once the parsnips had finished boiling I poured the water over the sugar and prunes, keeping the parsnips out of the mix. These will almost certainly end up in the bin but Claire has suggested using some of them for soup.

After 5 days' fermentation

The yeast and a teaspoon each of pectolase and nutrient went into the bucket on Monday morning. It all got a general stir once or twice a day until Friday 12th February, when I put the liquid into its demijohns. This was mostly done while Claire was sorting books in the kitchen - for the first time ever (possibly) we now have more shelf space than books. The wine is its usual orangy-brown colour and fermenting enthusiastically.

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

Fig Wine - Second Bottle (3), 5th September 2015

My parents have been instructed to collect figs on the strength of the last bottle. Therefore, I thought taking a bottle to York with me would only be fair. Both Mom & Pop loved it - with Pop saying he thinks this is the best wine I have made. I wouldn't go that far, but it is good and worth doing in fig-heavy years (of which this is one).

Earlier in the evening I won convincingly in Scrabble against Mom - my first win for many games. I got all letters out twice (LOOSEST  and  REDOING). Only part of this game was played in the presence of a random bleeding teenager who had come off his bike outside the house.

Elderberry Wine - Sixth Bottle (B1), 22nd-25th February 2014

Saturday was busy. I spent most of it at Holy Trinity Church rehearsing with the Elmet Sinfonietta. 'Biting off more that you can chew' would be an apt phrase. Amongst the pieces is Stravinsky's Octet, which verges on the impossible, and with an octet there is nowhere to hide. Thus I felt I had earned a bottle on Saturday evening, although we did not finish it.

We drank the wine with a fabulous sausage and lentil casserole, saving enough for leftovers on Sunday lunch. Worryingly, I had a few solid bits in the wine - just the first glass, so I am hoping this is not the sign of things to come. They resembled three small blood clots, which was a little off-putting. I ignored them as best I could and went on reading The 100 Year Old Man who Stepped Out of the Window and Disappeared, which on the whole I do not love.

Rhubarb Wine - Sixth Bottle (B3), 18th-19th October 2013

I had misremembered this to be a disappointing batch of rhubarb wine. This bottle, however, was everything rhubarb wine should be: dry, fizzy, pleasing and ever so slightly pink.

I opened it after coming home from the theatre feeling emotionally drained. We had been to see My Generation by Alice Nutter, which was superb. It followed a Leeds family over four decades, exploring their internal politics through external ones. I had to make an effort not to sob audibly during the performance - but there were moments of hilarity too.

Then, I finished the bottle on Saturday after returning from the theatre again, this time open mouthed in horror at Sweeney Todd. It too was excellent and both plays remind me how important live theatre is, and how I do not got enough.