Blackberry Wine #1
This blackberry wine will always hold a special place in the wine rack of my heart. It’s the first wine we ever tried to make, after purchasing a book called Booze for Free by Andy Hamilton. It’s a great book, I highly recommend it. The recipes use tea instead of tannin, and lemon juice instead of acid blend, so it really has minimal start up costs! I’m still not sure if the wines with tartaric (grape) acid are better.
We pick blackberries every year in Riggins, and the only limit on how many blackberries you can pick from the roadsides is your patience and your resistance to thorns. We had an abundance of blackberries in the freezer from 2016, so 4 lbs became wine. Since this was the first batch of wine, I didn’t have my recipe/note book yet, so there isn’t as much day by day information, just a collection of anecdotes. This wine taught me that patience is a virtue and yeast is an amazing force that will transform your wine on a daily basis. The blackberry wine was started on an unknown date, maybe March?
Blackberry Wine #1
4 lbs blackberries, frozen
1 cup strong black tea
3 lbs sugar
7 pints water
juice of one lemon
1 tsp pectolase
red wine yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Pour fruit into a sanitized plastic fermenting bucket, crush with a potato masher. Boil 2 pints of water, pour over fruit, add the sugar and stir until sugar has dissolved. Add the rest of the cold water and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cover, then leave to stand in a warm place for 3 days. Stir daily once fermentation starts. Strain into a 1 gallon glass carboy and attach an airlock. Rack after a month and allow to ferment out. Andy Hamilton says blackberry wine “can sometimes be quite drinkable as soon as it has fully fermented.”
April 20th: Racked wine, added a pinch k-meta.
May 11th: Tasted wine and tested acidity with Craig who was visiting from Canada. Craig declared the wine unsaveably acidic and he will drink nearly any wine with enough convincing. We argued about the shades of the pH strips, but it was undeniably in the 2.5 range. Yikes. Researching ways to neutralize acidity in wine.
September 24th: Added 1/4 cup French oak and 1/4 tsp cacao nibs soaked for 30 seconds in sanitizing solution to carboy. On oak for 17 days total. Softened acidity considerably and added great flavor. Still tart but should age well.
October 2nd: Good flavor, may backsweeten.
October 9th: Bottled blackberry #1, 4 750 ml bottles and 2 375 ml bottles. Not planning to drink this until our second anniversary next October! This wine ended up impressive enough that Toby and I picked enough blackberries for a 5 gallon batch…
