Gorse Flower Wine

You will need

• Gorse flowers, picked from the spines1.3 L loosely packed
• Sugar1.3 kg
• Raisins, chopped250 g
• Lemons, juice of2
• Waterto 4.5 L
• White wine yeast + nutrient1 sachet

Picking it at the right moment

• Gorse flower

  Pick strongly coconut-scented, fully open yellow flowers — not the papery, faded ones.

Method

1. 1

   Sanitise. Pick the coconut-scented flowers on a warm day, minding the spines; use them the day you pick.

2. 2

   The lesson is restraint: a delicate flower aroma is easily destroyed by heat and by over-soaking. Pour water that has been boiled and cooled to just-warm over the flowers — not boiling — and steep only 24 hours.

3. 3

   Strain onto the sugar, raisins and lemon juice; top to 4.5 L.

4. 4

   Pitch yeast and nutrient when cool; ferment cool if you can, which also protects the aroma.

5. 5

   Ferment out, rack, clear and bottle. A pale, faintly coconut-scented wine that captures a very Irish hillside in spring.