Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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Welcome to Fascinating Facts and Tantalizing Trivia

A Hartson Dowd Column

August 13, 2006

My profound and humble thanks go out to Noah, who reportedly discovered winemaking after his ordeal with the flood, and to all who preceded me in experimenting, refining, and passing on the knowledge I attempt to reflect herein.

The summer months are the perfect time when you can begin making flower wines.  No one knows who the first wine-makers were.  We do know that the Egyptians knew how to make wine early in their civilization.  Wine had a more practical reason in its beginning than the mere pleasure of drinking.  Ancient peoples had little pure water to drink, and they learned that alcohol formed by fermentation protected fruit juice from spoiling.  The people who drank this fermented juice did not get sick as those who drank the impure water.  And this reason for wine drinking continues down to our day.  Many peoples, especially in the Latin countries, use wine instead of water for drinking.

In most colonial households the making of wines and brandies was carried on as a matter of course and no housewife worthy of the name would be found without her blackberry cordial or peach brandy, especially in times of illness.

In making wine you must observe scrupulous cleanliness.  Although fruits, blossoms, and commercial yeasts cause fermentation, sterile procedures must be followed in order to restrict the growth of yeasts that secrete sour enzymes.  Wine goes through several fermentation periods – with the fruit, after the fruit has been strained from the juice, and in containers or bottles lightly corked.

Rule of thumb for the use of sugar in winemaking is to use two-and-a-half pounds of white sugar per gallon of liquid.  You may need to utilize more  sugar for tart fruits; pale flower petals need less.  Sugar, in part, determines the alcoholic content of the wine {Two-and-a-half pounds of sugar per gallon will usually produce 14% of alcohol by volume}. Your wine will be too sweet if you use too much sugar.

A thermometer is an important tool in winemaking—you should keep fermenting temperatures in the 60 or 80 degree F range.  Later, when you store your wine, it is best kept at 50 degrees F.

Metal containers react to the acid in wine, so use earthenware, enamel, glass, stone or wooden vessels.  Containers used in wine storage should be well sealed, because air spoils most wines and corks shrink.

You can clear wines by letting them settle and siphoning off the top wine; or you may crumble an eggshell into the liquid, and then pour through a cloth or coffee filter.

Wine may be made from many flowers, berries and edible fruits.  Do not use unknown fruits or flower petals, however, as some may be violently poisonous.  And be sure that those you use have not been sprayed with insecticides.

Elderberry Wine

8 quarts of berries      +    4 quarts of boiling water, poured over berries

Let stand for 12 hours, stirring now and then.  Strain well, pressing out all the juice.

Add

3 pounds of sugar to 4 quarts of juice

1 ounce powdered cinnamon

? ounce powdered cloves

Boil five minutes, and set away to ferment in a stone jar, with a cloth thrown lightly over it.  When fermentation is complete, rack it off (draw it off) carefully, so as not to disturb the lees (sediment or dregs).  Bottle and cork down well.

Honeysuckle Wine

When the summer evening is heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, who could resist its charm?  Moreover, in many areas, especially in the south, honeysuckle grows wild so often there is an abundance of blossoms for the taking – another freebie.

Start your honeysuckle wine making by picking approximately one gallon of the flowers, and then cover the blossoms with one gallon of boiling water.  Simmer for twenty minutes, cool, strain, and discard the blossoms.  Then add enough boiling water to the remaining liquid to make one gallon.

Stir in two-and-a-half pounds of sugar, two cups of white raisins, two lemons thinlt sliced and one package of yeast that has been dissolved in one cup of water.  Bruise two ginger roots (I find these in my local supermarket), each about an inch long and toss them in.

Cover the mixture and let it ferment for about two weeks, stirring daily.  Strain the wine at the end of this time, pour into bottles, and cork lightly.  Watch carefully and when the bubbling ceases (in about two months) it is time to seal each bottle with paraffin.

Bilberries

Bilberries are cousins of cranberries, blueberries, deerberries, farkleberries, and a few other erect shrubs of the Vaccinium genus. Of these, only the cranberry produce red fruit, the deerberry's fruit are greenish-purple, but all others are bluish-black. Bilberries are one of the most popular field berries in Europe for making wine, and the wine is quite good. In the United States and Canada, bilberries are far less plentiful than in Europe but still available. They are a decidedly northern shrub ranging from the Alaskan and Canadian Artic down through the American Pacific northwest to northern California, the Rockies down into Colorado, the great lake states, and eastward to Newfoundland and down into New England. Most noteworthy among them are the tundra bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), the ovalleaf bilberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium), the square-twig bilberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), the Newfoundland bilberry (Vaccinium nubigenum), and the dwarf bilberry (Vaccinium cespitosum). Minor varieties also exist.

