In the summer I made rather a lot of Elderflower wine, a beautifully simple country wine recipe that if treated with a little care makes a very delicately aromatic and flovoursome abate rather alcoholic wine!
So with some ‘help’ from the little girl we set to bottling two demijohns of said concotion.
I tend to sterilise my bottles in the oven, which is on quite often in my household, yesterday I was roasting a bacon hock, so alongside that was a stack of bottles that had around 60+ minutes in a medium heat oven! A peculiar combination for sure.
Allow the bottles to cool before syphoning the wine into them, as the difference in temperature can crack them.
Fill all the bottles evenly and if the bottles are slightly short of the neck you can add some cooled boiled water if you wish, this will only slightly alter the specific gravity (alcoholic content) but it gives you a better looking bottle, especially if you give them as gifts like we do – it prevents you from appearing stingy!
Once corked ( remember o soak your corks in boiled water or sterilising solution as this makes them SO much easier to put in! And label with all the appropriate information. I even have batch numbers on mine, as I like to see whether to slight alterations in the ingredients at the must and fermentation stages have any effect on the taste.
Leave them to rest stood upright at room temperature for 24-48 hours before laying them on their sides in a cooler environment, as this allows any settlement not got rid of in the racking process to drop to the bottom of the bottle.
We also racked some Rhubarb and Bullace (a type of wild plum) and Marbella (another type of cherry plum, that is yellow when ripened you see it quite commonly in roadside hedgerows in our particular part of the country)
Racking is simply transfering the wine from one vessel to another and leaving the yeast and sediment behind, which can taint the flavour. You can buy filters and wine fining granules all of which we have inherited from various sources, but the general consensus is that filtering and fining is no substitute for racking. And the key to making a smooth wine is allowing it time to settle and separate from the rough stuff naturally rather than forcing the issue.
Bung the demijohns, label and then leave for a month of two to clear until the next racking or bottling depending on flavour and appearance. And of course whether you can extricate the two year old from the alcohol! Does she know theres a new baby coming already?!
Only three more gallons to bottle, five more to rack, and then we can turn our attentions to tidying up the ‘cellar’ (the corner of the outhouse!) and making ready for the first wine of the season Birch Sap Wine which is another with a beautifully delicate taste. Oh and there’s the cider to be transfered into jars now its settled down! By the time this baby is born I think that we had better have a party to make a dent in all this homebrewing we’ve been doing and not consuming! A boozy baby party not bad! – I can hear social services being called as I write this! heheheh
