What Flowers & When

So you want to make Elderflower wine, but how do you know what flowers to pick and when to pick them?

Engage your senses, you'll need your nose especially but also your eyes.

• Wait for the sun to be shining, at least a few hours, preferably a day, since rain fell.
• Smell the flowers, they'll have a citrus, lemon, lychee (litchi), pineapple scent if they are good. Those to avoid are the ones that smell of .... well bluntly .... cat's pee. So if they smell wonderful pick them, if they smell horrid then don't.
• Flowers will be an almost brilliant white to very pale yellow and most on each spray will be open.
• Look out for pollen when you shake the flower sprays. This will look like a very fine dust and you wont have to move the sprays much to see it fall. If it's been a windy day then it may all have been blown off, but otherwise it'll show! Look at your hands after handling a few sprays, they'll be stained orange/yellow in patches.
• Make a note of where you found them, because when the berries out the branches will hang lower, and those trees with horrid flower scents may well be the ideal ones to pick the berries from ... elderberry wine! The tree just keeps on giving .... if you beat the birds to the berries.

This is an uber wine that just screams spring/summer at you. Great to drink on a bright warm day. If you are considering homebrew then this is a must, a real huge must.

• The flowers are free ... just get foraging
• Unlike any wine you'll ever buy and is very traditional
• Totally Delicious