Sloe Wine II

Origin: British      Period: Traditional

Like many wild fruit, sloes can be very variable in their characteristics. A long hot summer will give fruit packed with sugar, a short, wet summer will yield extremely tart fruit which will give a very dry wine that may need sweetening with a little honey or additional sugar.

Ingredients

1.2kg sloes (blackthorn fruit)
1kg granulated sugar
juice of 2 oranges
4.5l water
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Yeast (sherry yeast is good for sloe wines)
campden tablets

Method:

Pick over the sloes, de-stalk then place in a large pan along with half the water. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes, crushing the sloes against the sides of the pan to extract as much flavour as possible. Take off the heat and pass through a sieve, pressing down with the back of a spoon to extract as much of the liquid as possible. Pour the resultant liquid into your sterilized fermentation bucket and discard the solids.

Combine the sugar with the remaining water and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat and add the orange juice and the crushed campden tablet. Stir with the sloe juice. Allow to cool to blood temperature (no higher than 40°C) then add the yeast nutrient.

Now prepare a yeast starter by combining the yeast and 1 tsp sugar in 200ml lukewarm water. Cover and set aside in a warm place for 20 minutes to activate. When ready add to the sugar and sloe juice mixture and stir in with a sterilized metal spoon. Cover and set aside to ferment for about 4 days (stir well each day).

Strain the liquid into a demijohn then make up to 5l with more water (if needed). Fit a bung and a fermentation lock and leave to ferment in a warm place until it has fermented out (ie all fermentation has stopped). Rack the wine ino a second fermentation jar, add a bung and a fermentation lock and set aside in a cool place until the wine clears (about 3 months). As soon as the wine is clear and stable rack into bottles and stopper with corks.

Lay the bottles down in a cool place and allow to mature for at least 12 months (2 years if you can). This is an excellent dry white wine, somewhat reminiscent of a fine sherry.

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