Redcurrant Wine

This I started on 21 July 2002 following a recipe I found on Jack Keller's excellent site

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I didn't quite follow the recipe exactly as I had an extra 1/2lb of berries that were frozen from last year so rather than waste them I decided to use all of them. This has left enough to use for topping up as I rack.

It is already fermenting well and smells an awful lot better than both the nettle and the peapod wines and has the most fabulous colour to it....a very vivid red!

Thought I might top up today but unfortunately the leftovers had started up a spontaneous fermentation. Normally I wouldn't consider this to be a problem but we had kept it in an Grolsch bottle and when we flipped the top off we lost the lot as it exploded it's way out! Luckily we had decided to open it in the garden (just in case!)! So I will just have to be very careful about oxygen exposure I suppose!

I decided not to ferment this one to dryness and sorbated to stop the fermentation as I decided I'd quite like a light style of wine with not too much alcohol. It is now settling out quite nicely and will be due a racking fairly soon I think!

Took another look at this today and it was beautifully clear with about 1cm of sediment on the bottom of the demijohn. Normally, I would have left this to age before bottling but because of the amount of air space in the demijohn, I thought I'd better get it bottled....Now we have to wait and see what happens as it ages! Tasted a little sample and was quite nice though a little sweet, maybe i should have let it ferment a little longer! However, mistakes are the best way of learning and I won't make the same mistake twice (I hope)!!

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