Prune & Parsnip Wine 2021 - First Bottle (B4), 3rd-5th February 2022

When I bottled this, I noted that Prune & Parsnip 2021 was a poor vintage. It is pleasing, therefore, that the wine seems to have aged well. This bottle was entirely like Prune & Parsnips that I have known. Possibly it is lighter in colour, but I cannot detect a difference in taste. As always, it has the essence of a semi-sweet sherry.

I opened it on Thursday and we finished it on Saturday. In between, we had Book Group (proper face-to-face Book Group) where we discussed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: mostly enjoyed with Catherine dissenting.

A not very interesting photo taken on 7 February

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

Blackberry Wine 2019 - Fifteenth Bottle (B3), 30th August 2021

Blackberry wine was the natural choice of wine after a day spent picking brambles for 2021's batch. The wine was delicious and bursting with bramble flavour. Rather better than the vegetarian moussaka I made to accompany it, which, despite its vegetarian credentials, would have benefitted greatly from a chicken stock cube. The rest of the evening was spent watching The Crown and then reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, which is witty and beautifully written. One of those books that manages to be engaging despite a paper-thin plot.

A grave from which I picked brambles

Ginger Wine 2020 - Third Bottle (1), 18th June 2021

Baked fish requires a citrus wine, and ginger very nearly fulfills that role. The wine was perhaps a little robust, but there was no struggle involved in finishing it. Nor in finishing the current book: Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. I picked this up from one of the Little Free Libraries dotted around Leeds, expecting it to be trashy, badly written yet fun. It only matched the last of those - perhaps not Great Literature but extremely engaging and written with knowing humour. It was not what I expected - more Romance Structure and less Murder Mystery than anticipated.

Blackcurrant Wine 2020 - First Bottle (6), 8th-10th April 2021

Claire required something nice to drink after I had forced her to have two sips of Magnolia Petal Wine. Being the loving and considerate husband that I am, I directed her to the blackcurrant wine and whilst Claire was drinking this, I was drinking the Magnolia Petal. There was half a glass of this for me on Saturday night, and it is a pleasant vintage of blackcurrant - much like every other blackcurrant made (a remarkably consistent wine ingredient). I drank my ration whilst watching The Core with the Snarkalong Film Club - a truly silly disaster movie with the concept that the Earth's core has stopped turning and only a nuclear bomb will get it going again. Hilarious and predictable.

I started reading 'Knowledge of Angels' by Jill Paton Walsh - and the pages above are its opening. I think they are stunning, and I thoroughly recommend this book.

Rhubarb Wine 2016 - Fifteenth Bottle (A3), 21st March 2021

From recent experiences of ancient wine, I had expected this bottle to end up poured down the sink. It is therefore with unanticipated pleasure that I can report the wine was in the realms of Quite Good. There was a rhubarb taste, subtle but present, and no huge globs of sediment.

Sunday was a lazy day - I had left it empty to recover from my Covid vaccine side-effects, but as these consisted of an uncomfortable arm, I could have been more active. I baked a cake (coffee & coconut), finished my book (Out of the Shelter by David Lodge) and watched two hours of television (The Crown and  Line of Duty - a new series). Often lazy Sundays are just what I need.

Coffee & Coconut Cake

Orange Wine 2021 - The Making Of...

One of the 'First World Problems' caused by Covid 19 is the sheer amount of queuing that it creates. Whilst one might point to the 120,000 deaths in the UK, the mental health crisis, the vast unemployment and the failure to see loved ones, it was the time spent standing in lines that annoyed me most on Saturday, 6th March. The greengrocer, the butcher and the post office all had long, slow-moving queues and by the time that I got home Claire had to calm me down with cake.

A crate of 24 oranges

Making things better, though, the greengrocer had set aside a box of 24 oranges for me - large Spanish oranges looking like they had been plucked from their tree mere hours ago. 

I started making my wine that afternoon by thinly peeling half of the oranges and covering the peel in two pints of boiling water. This is always the most tedious bit of making orange wine and this year I separated it out of the process by making it my first task, leaving the orange peel to percolate in its water for 24 hours. I did a particularly poor job of avoiding the pith and if this wine turns out too bitter, that will be the explanation. 

A particularly poor job of avoiding the pith

On Sunday afternoon, 7th March, I squeezed all 24 oranges - changing hands every three oranges so as to avoid a painful and overused shoulder. This is a sticky job and required frequent handwashing.

