Blackcurrant Wine 2018 - Sixth Bottle (B1), 8th March 2019

What a literary weekend we have had: a Poetry Walk in Roundhay Park on Saturday and today an 'Adventure Walk' around Leeds where at points actors would perform monologues to us up close. I found it exciting, surprising, exhilarating. It was all part of Leeds Literature Festival. Afterwards we came home and drank a bottle of Blackcurrant Wine - smooth and delicious but not any of exciting, surprising or exhilarating - to a nut roast and onion gravy.

The Leeds Lending Library

Orange Wine 2020 - The Making Of...

Saturday 7th March turned into a busy day. I had plans only for orange wine making, but at 11 a.m. I found myself at the gates to Roundhay Park waiting for a poet to arrive.

Sitting in a bandstand, discussing poetry

It has been the second ever Leeds Literature Festival with all kinds of literary events around the city, and one of these was a walk through Roundhay Park with Lydia Kennaway as she read, and her audience discussed, her poems about walking. Not having discussed poetry since A Level English Literature 32 years ago, this was a novel and somewhat daunting experience. Thoroughly worthwhile, though, and maybe I should read more poetry.

This all left the afternoon to buy wine making supplies (where I came away with a tub of tannin rather than the yeast that I had expected) and oranges, and to transform these into wine. I needed 24 oranges for a double batch, so bought two packs of 10 small and one pack of 4 large oranges.

At home I thinly sliced the peel off 10 of the small oranges, which as ever is the very worst thing about making orange wine. It takes such a long time and is mind-numbingly dull. I covered the peel in two pints of boiling water and left that for 24 hours before tipping the water into my bucket and putting the peel on the compost.

In the meantime, I squeezed all 24 oranges (swapping hands every three) and measured the juice - 3.75 pints. I poured this into my bucket with 9 pints of cold water and 5.5 lbs of sugar. This (plus the 2 pints of water covering the peel) was exactly the right amount of liquid. I stirred everything around to dissolve the sugar and added teaspoons of yeast, pectolase and nutrient (slightly more of the last two).

On Thursday 12th March I transferred all this to its demijohns. There was little to sieve out and this was a quick job. The wine is as vibrant and yellow as ever.

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

Blackcurrant Wine 2015 - Twenty-third bottle (A1), 1st March 2019

Claire and I disagree about what age has done to this wine. I think it has been smoothed out, creating something better, less one-note. Claire thinks that the effect is to make it taste less like alcoholic Ribena, which is a Bad Thing. That didn't stop us sharing the bottle equally, however.

It was an ordinary Friday night in which we ate quiche made from the Sick and the Weak and watched Mad Men on DVD. In the words of Albert and the Lion, Nothing to laugh at, at all.

Prune & Parsnip Wine - Sixth Bottle (B1), 17th November 2018

Prune & Parsnip inched into the top half of the bottles I opened for my Wine Party, coming eighth out of sixteen and scoring a respectable 2.9 out of 5. It was the last bottle opened and thus was the one that fewest people tried. I had worried that 16 bottles would not be sufficient, but there were only three finished and there is plenty to keep us going for the remainder of the week.

Lindsay composed an ode:

Hello Prune & Parsnip, my old foe;
Once again down the sink you go.

and awarded it 0.5

P is for Poem

Blackberry - Bottle C6, 22nd October 2011

Mom has recently returned from the States, so we took the opportunity of a free Saturday night to stay over in York. I brought this bottle and Mom's copy of 'Ben's Adventures' with me. Between us (and Erica, who dropped in and stayed to eat) we quickly polished off the bottle. It was really very good - one of my best. And the evening was delightful - even if my mother did start reading Gerald Manley Hopkins to us. Talk about an impenetrable collection of random words. Either I am not bright enough for poetry, or I have no soul.

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Quick Advert - If you are in Leeds (and I know some people reading this blog are) and want to taste some of my wine, come along to my book signing session on 12 November at Philip Howard Books on Street Lane, Roundhay, Leeds between 2pm and 4 pm. You don't even need to buy a book (though are encouraged to!). Come for the wine and to say 'hello'.