Dandelion Wine 2013 - Final Bottle (5), 25th-30th September 2021

NB For the next several entries, I am going to dispense with Date Order, and post them in the order in which they appear in my written diary. This means such narrative that there is (which is very little!) will be somewhat disrupted.

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I saved this final bottle of Dandelion Wine for a special occasion where I could share it with guests, on the basis that with 8 years aging it was likely to be spectacular. Bob, Judith and Susanna were here - only the second time that we have had guests to stay since Covid 19 hit. The wine, however, only served to disappoint. Yes, it was drinkable and had an element of sherry to it. But it was not the rich delicious nectar-like substance that I had anticipated. If anything, it was slightly rank.

No-one had a second glass, even though they stayed another two days. I drank it over the course of the week. The final glass was brown and murky.

Wiggy on 25 September, claiming her space

Dandelion Wine 2019 - First Bottle (4), 1st April 2021

"Odd" was Claire's description of choice. Followed by "Not unpleasant" but that was as positive as she got. I like this wine: it is very much 'home brew' but not in a bad way. The taste is sweet and had a hint of vegetable to it. I would happily serve this in polite company.

We drank the bottle on Maundy Thursday during which I was culinarily adventurous - Roquefort and mushroom stuffed pancakes a la Nigel Slater. Pancakes have been my downfall in the past, but last night they were circular and unholy, which I count as a success.

Taken on 2nd April - Cherry Trees and Sloe Bushes in bloom

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

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 2019 - The Making Of...

I was very much in two minds about making dandelion wine this year: the Magnolia Petal wine was to be its substitute. But as I have been driving home the last three weeks, the road verges have been golden with dandelions. Each journey has been a temptation, and my resolve to give dandelion wine a miss has weakened with each one. Therefore, on Good Friday, I struck out with my jug and a plastic bag to pick flowers. I had intended to walk all the way to the fields by Potternewton Lane, but thought I should have a quick look at Allerton Grange before making that half-hour trip. I am glad I did: there were dandelions in abundance and, whilst it did my step-count no good, foraging for flowers round the corner meant that I spent an hour less of my day with wine-making activities.

It was a glorious afternoon, picking dandelions in the sunlight, listening to a competitive father beat his under-tens at football. An Indian osteopath was interested in what I was doing and I had a long conversation with him about wine-making. At no point did he look as if he wanted to back away slowly.

I measured 6 pints of dandelion heads in my jug and took them home to boil up in 7 pints of water, 2 lbs 12 oz sugar and the thinly peeled rind of two lemons and one orange. This was brought to the boil and boiled for 20 minutes. I squeezed the citrus fruits and put the juice and half a kilo of minced sultanas into my bucket, pouring the contents of the cauldron over this once the twenty minutes was up.

Next day I added the yeast and a teaspoon each of nutrient, pectolase and tannin. I pretty much left the wine to its own devices until Thursday evening, 12th April, giving it only the occasional stir.

On Thursday, after returning from a solicitors' event involving beer and pies, I put the liquid into its demijohn, straining out the solids. The amount of water I had used was exactly right - nothing spare was left.

Dandelion wine at this stage does not suggest its eventual golden colour - though it isn't quite as brown as the magnolia.

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

Dandelion Wine - Second Bottle (1), 19th April 2019

On a day that I started my next batch of dandelion wine, which was Good Friday where Andrew, Sooz and Jayne were all here, it seemed right and proper that we should drink this year's bottle of dandelion wine. This was after having an early (and floppy) gin and tonic, followed by Cosmopolitans in the garden. The weather has been idyllic over the last few days (though we do need some rain quite badly, just not this Easter weekend).

This wine was good without being outstanding: a medium-dry sherry with a definite hint of lemons. I wonder how next year's bottle will be.

Cosmopolitans in the garden

Dandelion Wine 2013 - Fifth Bottle (4), 17th November 2018

Dandelion wine is an alarming colour. Rather than a golden shine, it has the colour one would expect to piss if badly dehydrated. That said, it is delicious. It came a close second at this year's Wine Party, and was only one of three bottles finished (out of 16). Its average score was 3.98 out of 5 and many people remarked how sherry-like it was. Rachel is desperate to use it as the base for a trifle, but that would be a waste. Jenny awarded it 6 out of 5, which I think means she liked it.

D is for Delicious.

Dandelion Wine - First Bottle (3), 14th April 2018

I am extremely pleased with this bottle. It has elements of a medium sherry, but with a lemon zing and something unusual besides. That will probably be the dandelions. It has a dark gold colour and was clear all the way down. I shall ration this flavour to one a year because dandelion wine is one of those that keeps on improving.

