Sloe Wine

You will need

• Sloes, picked after frost (or frozen overnight)1.4 kg
• Sugar1.3 kg
• Pectic enzymeper dose
• Waterto 4.5 L
• Red wine yeast + nutrient1 sachet

Picking it at the right moment

• Sloe (blackthorn)

  Pick after the first frosts, when a sloe gives slightly under your thumb and the blue-grey bloom rubs to glossy black; hard bullet-hard sloes are not ready (freeze overnight to mimic the frost).

Method

1. 1

   Sanitise. Pick sloes after the first frost has softened them, or freeze them overnight to do the same job.

2. 2

   The lesson: sloes are ferociously astringent — mouth-puckeringly tannic — and this recipe is about managing that. Do NOT crush the stones (like all Prunus they hold amygdalin); work the flesh only.

3. 3

   Prick or lightly crush the flesh, pour on 2.5 L cooled boiled water, add pectic enzyme.

4. 4

   Add sugar dissolved warm; top to 4.5 L (reading ~1.092); pitch yeast and nutrient.

5. 5

   Ferment on the fruit only two or three days — the tannin extracts fast and you do not want all of it — then strain.

6. 6

   This is the longest-haul wine in the collection. Astringent to the point of undrinkable young, it needs TWO years or more for the tannin to soften into a deep, damson-dark, port-like wine. Rack it, forget it, and be rewarded.

7. 7

   Teaches patience as an ingredient, and respect for tannin at its most extreme.