Winemaking calendar?

pumpkinlife

Hello lovely OSers, I hope you can help. I have been thinking about winemaking for a while and have all the equipment ready and waiting. I hope to start some parsnip wine in the next few weeks, as apparently this is the best time for them.

Can anyone give me any advice about the best times to start different wines? I know that obviously it will follow the seasons and I have read through Thriftlady's Preservers Year thread; but I wondered if peak seasons differed for winemaking? It would be nice to have a schedule to follow for the first year until I find my feet.

Many thanks in advance, Aurora

snapping_crocodile

I have nothing to add but I will be interested to see the replies. We made elderflower champagne last summer and it was lovely!

Norman_Bean

I just started blackcurrant last week but obviously they were from the freezer.

Think nettle will be my next wine as they need to be young.

Will watch with interest x

Norman x

Gigervamp

Everybody who makes wine recommends CJJ Berry's First Steps in Winemaking for beginners and that book has wines listed by the month.

I'm also going to start a parsnip wine off. Got parsnips cheap in Lidl the other day.

A couple of wines that you can make any time of year and are also quick to make, are tea wine and fruit juice wine. Here's jennyjelly's fruit juice wine.

Here's another link to a fruit juice wine.

And here's a link to tea wine. I followed the second recipe in this link and I'm drinking it now. I used vanilla chai tea bags and it's rather nice! A bit sweeter that I prefer and it's a bit *thick*, kind of like a sweet sherry.

It's good to have a quick wine to quaff whilst you're waiting for the fruit/veg wines to mature as they can take a year or more before they're ready for drinking.

zarazara

thanks for the link

ThriftyFelicity

Dandelion wine will be one of the first in spring, as will gorse. (I've made dandelion, but not gorse.)

Strawberry wine can be made starting in May/June, elderflower in June, raspberry starting in June (and all the way through to October if you have autumn raspberries), wild cherry and elderberry in July, blackcurrant and plums in July/August, blackberry in August/September, sloes and wild plums in September/October.

I would say the only wines you have to be on the ball with are the flower wines (dandelion, gorse, elderflower), because any of the fruits can be frozen to make at a later date... provided of course you have the freezer space!

We start drinking our wines within a few months of making them. Although they do get smoother with age, most are perfectly pleasant even when very young. Raspberry and strawberry are exceptional, as is elderflower. We did find the blackcurrant quite sharp when young.

Winemaking is a really fun hobby, and the wine is sooo good. We far prefer our homemade "country wine" to storebought wine, which just tastes boring to us now.

Sunnyday

I started making wine a little over a year ago and have always used jennyjellys fruit juice wine to make a lovely white wine, we prefer it to anything else.

I`ve recently bottled my first ever elderberry wine and it was lovely, i`m tring to wait as long as possible before drinking it though

I shall follow this thread with interest as this year i shall be looking out for new ideas/recipes.

How does everyone else filter their wine? I`m on a minimum outlay maximum wine type of thing as we`re usually stony broke so i filter mine through coffee filter papers works well though. I may be able to get a proper filter this year but i`ve no idea what to use.

SD

sareybox_2

I've just started making wine and followed Jennyjelly's recipe, I did one gallon of cranberry and red grape, one of apple and white grape and one of pomegranate and red grape. I didn't really know what jennyjelly meant when she said clear, filter etc as you would normally or how long to leave it so I left it for 2 weeks and it was still bubbling away so I checked the SG and it works out it's 15% ABV! Oops. I've racked them off into new demi-johns now and put them in the shed, I have sampled a bit but they need a bit of a mixer if you don't want to fall down drunk after 2 glasses! The pomegranate is particularly nice with a little fizzy water. I've racked off some ginger wine too, I just filtered it through a square of muslin, is this right, wrong, ridiculous?! Any advised greatly appreciated! i'm looking forward to trying some hedgerow wines in the summer, not sure I have enough room for all this wine though!

ThriftyFelicity

Sunnyday wrote: »

How does everyone else filter their wine? I`m on a minimum outlay maximum wine type of thing as we`re usually stony broke so i filter mine through coffee filter papers works well though. I may be able to get a proper filter this year but i`ve no idea what to use.

SD

We don't filter our wine as it clears fine on its own. We freeze the fruit to sterilise it and then use cold water to make the wine (apparently using boiling water does something... activates the pectin maybe?... which makes the wine more difficult to clear, though I've never tested this myself).

We make our wine very simply, just fruit, water, yeast, sugar and a litre of red or white grape juice (per gallon). I don't bother with pectolase, citric acid, yeast nutrient, Campden tablets, etc. The only chemical used is a chlorine-based steriliser to clean the demijohn (and wine bottles before bottling), which gets rinsed out thoroughly.

Norman_Bean

ThriftyFelicity wrote: »

We don't filter our wine as it clears fine on its own. We freeze the fruit to sterilise it and then use cold water to make the wine (apparently using boiling water does something... activates the pectin maybe?... which makes the wine more difficult to clear, though I've never tested this myself).

We make our wine very simply, just fruit, water, yeast, sugar and a litre of red or white grape juice (per gallon). I don't bother with pectolase, citric acid, yeast nutrient, Campden tablets, etc. The only chemical used is a chlorine-based steriliser to clean the demijohn (and wine bottles before bottling), which gets rinsed out thoroughly.

Hmm I don't filter either (although I'm just a beginner so will be easily swayed!)
I've been reading Mollie Harris' A Drop O'Wine and it seems she does it very simply and 'the old fashioned way' like you ThriftyFelicity - thanks for the reasurance x

Norman x

ThriftyFelicity

Actually, we're beginners as well... made our first gallon in autumn 2008. All our wine has turned out great.

I haven't heard of that book, will check it out, thanks