Blackberry Wine 2019 - Third Bottle (B2), 20th September 2020

It has been a thoroughly satisfactory Sunday. After an early morning trip to the Asian supermarket, where we bought vast quantities of pulses, spices and exotic flour, I spent the afternoon gardening and then foraging for sloes. We are having my 50th birthday garden bench delivered this coming week, so needed to clear a space. This is the sort of gardening that I can do - unsubtle manual labour. Then in the evening I made a lasagne, we drank this bottle (entirely acceptable) and watched Line of Duty. A grand Sunday, followed by a night of anxiety dreams about Law Society Finals (sat in 1993). This coming week is likely to be difficult!

My 50th Birthday Garden Bench (which arrived on 25 September)

Blackcurrant Wine 2015 - The Making Of ...

Buying a house is an expensive way to acquire soft fruit. On that first, tense weekend when we owned 20 Bentcliffe Drive one of the few pleasures was discovering blackcurrant bushes laden with fruit. There are raspberries and strawberries too, but not in such quantity. Anyone who visited (mostly parents) was put to work and our freezer began to fill with bags of currants.

Blackcurrants and chives (the chives were not added)

Of course, we also have blackcurrant bushes at Carr Manor Mount and these ripened whilst we were away at Rydal playing symphonies and having all sorts of fun. Claire and her parents harvested these during the course of last week whilst I was in Wales. When I came home the freezer was so full of blackcurrants that we had to use a buttress to keep the door closed. (I exaggerate. A little.)

More blackcurrants on their bush

On Monday 10th August I weighed the blackcurrants. Twelve pounds. That is enough for a quadruple batch, so this is what I have done. I mistook a small bag of sloes for blackcurrants and only realised my mistake when they were in the bucket. I rescued as many as I could, but there are still some in the mix.

Blackcurrants (and a few sloes) before mashing

On Tuesday, once the fruit had defrosted and I was back from helping Rory move flats again, I mashed it with a potato masher. This was hard work, took a while and I am surprised that my hands are blister-free. I dissolved 11 lbs sugar in 22 pints of water (in three batches), boiled this and poured it over the mashed fruit. The bucket is close to full and when putting in the yeast on Wednesday evening, 12 August, I noticed the packet warned of "High Foam". Fingers crossed. I also added 2 teaspoons of pectolase and about three of nutrient.

A full-ish bucket

Though I added the yeast on Wednesday, there was no hint of fermentation until Friday afternoon, and I was beginning to think that this would be my worst wine-making disaster yet. However, everything is fine and I put it all into its demijohns on Sunday 16 August. None of the demijohns are full and the recipe (if not the bucket) would have benefitted from another 2 pints of water.

Fermenting blackcurrants

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

Elderberry Wine 2012 - The Making Of ...

As with blackberry wine, my elderberry is a fortnight later than usual. This is partly down to general busy-ness but also because the fruit is later this year. I was concerned that I might have left it too late, but there is at least another fortnight of elderberries on the trees.

Claire and I went on our usual (shortened) Hetchel Wood walk on Saturday afternoon, 29th September, with a variety of plastic bags. As well as elderberries we were on the look out for sloes and brambles to use in gin and crumble respectively. It was a pleasant amble in mostly sunny weather - there is something entirely pleasing about autumn afternoon sunlight cascading through a forest.

We picked most of our elderberries in the regular field, thought continued foraging down the length of Kennel Lane. Once I got my eye in, elder trees were easy to spot, even when they did not bear any fruit.

Between us we gathered one full plastic bag and one two-thirds full. I was confident that this would be sufficient for a double batch. At home I started stripping the elderberries at 4:25 pm and did not finish until 7:10. It is a tedious task made bearable by Radio 4. I have found stripping the berries into sandwich bags aids their weighing.

The elderberries in their bucket, in the dark.

 I left the berries over night, and completed the process on Sunday evening. Between us we picked 6 lbs 1 oz, which was more efficient than expected. I crushed these in the bucket and poured over 5 lbs of sugar and thirteen pints of boiling water, which proved to be at least a pint too much. The yeast and one teaspoon each of pectolase and nutrient went in on Monday morning. I gave the bucket its twice daily stir and should probably have put the liquid into its demijohns on Thursday. However, I was out both that night and Friday (and in fact every evening this week - I'm exhausted), so did this on Saturday afternoon. It was a fast process and the wine is now bubbling in a half-hearted manner.

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If you want to see how the first bottle of this turned out, click here

Sloe Wine - Final Bottle (2), 11th-13th July 2012

And so sloe wine comes to an end. It isn't a great bottle and garely makes the "acceptable mid-week drinking" list. Certainly my last glass on returning from book Group was drunk through gritted teeth. (Only the very worst wines get tipped down the sink.) At Book Group we discussed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides which most of us loved, though Linda was hostile - thinking it at turns silly, racist and insulting. I have to say I disagree - it was a funny, epic sweep that at its heart discussed the nature of 'Self'.

