So I (as in not me) have been fermenting a baby for 9 months and we have let it mature for 6 months and this has left little time for making wine or drinking it. Not that I mind. I have been making a fair few gin-fusions with foraged fruit while we push Truffle Piglet around various green spots. When she finally drops off to sleep we can then have a little celebratory gin to wind down. I did get some deranged fan mail recently that made me dust off the demijohns and throw together a batch of wine though. Krazy Kris I salute you. The internet does not.
One of the most successful infusions I made (last year) was a low rent copy of Chambord, a fruity little liqueur made with raspberry, blackberry and blackcurrant with a few herbal additions. It was a lot closer to Chambord than the over sweet and simple recipes for other raspberry liqueurs I had seen and it made an excellent addition to gin or champagne. The combination of fruit seem to go pretty well together with a full on raspberry base smoothed out by the blackberry and hint of blackcurrant bringing a final whack of tangy complexity. Using this as a starting point I turned it into a wine.
Firstly I altered the ratios of the berries to turn it towards more of a full on red wine as I imagine raspberry alone will make perfectly decent rosé or an only palatable thin red. They went from 60% raspberry, 30% blackberry and 10% blackcurrant to 54% raspberry, 31% blackberry and 15% blackcurrant. Ideally if I had the fruit I would have wanted it to be 50/35/15.
There was also an addition of 200g raisins to bring some vinocity and tannin to the party giving a fuller body. Most pure blackberry wines do not add extra tannin but I find them to be thin so I add extra tannin as standard. I imagine the fresher base of raspberries will have even less tannin so I definitely added tannin to this with a strong black tea.
This mixed berry wine was the first time I could test out a method I have been planning for a while. Not only to adjust acidity through an addition but first reduce it with calcium carbonate. The dominant acid in wine… grape win is tartaric acid with a smaller amount of malic acid. These acids give a “smoother” taste than other fruit with other dominant acids. Grapes are almost unique in having tartaric acid as the dominant tasting acid and this informs our expectations of tasting any wine made from grapes or other fruit. Raspberries have citric acid as the dominant acid that can taste artificial in a wine as if used as if “lab made.” Blackberries have a huge amount of malic acid that if present in too high a concentration can give a “sour milk” like taste. Adding calcium carbonate reduced both these acids and then tartaric acid was added afterwards to bring it up to the 6g/l (6%) in line with other wines I make. 15 grams of tartaric was eventually added to the British gallon of wine I was making. In future if this is a success I could even reduce the acidity of the raspberries to target the citric acid and then add the blackberries afterwards as they are a smaller ratio of fruit so a smaller ratio of malic acid.
If you are just starting out making wine do not worry. The steps in adjusting acidity are fairly advanced and require extra steps and kit to test for acidity. You can make a perfectly great wine with out this hoo-ha. The ratios of fruit I used would have made a palatable wine unadjusted and with out the need for any additions with lemon juice or tartaric acid from a shop.
After a healthy dose of pectic enzyme I pitched some R56 yeast that I think is great as a red wine yeast and left it fermenting away in the primary bucket. Blackberries and I imagine raspberries have an amazing property in wine making. By amazing I mean totally sh*t. The skins can form an amazing cap that traps all the carbon dioxide given off by fermentation. This rising Blob-like mass then explodes out of the fermenter and stains everything. It can even push the top off a fermentation bucket and still stain everything. Because of this the fruit was added to a nylon back to stop a cap forming. This meant I only turned the bag once a day. If you are risking an unbagged fermentation of these berries punch the cap down three or four times a day to get a great flavour extraction. This may not help with the plug forming and with a healthy fermentation when the yeast is most happy on day four or five it could still foam over. I left the fruit for as long as I could bear it allowing it to soak for ten days – you can easily remove after six or seven but I wanted to extract as much colour, aroma and taste as possible.
I intend to leave this for a year to 18 months to age and I imagine it will be a sweet or possibly semi sweet wine through the additions of sugar after stabilising it.
MIXED BERRY (BL-ASP-CURRANT) WINE 4.5 litres
Rounded mixed berry fruit made with any red wine yeast though I used R56. Could be dry but will probably be best as semisweet or sweet to capitalise on the fruit flavours.
1400g raspberries
800g blackberries
400g blackcurrants
200g raisins
3L water
500g-ish to 1.09SG
Pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient
Tartaric acid and calcium carbonate if adjusting acidity
Red wine yeast
Boil the water and let it cool over night to sanitise and drive off any chlorine/chloromine that could affect taste. Pour into your fermenter and then add the fruit and raisins and a squeeze it to release the juice. It is advised to used a sanitised nylon bag if possible.
Add the pectic enzyme and leave to work for 24 hour to reduce pectin haze. At the same time add a campden tablet to sanitise the fruit.
If confident test acidity and reduce it using calcium carbonate then add tartaric acid to bring acidity back to 6g/L. If you are new to wine making just skip this as acidity should be pretty good for a first wine.
Add a strong cup of tea (traditiona breakfast. no milk or sugar!) then add sugar using a hydrometer to get it to 1.09SG. This was about 500 grams for me.
Add your yeast according to the manufacturers guidance then leave covered in a warm dark area.
Stir once, twice or if you can four times a day to extract as much flavour as possible.
Rack into secondary fermentation in a sealed demijohn when fermentation radically slows between six to 12 days. It pays to squeeze the bag first if you used it. Rack again when fermentation ends at about five weeks and then again two months after this.
Try to leave for a year to de-gas naturally.
Age for one year to eighteen months after pitching the yeast. Stabilise and back sweeten if you wish.
Imbibe.
- wine making
