Seasons

People like celebrations, traditions and things to look forward to. Some festivals are obviously seasonal such, as the cluster of religions that have an important day around the winter solstice but most have some touch of the time of year it happens in, such as Halloween in which pumpkins are symbolic and coincidentally this is the time that they are ready to pick.

It may be global warming or maybe paranoia but it seems although nothing seasonal happens when it is meant to anymore. In the UK we seemed to bypass spring this year (2013). Heavy snowfall up until the end of March did not melt until Middle April in some parts of Leeds-Bradford area was followed with an exceptionally warm end of spring-summer. This resulted in a large amount of (late) blossom followed by a heavy fruit yield. Fruiting occurred later than normal because of the cold start. There was an abundance of blackberries but in the weeks that they became ripe, heavy and constant rainfall caused them to spoil easily. Despite this, the burdening of the trees inspired me to make a large quantity of wine this year and to investigate further the possibilities of foraging beyond wine. 

This strangeness in the seasons made the blackberries and elderberries ripe at the same time this year (or maybe this happens every year) and I made blackberry, elderberry and blackberry and blackberry wine. Blackberry wine was the first wine I ever made. It is good for a beginner because the fruit does not contain much pectin. Pectin is the stuff in fruit that makes jam set, but having that jelly-like stuff in wine just makes it cloudy and so requires the addition of pectolase – a pectin destroying enzyme as an addition.  Blackberry wine, as it does not contain much pectin does not need pectolase adding. Blackberry wine also does not need acid adding to the recipe as the blackberries already contain a sufficient amount in the form of malic acid.

SEPTEMBER

Autumn starts in September and from the end of August to the beginning of October, a host of Autumnal fruits ripen. The best of these which are easy to forage are blackberries and elderberries, with the blackberries ripening slightly earlier. My favourite things to make out of these ingredients is blackberry, elderberry and elderberry and blackberry wine.  Also elderberry cordial.

Apples also begin to ripen at this time. I haven’t really experimented with apples this year. With the exception of crab apples they are hard to find but I would like to look into this more next year, maybe buy them from the shops and make apple and blackberry crumble, apple and blackberry strudel and apple sauce with cinnamon. 

Elderberry wine;

The recipe I used for elderberry wine comes from C.J Berry’s winemaking book. It contains red grape juice and the water that runner beans come in. People say that elderberry wine is just as good as red wine, other people say that it isn’t a particularly good wine. I am hoping that the red grape juice and runner bean extract will help but I will keep you posted as to how it turns out. If you want the recipe it can be found in C.J. Berry’s book, first steps in winemaking, or there are other recipes on the internet. Below are the stages.

1)     Pick the elderberries. 

Before you do this you do your own research to make sure you do not poison yourself. The key things I learnt from this is that the variety with red berries are poisonous, as are berries that are not ripe. You can tell they are ripe because the berries will be dark black and ideally be so heavy that they cause the stems to droop. The stems will have turned from green to the colour of red in the photograph. Also it seems that the berries and flowers are the only part of the tree that is not poisonous so take the berries off the stems. Furthermore it seems that the berries are poisonous if not cooked, although people seem to eat a few and are fine and also the wine recipes only blanche them to kill bacteria and yeast on them, but do not involve boiling them so I guess the fermentation process takes care of this problem.

Elderberries: note the umbrella shape of the stems that the berries come off

  I take the elderberries off the stems in the field, but the internet states that it is easier to take the berries of the stems when they are frozen. Elderberries are fine to freeze and then use in your recipe later. With all my foraged wines I find it is best to use the ripest fruit possible as the fruit is sweeter, but with this there is the danger that they are going to go mouldy more easily. To counteract this many wine makers put in one campden tablet. I also find that it is advisable to either immediately freeze the fruit or what I do is make the wine as soon as I get in.

 

      2)  Get home and put the elderberries into a fermenting bucket. Pour boiling water on them and then mash (I do this with a potato masher) them to crush the skins, add the sugar, red grape concentrate, tartaric acid, bean liqueur, pectolase and one campden tablet. Then 4 hours later add the yeast. Stir everyday for 4 days. How much of the acid, pectolase and tartaric acid I do not know, but I added one teaspoon of each.

3) After day 4, strain through muslin into a demijohn, add the rest of the sugar in syrup form, top up with boiled then cooled water to a couple of inches towards the top of the demijohn.  Leave in a warm place so that the yeast can start to turn the sugar into wine before other yeasts and bacteria get the chance to establish themselves. Leave some space at the top of the demijohn at the beginning as the wine will be vigorously fermenting at this time. 

4) When the wine has stopped vigorously fermenting top up to neck of demijohn with boiled then cooled water so that there is as little air in the demijohn as possible as the space will encourage the growth of unwanted bacteria and yeasts. 

5) A month later when fermenting calms down, rack and transfer to a cooler place and re-rack every three months, or if sediment collects on the bottom, adding a campden tablet every other time.

6) Bottle a year later (end of September for me), making sure you add two campden tablets at this stage to stop any fermentation that is left then drink half that winter and save the other half for next winter. People say that this wine is better with age though and if it does not taste good to begin with and this is not due to infection, it could still be excellent with age.

Notes on wine making – if you are a complete beginner it is advisable to do some more research on the topic, but important things to note are that 1) you must sterilise everything that the wine comes into contact with, 2) do not use metal implements with the wine 3) airlocks need water in them for them to work.When you are bottling your wine make sure that fermentation has stopped. If it has not and you bottle it in screw capped bottles the bottles can explode. I bottle my wine with corks, they have not exploded so far but a number of the corks have exploded out on hot days when fermentation hadn't finished yet.