Gooseberry 'Mock Champagne'

You will need

• Gooseberries, hard and green (under-ripe)1.6 kg
• Sugar1.1 kg
• Pectic enzymeper dose
• Campden tablets (sulphite)1 in must; 1 at bottling
• Waterto 4.5 L
• Champagne / sparkling yeast + nutrient1 sachet

Picking it at the right moment

• Gooseberry

  For a dry or sparkling wine, pick them hard and green (under-ripe); for a fuller wine let them soften, colour and give slightly.

Method

1. 1

   Sanitise. Top and tail the gooseberries and crush them under 2 L of cooled boiled water.

2. 2

   Crush ONE campden tablet and stir it in; cover and leave 24 hours before adding yeast. This is the new step: sulphite stuns the wild yeasts and bacteria that ride in on fruit skins, so your chosen yeast wins cleanly. Always give it that 24-hour gap — added at the same time as the yeast it would stun that too.

3. 3

   Next day add pectic enzyme, then the sugar dissolved in warm water; top to 4.5 L. Add the sparkling yeast and nutrient.

4. 4

   Ferment dry (down to about 0.994) for a crisp, sharp base — under-ripe gooseberries give the green acidity that makes this taste like a dry fizz.

5. 5

   Rack, clear, then for sparkle prime with a measured half-teaspoon of sugar per bottle in STRONG sparkling-wine bottles only, and wait two months. (For still wine, skip priming and add the second campden at bottling.)

6. 6

   Serve cold.