A Good Few Days

As well as the great company mentioned in the last post, we at Critter Wines also got out to the coast on a hot, sunny, breezy day at high tide. It was local surfing, around an hours drive, and the surf was good. We both caught some nice rides and came home with grazed knuckles (from riding rides right up onto the beach) and big cheesy grins courtesy of mother nature.

So here I am, sipping Orange & Hawthorn Blossom wine and wondering if I should blog again with no images! And the answer that came back to me was yes. So thanks for reading on, but as a reassurance please know that I do aim to put up piccies often, so there will be more soon. Just now tho the brewing has gone quiet while chores and body-boarding fill up the spare time.

But like I said, I'm drinking and I want to pass on a tip that made this wine work.

The Orange wine I make, more accurately described as citrus wine, is very sweet and strong. It also has plenty of body and as you would expect plenty of acidity. So the whole thing balances out nicely. The recipe was inspired by CJJ Berry, and if you follow his recipe and method you'll also get a great dessert wine. I'll post my recipe and method soon.

This Orange wine is so big and sweet and strong that its a great candidate for blending with other wines that for some reason are not good for drinking as they are, but (and this is important) don't have any flavour faults. Some time ago I made a hawthorn blossom wine. It was my first try and the flowers I used didn't have much of a scent. The resulting wine is simply hooch. Its lack of flavour and body means it's just loopy juice that'll get you drunk but won't do anything much for your taste buds except burn them gently. So I blended it 50/50 with the Orange wine. I still have a cracking, strong, sweet, big dessert wine. But I don't have any waste Hawthorn blossom wine!

For those who like a sweet wine, but are not nuts about intense sweetness, this wine works so well! For those who want a full on dessert wine then the orange works better, but this would be satisfactory. I must say here that I have only blended wines a couple of times. Every wine that I have made before the Hawthorn Blossom had a time and place. So there was need to blend it, rather simply bring it out at the right time. I'd advise that as a way to go, unless you brew such vast quantities that you have ample to experiment with. In which case please feel free to advise me on blending. I'd also advise you not to blend a bad wine with a good one cos the chances are you'll end up with with a whole heap of bad wine. But a very neutral tasting wine is good for blending, whether dry, sweet, hot or thin. Just be sure to choose a partner that can take it, like big in all the areas that your disappointing wine is lacking.