It was a suitable choice for the day, which has been the first day this year that has felt spring-like. No rain and the sun made a showing for part of it. I spent a couple of hours in the garden, cleaning the eventual rose-bed. Claire tidied borders and pottered, some of which involved pulling up dandelions.

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

Dandelion Wine - Fourth Bottle (1), 23rd April 2017

Drunk on St George's Day in every sense! It seemed like a fitting occasion for a bottle of dandelion wine. Could anything be more English? The wine is superb - a full sherry that is smooth in the throat. This policy of leaving a year between bottles requires patience but pays dividends. I had a lovely, relaxed day too. Claire was off being tutored in the art of the string quintet so I spent a day on the chaiselongue reading and doing very little else. The book is A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, our Book Group Book, and it is beautifully written. 'Jolly' is not an adjective to describe it, however.

Dandelion Wine - Third Bottle (2), 14th May 2016

For the first time since our honeymoon in the Grand Canyon in 1998, I have gone a week without alcohol. Then it was forced upon me by antibiotics and a swollen face. This time it was through choice, after a heavy week of drinking in Cornwall. I found it surprisingly easy, and I am pleased about that.

Dandelion was a good choice - it is a wine drunk rarely and it just gets better with age. Browner too, but never mind. There is little difference between this wine and a commercial sherry, and I did a taste test to prove it. I think I will save my next bottle until May 2017. Check back in a year!

Obviously not me, but this is how I looked on my honeymoon

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.

Dandelion Wine - Second Bottle (6), 26th November 2015

What could possibly say 'Thanksgiving' more than a bottle of homemade Dandelion Wine? This was our first bottle of the evening after a round of whisky macs, and everyone thought it a 'Hit'. It is very reminiscent of sherry, though sherry with a touch of vegetable, and I was told that even Claire's grandmother might have approved. It being Thanksgiving we had a couple of Americans over - Linda and Rory, plus Richard (of course), Andrew and Sooz. It was a lovely evening with too much food and lots of good conversation. And Linda's pumpkin pie was the best I think she has ever done.

Dandelion Wine - First Bottle (3), 12th May 2015

I have left this batch of dandelion two years before sampling. I thought my last batch improved massively on keeping, hence the wait. Even so, I was expecting something bland at best and undrinkable at worst. When I fail I like to do so in a big way, so I shared the bottle between the six of us sharing a cottage in Suffolk. In fact, the wine was Not Bad At All. It was too sweet, but when I changed my mindset to this being a pudding wine, that stopped mattering so much. Nick declared that I had made a sherry and everyone finished their glasses. Only the colour was unfortunate: dark urine.

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

Julia's Wines - an Introduction, 10th May 2014

I am going to dedicate some posts on this blog to Julia's wines.

Once when Julia cooked a Feast - possibly road-kill pheasant - she disappeared into her cellar and brought up a bottle of Dandelion Wine, made at least twenty years earlier. It was the finest home made wine I have ever had. She also brought up a bottle of redcurrant that was foul.

Julia died two days ago. Late this afternoon I ventured into her cellar and have retrieved thirteen bottles of wine. There are many more and, whilst not mentioned in her will, she has bequeathed them to me. I will record each one in this blog.

A Pyramid of Arts Creation, with Julia in the middle distance.

Dandelion Wine - Final Bottle (4), 11th-13th August 2013

I had expected marvellous things of this bottle, remembering that the last two had been superb. Instead, I got something that was on the good side of drinkable. There was the dandelion herby taste from earlier bottles, which is distinctive without being actively nice. I am pleased that I did not serve this wine at Book Group on Friday, and instead shared it only between Claire and me.

We drank the bottle to our first home grown tomato of the year, which was small and yellow. This is a small, yellow tomato more than we got last year, and I expect many more. Claire's plants are looking healthy and fecund, and we should be eating a tomato glut shortly after courgette week has passed.

Claire's tomato plants

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With this post, my blog has come full circle. This batch of dandelion was the first wine that I made after starting the blog, and you can see how I made it by clicking here. If you want to see how each bottle turned out, just click on the label 'Dandelion' below. So, in the 2 years and 4 months that I have been writing this blog, I have provided recipes for fifty batches of wine and thirty separate flavours. There have been 440 posts, of which only a handful are neither about making wine or drinking bottles. Therefore, I reckon that about 370 posts relate to drinking a bottle of wine. As I say at the top of the blog, you may come to the conclusion that I am drinking too much! Cheers.

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.

Dandelion Wine 2013 - The Making Of ...

