The wine making continues...

The wine making continues, am I repeating myself? If so it'll be the wine... Hic! 

Today, with a little time to fill, I re-racked my Elderflower, Honeysuckle, and Carrot and moved them on the clearing stage by adding finings. As usual the need to sterilise everything was a pain, but there is only one way to do this and of course it has its perks. The racking process involves siphoning the wine into a clean and sterilised demijohn and after that is done there is at least a glassful of wine left in the bottom. If you are careful, very careful, you can pour this into a glass and, although it is a bit cloudy, you can get the feel for how the wine is coming along.

So here it is, my verdict, although generally my wines would be well appreciated by the inmates of any prison in the country.

Elderflower: Dryish with a good elderflower taste, just a hint of sweetness but rich like honey; which is hardly surprising as I used honey in it. It has a warm, but light colour and seems to be pretty strong. It needs to mellow, but is passable or should that be pissable. It smells rather than has a bouquet but a few months more could sort that out.

Honeysuckle: A rich, deep colour, and quite flowery, but not in that German way. It is definitely on the dry side but needs to stand as there might be more sweetness to come. I didn’t really want to stop drinking this one, but again a few months will do it good. It smells of summer.

Carrot: If ever there was a dry wine this is it. It’s pale and light and I think that it may be deceptively potent. There is little taste of carrot, but there is a rich taste of the earth. It almost blew my head off and this one definitely needs some time to mature. It smells like Worzel Gummidge after a shower of rain.

So, all coming along well, in all three there is the distinct promise of flavour and there’s no doubt that the fermenting process has made plenty of alcohol. I was hoping for images of maiden aunts and vicars as I drunk it, but was instead temped to sing about the four and twenty virgins who came down from Inverness and that girl from Glamorgan. Yes, potent stuff and only after a single glass of the dregs of each.

I’ll leave them to mature (if I can) and let you know how it’s going when I bottle them up.

Meanwhile… I have a cherry wine to make.