Claire did not attend - she is down in Peterborough looking after her Uncle Bert (who was a drag artiste in the 1970s and can tell an interesting tale) because Wicked Uncle Alasdair has had a stroke and is in hospital. The prognosis is good and rapidly improving, but Bert is distressed and probably needs some looking after. So begins a stage of having elderly and infirm relatives for whom we have some responsibility.

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.

Sloe Wine - Bottle 6, 26th April 2012

This was the last of six bottles brought to Derbyshire. It has been a week infused with alcohol. Everyone agreed that the hue of this wine is its best feature. It is a light, clear red that lies beyond the colour pink. Tastewise, however, sloe is too thin. There is no body or depth. The alcohol content, though, is not in doubt. Shortly I will be lying very still in the dark muttering that I ate and drank too much. Which has been a feature of this holiday.

Today we went on a walk of less than ten miles which took us past Chatsworth - a huge Georgian pile of golden stone and gilded windows. It even looked impressive in the pouring rain, which has been the other feature of this holiday.

Sloe Wine - Bottle 3, 17th February 2012

One bottle of sloe wine between two on a Friday night equals a slight fuzziness to the evening. Though perhaps not my most delicious wine ever, it is a lovely dark pink colour, and there is nothing actively wrong with the taste.

Now (as of yesterday) that I have been accepted as a student of ACCA (which stands for something like 'Association of Chartered Certified Accountants') I have been reading about the frightening array of exams that I must sit. And there I was, thinking that my 2009 Latin exam was to be my last ever. I did an on-line maths test and did not quite get 90%, which was disappointing. Nevermind.

It has, however, been a proper Friday night - eating leftovers and a jam roly-poly with custard. And now I have a date with a Doctor Who DVD. What could be better?

Sloe Wine - Bottle 4, 11th-12th December 2011

Sunday was the sort of day made for staying inside. The light never rose beyond 'dim' and the weather was dank and wet. We did venture outside, but with great reluctance. This was to do our pre-Christmas supermarket shop, and we timed is sufficiently before Christmas for it not to be hell on earth. It was still pretty bad, though, and when we got home there was the ceremonial locking of the door.

Claire was not enthusiastic about me opening a bottle of sloe to go with our meal of Actively Delicious stir-fried pork and noodles. She admitted, however, that it was better than she had remembered. We saved a good proportion for Monday, mostly because of the large whisky macs consumed earlier in the evening.

Blackberry - Bottle B4, 3rd December 2011

We have just played in the WYSO December concert, which American themed: Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Anton Dvorak. Admittedly, that last composer is Czech, but he did write 'The New World Symphony' which is what is currently bouncing around in my head. It was an excellent concert and I suspect I shall sleep badly tonight because of it.

On our return Claire wanted a glass of something and rejected my first suggestion of sloe. My parents came back with us and blackberry proved a more popular choice. I spent the time they were here signing copies of my book. Mom has bought far more than she ought. If I make the best seller lists it will be entirely down to her efforts.

Sloe - Bottle 5, 2nd October 2011

This was the bottle that would decide whether I would ever repeat this wine. So, no pressure there, then. And, in fact, it is Not Bad. It is also not an All Time Classic, but I can't hold that against it.

Sloe wine has a lovely colour - rosé with a hint of purple - and this bottle was clear until the last glass. It benefits from being chilled, so it is not a red, and maybe it is drier than ideal. But on the whole, it is a qualified 'Hit'. I probably won't make sloe wine this year, though; I have too many experiments planned with Crab Apple, but this bottle has removed sloe from the potential blacklist of 'Never To Do Again'.

We drank it to a fabulous nut loaf, with roasted cauliflower, onion gravy, a beetroot and red cabbage mix that was as tasty as it was colourful, and beans and potatoes from the garden. Oh, and to the series finale of Doctor Who.

Other Wine Jobs over the last 10 days or so ...

5th June 2011 - I racked my Dandelion wine. It had cleared entirely and was a pleasing yellow. I racked it far earlier than I normally would have done, but I have begun to suspect that the musty taste in my homebrew is caused by leaving it too long on its sediment. The taste was more promising than any but my first Dandelion. I added three-quarters of a pint of water and 4 oz sugar.

10th June 2011 - I bottled my Hedgerow wine, on the Feast of St Ithamar after 11 p.m. . The evening was spent in Harrogate playing quintets in anticipation of Saturday's concert in Killinghall, hence the late hour. The wine's taste is rather good. Lots of currant, quite dry and with a bit of body to it. I think it needs time to age.

11th June 2011 - I bottled my Sloe wine. It is still clear, and an attractive light red. The two sips I got (rather than my usual full glass because of the drive to Killinghall that followed) were dry and thin. So, disappointing without being nasty.