Our home wine making continues, and has entered an exciting new phase. As the summer advances, we’re able to try more cottage wines. But, with the continued hope for success come a few admissions of defeat.
The half gallon of birch wine that I made has matured, but has been found wanting. We’re going to try cooking with it, or it may end up feeding the compost pile. It will get used somehow, but it has no future as a wine. The lemon peel, which the recipe did call for, flavored it too strongly for us. Next spring I may try again, with lemon juice or a peeled lemon.
The rose hip wine is a success, in that it tastes like rose hip wine. I’m not fond of that, but we have hopes of sweetening it after fermentation is complete.
The new phase, on which I pin so many hopes, is spruce wine.
We have made spruce honey and syrup for many years, harvesting the young spruce tips in May and June. I’m crazy about the stuff. If I can make a wine that has the same flavor, I’ll be thrilled.
It’s going to take a lot of patience before we find out how well this works. Much of that time may be spent in contemplating exactly what the end result should be called.