The ‘test batch’ of blackberry wine turned out surprisingly great, so over the summer of 2017 we picked enough blackberries for a 5 gallon batch. We saved some time and some skin damage by taking hand pruners and nipping off the loaded ends of the canes (to battle later). Many…
In November of 2017 we drove to Santa Barbara to celebrate at Ryan and Laurie’s wedding! It was a little early for citrus, but on the way back through California we pick up a flat of oranges. Rumor has it oranges can make a great wine! Toby willingly gave up…
I know a lot of you have been keeping up with the peapod wine on Instagram! Some of you have even been over for a taste, and it may have been a good or bad day for this VERY volatile wine. Read on for the tasting notes from carboy to…
Fresh from the bog! My parents live on the coast of Oregon, surrounded by berries of all kinds. One is the cranberry, which is farmed in floodable bogs near their house. It’s really cool to see how the berries are harvested, it’s a pretty efficient system,…
The first blueberry wine turned out great, and we need room in the freezer, so we’re doing a second batch of blueberry wine! I wish I had enough for a 5 gallon batch! Check out the first one here. Like the second child, there are nearly no photos of the…
One of my friends is getting married on the Salmon River in May, and I told her if she could pick enough blackberries I would make her blackberry champagne (which I have never done before). She missed the berry season, but a mutual friend gave me 6 quarts of steam…
As you might have gathered by the peapod, the tomato, and the orange, I will make wine out of anything once. It’s all part of my crusade to make a crisp, tart, non-poisonous summer sipping wine in bulk for free. The fruit transforms so much from start to finish that…
Almost before the first raspberry wine was out of the fermentor I started a second batch. The smell was just TOO amazing. Check out the recipe for the first raspberry wine here. The second wine was started on August 12, 2017. Raspberry Wine #2 5 lbs raspberries from the garden…
There are 30 glorious feet of raspberries in the Timber Garden, and they are my favorite berry plants. I could eat raspberries off the vine all day, and sometimes I really do just go graze the plants for breakfast. During the peak of summer they produce several lbs of raspberries…
I love the taste of rhubarb. Rhubarb crisp has been my favorite dessert since I was a kid. And since we have lived in McCall with several productive plants, I’ve tried rhubarb chutney and rhubarb bbq sauce and they are pretty great too. It’s that crazy tart flavor. My friend…