Home Winemaking - Wild Black Raspberry Wine and White Currant Wine

I started my second and third batches of wine a couple of weeks ago.  This time around, it was a raspberry wine and a white currant wine.  I was really excited to use the wild black raspberries that I had picked and froze back in June. 


For my raspberry wine, I used the recipe found in Terry Garey's "The Joy of Home Winemaking," which calls from 3 - 4 lbs of raspberries for every gallon of wine.  In this case, I used 2 lbs of wild black raspberries and 2 lbs of our homegrown red raspberries (which are delicious by the way). 


I started another gallon batch of wine using 3 lbs of white currants that I had also picked and froze in June, again using a recipe found in Terry Garey's book.   This particular recipe for currant wine called for 3 lbs of sugar, which seemed a bit much.  After the must was assembled, I was a bit concerned that the finished wine might end up tasting overly sweet for my liking. (I usually like my wine very dry.)  You see, during the fermentation process, the wine yeast feeds on the sugar contained within your must (which in fruit winemaking consists mainly of crushed fruit, water and a sweeter like sugar or honey), creating alcohol and releasing carbon dioxide.  Once the alcohol level in your must reaches a certain level, say 14% for example, the yeast population begins to die off.  Hence, if the alcohol level of your must reaches this critical point before all of the sugar has been consumed, then you may ultimately end up with a sweet tasting wine.  I'm hoping this is not the case with this recipe.


The raspberry must was a brilliant blood red and very fragrant.  The white currant must, on the other hand, was far from interesting in sight or smell. 


The primary fermentation process lasted for about 12 days, after which the wine was siphoned into one gallon glass jugs to start the slower secondary fermentation stage, which usually lasts anywhere between 4 and 6 months.  As more sugar is consumed, more alcohol is released, and more yeasts die and sink to the bottom of the jug, the wine should slowly become clearer (hopefully).  During this stage, the wine is usually siphoned into new jugs several times, separating the liquid from the settled dead yeast particles, until you end up with a clear wine that is suitable for bottling.

As you can see from the picture above, by the end of the primary fermentation stage, the white currant wine took on a light yellow hue more reminiscent of white grape wine. 

On a side note - I forgot to post an updated picture of my Juneberry wine, which began its secondary fermentation stage a few weeks ago.  You can see how cloudy the wine is at this point, but already, it's beginning to clear.  It's hard to tell by the light but I would describe the color as being ruby red.

Currant Madness

During the past couple of weeks, we've been picking currants planted throughout the development.   We have six bushes ourselves, which have yielded much more than I had expected. The red and white varieties seem to ripen all at once, which makes the picking process much easier.


The black ones on the other hand seen to ripen individually, so instead of plucking whole clusters, we picked these one by one.  I've never picked coffee before but I imagine it's a lot like this.  And unlike the white and red ones, which have a sweet/tart taste, the black one are much more interesting.  They are less juicy than the others and have a flavor that's musky and almost spicy. 


Just to give you a sense of scale, the Red Lake currants on the right are somewhat smaller than the unknown red variety on the left, but I think they have more flavor.


And while the black currants are more time consuming to pick, the red and white ones require more processing time.  But once you got into a groove, striping the berries seemed like therapeutic work. 


Just part of the harvest - we picked enough for several batches of wine, including one for each variety.  I think I'll also try making wine from a blend of the three.  And there will still be enough left over for jellies, syrups, cordials.

What's In Season - White Currants

I was excited to find yesterday that the white currants were ready to be picked.  The reds still need another week or so and the black currants are ripening a few at a time.  


We have one small white currant bush, which was covered underneath a thick canopy of tall weeds.  I was surprised that we able to get exactly a pound of fruit.  I have BIG plans for these!

Strangely, this year I'm more excited about all of the fruit shrubs we have growing around our unit than I am about my vegetable garden.  It's nice to have such a big reward from so little effort!

Fruit Propagation Update

The cranberry plants I divided earlier this year are putting on lots of new growth.  I have about a dozen potted plants now from the two that I purchased three years ago.  Strangely, they haven't produced many flowers (and hence, fruit) during this time. I wonder if there is something I should be doing that I'm not.


I also have seven raspberry plants that I grew from suckers taken from our old garden.  After I potted them up, I placed them inside a sealed plastic bag for about a month until sufficient roots formed to support the foliage.  I love this everbearing variety and was glad that they survived.  They've since been moved to my community garden plot.

On the left-hand side are black and red currant hard wood cuttings that I took in early spring.  I removed about half of the buds and applied some rooting hormone to the cut ends before potting them up and placing them into a sealed plastic bag for about 6 weeks.   From the 6 cuttings that I took, 4 went on to root successfully.  I imagine they all would have survived if I'd noticed that they'd become infested with whiteflies and tiny leaf-eating caterpillars while they were covered in plastic.

Soon, I plan on taking even more cuttings from from all of the fruit shrubs around our townhouse.  It'll be a few years before we settle into a more permanent home. By then, I hope to have a ton of potted fruit shrubs ready to be transplanted. 

Berry Update

We have four pathetic looking blueberry bushes in the back of the house but surprisingly, they all have a fair amount of blueberries on them.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we might actually be able to pick a few this year...that is if the birds stay away.  I'm also going to try rooting some green stem cuttings later on this summer.

The red and black currant bushes are loaded with fruit.  I'd like to dry the black ones and make red currant jelly if we get enough.

Although I've never picked them before, currants seem rather tedious to harvest.  However, the little clusters of fruit sure do look inviting.  The leaves themselves also have a wonderfully pungent wine-y dark fruit scent to them. 

The gooseberries are fattening up as well.  It's another soft fruit that I've grown to love.

In addition to these, our raspberries are growing like gangbusters and there are a ton of flowering blackberry canes growing wild all around the development.  I've been told that they are suspected to be a cultivated variety that was planted by someone before the land was developed here so I might dig up a few plants to take with us if ever we decide leave this wonderful home we're renting.  

Red Currant Bush

The red currant bush next to our townhouse is blooming like crazy this year.  This variety is called 'Red Lake'.  I was worried that the warm Spring we've had so far coupled with the few nights of frost we've had recently would mean death to the clusters of tiny buds but they seem to be developing unscathed.

The bud clusters look really interesting up close.  I wonder if the flowers pollinate easily without assistance as I haven't seen many bees active yet this spring.