Some of the oranges with outer skin removed

With the oranges being larger than most years I got far more juice - 6 pints (including all the bits of flesh). I added 6¾ pints of cold water and the two pints of water that had been covering the peel. Into this I poured 5½ lbs of sugar and gave it a good stir. I then started 2 teaspoons of yeast fermenting in half a pint of water with a teaspoon of sugar and put this into the mix once fermentation had begun. I added a teaspoon of pectolase and 1½ teaspoons of nutrient. Though my usual timetable would have me putting the wine into its demijohn on Friday, it was Book Group that night (Grownups by Marian Keyes - hated by some, loved by others) so I did this all on Saturday 13th March instead. There was little to sieve out so the process was quick. I am left with two demijohns of pure sunshine.

Two demijohns of sunshine

Damson Wine 2020 - First Bottle (2), 7th March 2021

Ordinarily I would wait another five months before opening this bottle. However, I snapped the string when corking it, so we drank it as a young wine. It isn't bad at all - whilst not reaching the heady heights of Damson 2018, it was a light and fruity red that was pleasant drinking. Now that I know where there is a damson source, this could become a regular.

Sunday mostly involved making cake and wine. The cake was a date, apple & walnut Tea Loaf, and was superb. Cake making is pleasingly easy. The wine was orange, and you will be able to read about that elsewhere on this blog. I also finished Grownups by Marian Keyes - a book that I was prepared to sniff at, but which was compulsive and I was sad to have finished.

The Tea Loaf

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

Blackberry Wine 2019 - Ninth Bottle (C1), 11th-12th February 2021

It turns out that making stew is really easy. You just put some meat and vegetables in a pot with enough water to cover and then let it cook on the hob for a couple of hours. To mark my new found skill (which was an Irish stew with dumplings) we drank half a bottle of blackberry wine, which is the correct wine for a peasant's meal. The rest was finished on Friday before Book Group, which was an entertaining discussion on Parade's End - a huge book with which I have struggled and not enjoyed.

Patterns in the Ice - taken on 11 February

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2019 - Ninth Bottle (B6), 16th January 2021

Saturday was one of those days where I pottered. It was much like all other Saturdays have been stretching back for months. Post Office, grocery shopping, Scrabble with my mother, bottle of wine (as prune & parsnippy as ever) and Snarkalong film (Ocean's Eight). The only different thing was that I made a serious effort with our Book Group Book: Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. It is 824 pages long. I have reached page 144 and Nothing At All Has Happened. I am relieved that I still have nearly four weeks until Book Group.

Parade's End

Crab Apple & Strawberry Wine 2020 - The Making Of...

Sunday 25th October was a day of industry. Our evening was to be spent having a virtual dinner-party via Zoom with Mary. When dining with Mary there is always a theme: we have had foods that rhyme, foods of a particular colour and food that starts with a letter in Dvorak's name. On Sunday Claire chose the theme and that theme was 'Tapas: Pride & Prejudice style'. Therefore much of my day was spent making Spanish dishes and trying to shoe-horn a way of fitting it into Pride & Prejudice. Pickled peppers stuffed with goats cheese and sprinkled with dill represented Lydia for being both cheap and easy. Patatas Bravas represented the early fiery nature of Lizzie and Darcy's relationship.

Lydia & Whickham - Tapas Style

When not making tapas, I was making Crab Apple & Strawberry wine. The 1 lb of strawberries was fished out from our freezer a couple of hours before I started in earnest. I needed 4 lbs of apples, but our crab apple tree only had 3 lbs left on it, so I bulked it out with 1 lb of apples from the tree in our back garden - thus robbing the blackbirds and squirrels of their full ration.

Apples on our tree

I mashed the strawberries, which had yet to defrost fully, in the bucket and whizzed the apples through the food processor, putting these in as well. As 6¾ pints of water boiled, I put 3 lbs sugar into the bucket and gave everything a good stir. Once the water was boiling I poured this into the mix and stirred again. Next morning I added a teaspoon each of yeast, pectolase and nutrient.

The ingredients before processing

On Wednesday evening we drank some of last year's Apple & Strawberry Wine, which was thin and boring. Therefore, I added a teaspoon of citric acid to my bucket as an experiment to avoid that fate - though I don't actually know what effect citric acid has!

The ingredients, after processing

On Saturday morning I sieved out the fruit and put the liquid into its demijohn - this time leaving a gap to avoid any overflow, and storing some wine in a separate bottle for topping up purposes. I could have reduced the water by about half a pint in the above recipe, but now I have a lovely red coloured wine bubbling away in the demijohn.

