Bottling Again

Tonight I'm emptying demi-johns cos I need 6 empties. Tonight's effort will get the total up to 5. So it was decision time and this is what I went for

1 gallon of Elderberry & Blackberry wine. Started August 2009. My hunch was that this would be best left for around another year due to the elderberry content, but best does not always mean that it isn't just fine a little early, and curiosity got the better of me, especially as I have 3 gallons of it! So the verdict is really quite yummy! It's a bit like the commercial Rioja (2007) that we opened last night. Tho it is a bit lighter coming in at 12.4% ABV compared to 13.5% for the Rioja. It's a little velvety, plenty of body, fruity, a little astringent, medium/dry. If I called it "Rioja light" then I think that would be fair enough. Happy? YEAH! It's a proper red and for a country wine that means you don't have the abundance of options that homebrewers have for whites and rosés. I don't make many reds and I'll make this again!

1 gallon of the 2010 Quickie Elderflower. This is the last of the 5 gallon batch. It's very pleasant table wine. If you get on with Elderflowers then it's the business. Certainly done the job well of be something we can quaff while we wait for the good stuff to age. And the good stuff (3 gallons of it) hasn't been touched as a result.

1 gallon of 2009 Blackberry, from the brambles in the garden. A big rosé that I love. It's one of my favourite homebrews. Great flavour and feel and throw in foraging for free ingredients, top notch fun quality homebrewing. I just noticed while searching for the link, that I haven't written this one up. So I'll get onto that. In my opinion it's a must for the homebrewer who has blackberries around and about. A wild bramble will make sharper wine unless you pick very fussily, but neverthless it's still good stuff. Cultivate a bramble tho and it'll have less fruit to support, which means bigger fruits, more sugar flavour etc.

No piccies today, sorry, hic ;-)