I thought I would share with you one of my more secret hobbies – the wonderful world of wine making.

I say its a secret hobby because I don’t advertise I make it or suddenly everyone would want to be my friend – and I’m greedy. Actually it was a neighbour who got me into it and has been a great way to use up gluts, fruit I get cheap at the supermarket or fruit in the bowl past its best but not quite compost.

I have discovered there are as many ways to make wine with as many ingredients as there are stars in the sky so I have had to wade my way through advice and recipes to get to a point where I’ve found methods that work for me with ingredients I’m happy to use. Whatever method is used however, it all starts with cleanliness.

Everything must be cleaned and sterilised or you will end up with something more akin to vinegar than wine.

After that its a question of ingredients. I chose to make 2 different kinds this time using fruit I had frozen as I find this helps to bring out all the juice and therefore flavour when they defrost into the sugar, using the method I do! If I didn’t freeze the fruit I’d have to spend a good while thumping at it with a wooden rolling pin – which I’ve done and don’t enjoy all that much.

For the first bucket I’ve gone for rhubarb with a mix of different fruits: plums, redcurrants, grapes etc. There was enough of these to make 2 batches – each batch fills one demi-john and each demi-john holds enough to fill 6 bottles! The other bucket got the strawberries with a little rhubarb thrown in to make up the weight and give a little more body to the finished wine. Hold onto your hats because each batch requires 3 pounds of fruit!

Then I added the sugar – for every 3 pounds of fruit I add 3 pounds of sugar (I know, its scandalous!):

These are left overnight so the fruit can defrost and start soaking up that lovely sugar.

The next day, boiling water is added – 8 pints for each demi-john.

When that has cooled, I add yeast and yeast nutrient and give it a good stir. The stirring is done daily for about a week and everytime you open the lid you get to see the lovely frothiness proving the fermentation is under way:

When the week is up (or in this case it was about 10 days!), its time to strain the wine into the demi-johns. Again these are scrubbed clean and sterilised first.

When its all been strained (and I confess to squeezing out as much juice as I can), the demi-johns have their little bungs put in so the fermentation gas bubbles can escape without exploding all my jars!

I’m very happy with the colours and ended up with 3 and a half demi-johns! I’ll add any ‘spare’ wine from future batches to the half one to make it up. Looking forward to the strawberry one in particular!

Then its off to the cupboard with them to join the rest. I love the different colours you get from different ingredients:

Now theres something to look forward to!