The raw ingredients

 I thought I had missed the dandelions this year. Generally dandelion wine is one to make in April. Today is 11th May. However, we suffered the coldest April in decades, meaning everything is late flowering. Walking through Gloucestershire fields last week, it became apparent that the dandelions were just hitting their peak, meaning there would be no problem getting enough 100 miles north in Leeds. I mentioned my quest for dandelions to Julia when discussing relieving her of several rhubarb stalks and she told me there were plenty of them surrounding her allotment. I would be doing her a favour to take as many as I needed before they turned into clocks.

The weather this Sunday afternoon was not ideal for picking dandelions. Generally one wants bright sunshine so that the flowers are fully open. Instead my only choice was drizzle. The dandelions were mostly three-quarters open, and this was good enough. I took a measuring jug and plastic bag with me and collected six pints of flowers, which was about half an hour's work.

Back at home I put all the dandelions in a bucket and collected a handful more from our back garden. I poured over 7 pints of boiling water and I am now meant to let them sit until Tuesday. My timetable does not allow for that, so I will do the next stage late on Monday night instead.

Before the water went into the bucket

I arrived back from Airedale at 10:15 p.m. already tired and set to work. The dandelions and liquid were poured into the big pan and set to boil. This revealed several blades of grass and a slug. It was a very small slug, but a slug nonetheless. I removed it and will pretend I did not see it.

I sliced thin peel off two lemons and an orange and put these peelings in the pan. Three pounds of sugar went in and I boiled it all for ten minutes. Meanwhile I minced a pound of raisins and juiced the citrus fruit, and these ingredients went into the (slug-free) bucket. I poured over the pan contents and left it over night (during which I slept remarkably badly). On Tuesday morning I added the yeast and a teaspoon each of nutrient, pectolase and tannin. I put this into its demijohn on Friday, 17th May. It is remarkably brown, but smells fabulous.

Remarkably brown wine

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

Dandelion Wine - Fifth Bottle (3), 2nd April 2013

Oh it's nice to be feeling well again. And drinking a bottle of dandelion wine, aided and abetted by Claire, helps to prove it. Perhaps Tuesday night was not the most sensible time to make the point, particularly as I have an eight o'clock breakfast meeting tomorrow. Still, Claire is technically on holiday, and the wine is really very good indeed. I think it is the best dandelion I have made - fragrant and light and (as tonight has shown) rather more-ish. Now I have a dilemma about which April wine to make - this or Exotic Tinned Fruit. I shall possibly do both, and hoard the dandelion as it obviously improves the longer it is kept.

Dandelion Wine - Fourth Bottle (1), 6th-7th December 2012

I opened this bottle on a Thursday night and proceeded to drink half of it with unseemly haste. Some of that was spent watching The Killing (which continues to be excellent - better than series two (which was still Very Good), not as good as series one) and the rest was over a meal of sea bass and lentil salsa. Claire finished the bottle on Friday night whilst I was out with my colleagues eating pizza and drinking far, far too much. I am typing this at noon on the day after, and only just now feel human. Which is lucky, as I have a concert tonight.

This dandelion wine was surprisingly good. So much so that I think I will make it again. Maybe leaving it to mature is the answer.

Dandelion Wine - Third Bottle (6), 25th-27th August 2012

Dandelion wine has an odd taste - one that I fluctuate between enjoying and not. It is herby, and if it was a tea I expect it would be drunk by middle-aged women wearing long purple skirts and lots of beads. An acquired taste, I think - and not one I drink frequently enough to acquire.

I now can't remember why we did not finish this on Saturday night, but Saturday was an unremarkable day where I read the Guardian and did little else. We eschewed a glass on Monday, after travelling to Skipton to hear Schubert's String Quintet played in a church crypt, in favour of a kir assembled from Cassis and cooking wine. Instead, we had our final glass early on Tuesday evening in a successful attempt to prevent me from going to Rubbish Summer Orchestra.

Sloe Wine - Fifth Bottle (1), 8th-9th June 2012

It is always good news when we get to Friday evening and the fridge is empty of vegetables that Need Using Up. This will result in a bring-round curry, which is rare enough to qualify as a treat. And in ordering two main dishes (Lamb Karahi and Paneer something) and a side (Tarka Dall) with two garlic naans, we ensured sufficient quantities for Saturday night too. The sloe wine was supplemented with dandelion on Friday and the first-glass-while-bottling of Elderberry 2011 on Saturday.

This bottle was inexplicably better than the last and I wonder if this is because I had no audience. It is a dry, interesting taste, and of course a fabulous colour. I may make it again.