Making Country Wines from Flowers and Berries

Why the Hedgerow Makes Fine Wine

Country wine is a simple business at heart: water, sugar, yeast and something with flavour. What separates a dreary home brew from a bottle worth hiding away in the back of the cupboard is not expensive equipment, but three things — good fruit, scrupulous cleanliness and patience. The hedgerow provides the first two in abundance. Elderflowers in late spring, blackberries in late summer, rosehips after the first frosts: each has been turned into wine in British kitchens for centuries, and the method has barely changed because it works.

You need very little to begin. A food-grade bucket, a demijohn or two, an airlock, a siphon tube and a hydrometer will see you through. Everything that touches the wine must be sterilised, and I mean everything — a stray vinegar bacterium will undo months of waiting.

Elderflower Wine: The First Wine of the Year

Elderflower is the finest introduction to country wine making, partly because the ingredient is free and everywhere, and partly because the result is genuinely lovely — dry, grapey, faintly musky, and ready sooner than most. Pick the flat creamy heads on a warm, dry morning once the dew has lifted, and choose clusters in full flower rather than those already dropping their petals.

For a gallon (4.5 litres) you will want roughly 1.5 litres of packed flower heads, stripped from the stalks. This takes time, but do it properly: the stalks and green stems carry a bitterness that will haunt the finished wine.

• 4.5 litres water, 1.2–1.3kg sugar, juice of 2 lemons
• 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient, 1 teaspoon pectolase
• A general-purpose white wine yeast
• Flowers steeped in the boiled, cooled sugar water for 24–48 hours

Strain the flowers out, pour into a demijohn, add the yeast and ferment under airlock. It should be drinkable by Christmas, though it improves markedly if you can leave it until the following spring.

Blackberry Wine: The Autumn Standby

By September the hedges are heavy, and blackberry wine is the most forgiving of all the country wines — rich, deep in colour and tolerant of a slightly rough-and-ready approach. Use fully ripe fruit, and don't worry if a few unripe berries slip in; they add useful acidity and tannin.

Two kilograms of fruit to a gallon is a good ratio, with about 1.2kg of sugar. Freeze the berries first, ideally for a week. Freezing ruptures the cell walls and gives up far more colour and juice than fresh fruit, and it means you can pick as the berries ripen and store them until you have enough.

• Mash the thawed fruit and steep in the must for 4–5 days before straining
• Add pectolase without fail — blackberries are high in pectin and will otherwise throw a stubborn haze
• A strong cup of cold black tea adds the tannin that gives the wine backbone
• Expect a slower, more vigorous fermentation; leave plenty of headroom

Rosehips and the Rest of the Hedgerow

Rosehips make a pale, delicate wine with a faintly floral, almost sherry-like character. Roughly 1kg of hips to a gallon, chopped or split, with 1.3kg of sugar and a little extra citric acid. The one absolute rule is to avoid the irritant hairs inside the hips — either use them whole and strain carefully, or split them and shake out the seeds and hairs outside, well away from your face.

Beyond these three, dandelion, gorse flower, elderberry, crab apple and sloe all make respectable wine, though sloes are arguably better spent on gin. Elderberry wine is the darkest and most robust of the lot, and benefits from a year in the bottle before you judge it.

Yeast, Sugar and the Numbers That Matter

Sugar is not just sweetness; it is the raw material for alcohol. Roughly 450g of sugar per gallon gives about 5% alcohol by volume, so a typical country wine must starts at a hydrometer reading of 1.080–1.100 and ferments down to around 0.995.

• Use a proper wine yeast, not bread yeast, which throws odd flavours and gives up early
• Yeast nutrient is not optional for flower wines, which are short on the nitrogen yeast needs
• A crushed sulphite tablet at the start knocks back wild yeasts and bacteria
• Stabilise with potassium sorbate before bottling if you plan to sweeten

Patience, Racking and the Long Wait

Ferment the first few days in a bucket covered with a clean cloth, then move to a demijohn under airlock. Once the bubbling slows, rack the wine off the sediment into a clean vessel, topping up to the neck with a little cooled boiled water or spare wine. Rack again every six to eight weeks until no new sediment forms.

Bottle only when the wine is completely clear and has stopped dropping anything. Elderflower is often ready in six months; blackberry, rosehip and elderberry reward a full year, and two is better. Cool, dark and still is what they want. Label the bottles with the date — you will not remember, and you will want to know.