Although thornless, bilberry shrubs are many-twigged and do not make their fruit easy for humans to gather. Still, the wine they yield is well worth the challenge of gathering enough fruit to make it. However, if you can order dried fruit, do so. The wine is well worth making.

The recipes below are, in my opinion, the more interesting ones for bilberry wine. You will notice that all but the first, which is more traditional, use a body-enhancing or a bouquet-enhancing ingredient -- such as raisins, banana chips, grape concentrate, or elderflowers.

BILLBERRY WINE (1)

• 4 lbs fresh bilberries
• 2-3/4 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1/4 tsp tannin
• 3-1/2 qts water
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Burgundy wine yeast

Put water on to boil. Meanwhile, carefully inspect and wash the berries, discarding any that are neither sound nor fully ripe. Put berries in nylon straining bag and tie the top. In primary, crush the berries thoroughly. Pour half the sugar and all the tannin, yeast nutrient and acid blend in primary. Pour boiling water onto berries and stir well to dissolve sugar. Cover and set aside to cool. When lukewarm, add crushed Campden tablet and recover. After 12 hours, add pectic enzyme and recover. After additional 12 hours, add yeast. Ferment 5 days, stirring and gently squeezing bag to extract flavor, then add half the remaining sugar and stir well to dissolve. Ferment 2 additional days and drain (but do not squeeze) bag. Add remaining sugar, stir well to dissolve, and recover. After 24 hours, siphon juice off sediment into secondary, top up and fit airlock. Allow 3 weeks, rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 60 days rack again. If wine is clear, bottle it. If not, wait until it clarifies and rack into bottles. Age one year.

BILLBERRY WINE (2)

• 5-8 oz dried bilberries
• 1 lb chopped or minced raisins
• 1/8 oz dried elderflowers
• 2 lbs finely granulated sugar
• 2/3 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• water to 1 gallon
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Bordeaux wine yeast

Boil water and pour into primary over all ingredients except yeast, and pectic enzyme. Stir well to dissolve sugar, cover with cloth, and set aside to cool. When lukewarm, add pectic enzyme and recover. After additional 12 hours, add yeast and recover. Stir twice daily for 7 days, then strain through nylon staining bag and press gently. After additional 12 hours, siphon off sediments into secondary and fit airlock. Rack, top up and refit airlock after 30 days and again after 60 days. Age wine under airlock additional 4-6 months. Stabilize, wait 10 days, rack, sweeten to taste, and bottle. Allow 9-12 months to mature.

Field Daisy Wine

Daisies are another gift of summer and they too, make a delightful flower wine, topaz to amber in color with a delightful sparkle.  Gather four quarts of daisy blossoms (Chrysanthemum leucanthemun) and cover with a gallon of boiling water.  Let stand for twenty-four hours.  Press out the daisies and boil the liquid gently with two thinly sliced lemons, two oranges, and three pounds of brown sugar, for about twenty minutes.

Cool and add one-half box of raisins, a two-inch piece of bruised ginger root, tied in a tiny cheesecloth sack, and one package of softened yeast. (Yeast softens best in a small quantity of warm water).

Allow fermentation for about two weeks in a covered stone crock.  When fermentation ceases, strain and bottle in sterilized jars and cap lightly.  In about two months you can bottle permanently, seal and store.

The essential steps in winemaking can be summarized as follows:

1. Extract the flavor and aroma from the base ingredients by chopping, crushing, pressing, boiling or soaking them.
2. Add sugar, acid, nutrients, and yeast to the fermentation media or liquor to achieve the proper ratio and ferment, covered, for 3 to 10 days in a primary fermentation vessel (crock, jar or polyethylene pail) at 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Strain off the liquid from the pulp, put it (the liquid) into a secondary fermentation vessel (a carboy or jug), fit a fermentation trap (airlock) on the mouth of the bottle, and allow fermentation to proceed at 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit until all bubbling ceases (after several weeks).
4. Siphon the wine off the sediments (lees) into another clean secondary fermentation vessel. Reattach the fermentation trap. Repeat after another one or two months and again before bottling.
5. When wine is clear and all fermentation has stopped, siphon into wine bottles and cork the bottles securely. Leave corked bottles upright for 3-5 days and then store them on their side at 55 degrees Fahrenheit for six months (white wine) to a year (red wine) before sampling. If not up to expectations, allow to age another year or more.

Hartson Sager Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net