The End Result

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

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2019 - Sixth Bottle (A3), 17th October 2020

A Saturday bottle of wine, drunk to 'Lemony Lentils' and 'Stuff lurking in the fridge baked in the oven' - both delicious. It being Saturday, we had a Snarkalong Film Club, and this week we watched Hackers, a 1995 'Teens against Big Business' computer conspiracy movie. I found it dull and incomprehensible and should have spent the evening with a book instead. Mind you, I am reading a silly book called The Corset, with the ridiculously named heroine, Dorothea Truelove.

Prune & Parsnip Wine 2017 - Tenth Bottle (A5), 8th-9th September 2020

This was one of those mid-week bottles where both wine and the days on which it was consumed were unremarkable. Not bad by any means - just ordinary. Nothing dramatic happened at Work, in the evenings we ate and watched television, the cats didn't bring anything unwanted into the house. 

I nearly finished our Book Group Book: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, which I have enjoyed but not as much as the superlative comments on its cover would suggest. I wouldn't make everyone read it, it is not an unconditional masterpiece and Ferrante is not the foremost modern writer in the world: all claims on the back of the book. It passed the time.

Taken on 9th September

Orange Wine 2018 - Fifth Bottle (B6), 5th May 2020

Whilst I am on holiday this week, Tuesday was a day to be idle. On Monday I had walked nearly thirty thousand steps, so a day of doing little was excusable.

We drank this orange wine after a lovely Zoom conversation with Mary. Social isolation is all well and good, but I do miss my friends. We chatted for nearly an hour and a half, covering everything from Jane Austen to haircuts, and then Claire and I shared this orange wine.

Taken on 5th May - 

Socially distancing outside a shop

Blackberry Wine 2017 - Final Bottle (C1), 21st June 2020

Toad in the Hole requires a red wine, and this was how Blackberry 2017 came to an end. Sausages are one of life's great pleasures. And the wine wasn't bad either, though we very nearly finished it before eating. It was the end of a lazy Sunday where I feel that little was achieved. Most notable event was reading a proper chunk of our next Book Group Book - The Bee Keeper of Aleppo by Christy Leferti. It is too harrowing to be enjoyed and right at the moment I need light things.

Taken on 21st June

Blackcurrant Wine 2017 - Tenth Bottle (A2), 18th June 2020

I do make a good bottle of blackcurrant wine. It has all the fruit taste you want and this vintage is smooth and easy to drink. Possibly too easy. We drank the bottle on Thursday night on a day where very little of interest happened. The most exciting thing was a trip out to the Book Shop to buy books. Whilst this might sound unremarkable, this week was the first week that shops selling non-essential items were allowed to open since Lockdown began. Some might argue that books were never non-essential.

Two more doors I like 

(taken on 17th June)

Strawberry Wine 2017 - Final Bottle (5), 9th May 2020

I don't know how Claire cannot much like strawberry wine. It is one of my favourites and this was a good vintage of it: dry, light and distinctive.

Saturday was a lazy day, partly spent in the garden doing some ineffectual weeding (the ground is so hard - we need some rain) and partly spent reading Frankenstein. Now that the Creature is telling his tale, the book has become more interesting. I prefer Jane Austen though!

Taken on 8th 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.

Orange Wine 2019 - First Bottle (2), 29th March 2020

I have made a rather decent vintage of Orange Wine. It may be a tad sweeter than usual and it has plenty of orange flavour without any bitterness. I must have done a better job this time of avoiding the pith.

We drank the wine to tuna fishcakes and ratatouille and then I fell asleep on the sofa whilst trying to concentrate on Morse. Earlier in the day my timetable read like an exercise in self-improvement: I wrote a proper letter (pen & paper) to Bridget and family, started Mansfield Park (the only Austen I have yet to read) and went on our one Government-sanctioned walk to Meanwood Park and back. This isolation and social-distancing lark isn't entirely awful. Yet.

Dead Nettle in our Garden (30th March)

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

Halloween Wine - Third Bottle (2), 21st April 2020

This wine is as sharp as they come. I think that it is the mix of gooseberries and blackcurrants that make up the majority fruit in this flavour. The chilli was only noticeable when I remembered that I had put one in.

We drank the wine to a meal of sausages, baked potato and delicious gravy (like ordinary gravy, but better). Unusually for Lockdown, we hardly watched anything on television. I tried to get on with Mansfield Park but Jane Austen and half a bottle of wine are not the best of friends.

The inside of a gas gosvenor (I think)

taken on 21st April