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.

Picking Wild Black Raspberries

Towards the back of our development, the side facing Centennial Woods, I came across a patch of wild black raspberries the other day.  Admittedly, I had to do some googling before I figured out exactly what they were.  They're tiny compared to cultivated raspberries but have a wonderful flavor.  And unlike the raspberries you grow in your own garden, these were bit of a pain to pick.  This particular patch was growing on the side of a downward slope so I had be extra careful when picking.  Falling head first into a thick patch of thorny brambles would ruin anyone's day.


As you can see, the berries start out red, turn purple and then ripen black.


Luckily, I was able to find several patches that were not so treacherous, though I also made the mistake of not dressing in appropriate attire when I picked my first batch.  Like most wild edibles, these tend to grow amidst tall weeds and brush, which are a haven for plants and bugs that make you itch.  Luckily, it was just the bugs that first time and now I make sure to wear pants whenever I go searching for them. 


Juneberries a week ago, wild raspberries now and blackberries next month - who knew you could have this much free fruit living within city limits?  At this point, I've been able to pick almost two pounds of these berries.  (They are tiny and way next to nothing!)  Combined with some of our cultivated red raspberries, I now have enough to make a batch of (mostly) wild black raspberry wine. 

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. 

Propagating Raspberries - Root Cuttings

As a gardener, one of the saddest aspects about moving is having to leave behind some of your edible perennials. In my case, it was my raspberries and asparagus that hit me the hardest. A couple of years ago, I'd planted a small patch of raspberries, an everbearing variety that produces large dark red berries, which are VERY sweet and among the best I've ever tasted. What I especially like about this one is that it produces a fall crop on its first-year canes and then a smaller summer one on the same canes before they are pruned away. When we moved, I told myself that I would plant it again once we were settled into another home for the long term (which probably won't be for at least another couple of years).

Then it hit me the other day - instead of buying new canes, why not try to propagate the ones that were already growing in my old garden. Last week, while I was in Massachusetts, I decided to take some root cuttings. It seemed like the perfect time to do so since the canes were still dormant yet the soil was now frost-free (despite the fact that the only time I could do this was at night and in this case, during the early hours of a snow storm when there was already 3 inches of snow on the ground).


As I surveyed my raspberry patch, what I was looking for was a sucker cane as these would yield the longest roots (or more accurately - rhizomes). I found one such cane located two feet away from the original plants. When I dug it up from the ground, I came away with two rhizomes that each measured a foot long - part of one that had connected it to the mother plant and another that would have gone on to produce other suckers. This was an exciting find for sure. From these, I took eight 3-inch root cuttings.


This past weekend, Jonathan and I planted up the cuttings in small pots, which we covered with a plastic dome and set in a warm spot in the green room. With a little luck, at least some of them should go on to sprout in about a month. As they get larger, I'll transplant them into larger pots and hopefully find a permanent home for them in a couple of years.

I'm planning on taking a few more cuttings during the next week or two as I'd like to end up with enough starts to fill a large patch.

Early September Harvest

Can you believe we're approaching the middle of September already? I consider September to be a fleeting month in the gardening calendar but this is ridiculous. The garden is transitioning quickly right before our eyes (too quickly if you ask me) and before before you know it, most of our summer crops will be reduced to dust. The daily highs are expected to reach only into the 60's later on this week. Something tells me that our first fall frost will arrive earlier than usual this year.

This weekend, I picked all of my Sweet Banana peppers and pulled the plants to make room for some fall sowings of radishes, claytonia and mache. I'm a bit late with these this year but that's what happens when your garden is overtaken by mosquitoes.


The tomato vines are looking horrible now. Our paste tomatoes are still producing but the rest have succumb to disease.




The fall berries are coming in consistently, but a little at a time. I might try to root some raspberry canes next year to expand our current patch.


Finally, I ripped out our zucchini vines last week and discovered these two monsters. They are hard and heavy at this point. I wonder if they are even edible at this stage. At the very least, we can use them as fall decorations.

Labor Day Harvest

It's only fitting that I should celebrate this Labor day weekend by doing absolutely no gardening work. It 's not by choice of course. The mosquitoes are merciless right now, attacking in threes and fours and even during the mid-day hours. I'm already looking forward to the second fall frost (which takes care of the mosquitoes that aren't killed by the first fall frost).

I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of this opo. There are about a foot long and weigh around three pounds each. If I had Asian neighbors, I'd gladly share as opo does not have a very long shelf life.


The slicing tomatoes have slowed down but the paste tomatoes are still going strong. We've met our tomato needs for the year so I'll have to find a home for these.


I picked the last two acorn squash and two more watermelons this week.


The Yellow Sunshine watermelon was picked about a week too early. I have one left in the garden. Hopefully I can get it perfect with the last one.


The last Blacktail Mountain watermelon was the best. If I had waited any longer, it would been overripe.


Our small patch of fall raspberries are producing well in the second year despite the fact that half of the canes had succumb to the raspberry cane borer. We are getting a little bowl full each day.


Finally, we also harvested a few fun things this week including some sunflower seeds...


...and some decorative Indian corn. I wonder if they can pop them.

This Week's Pickings

It's all about tomatoes again this week, not that I'm complaining. Lately I've been canning salsa and making sauce as much as I can to get our reserves back up. While it can be labor intensive at times, preserving your homegrown harvest is always deeply satisfying.

Aside from the tomatoes, I picked the last of this year's savoy cabbage and the first of our soybeans (edamame)and Poblano peppers. Despite the groundhog assault, I was able to get a fairly decent harvest from our early-sown bed of soybeans. I have two more that should be ready in a week or two.

Another sign that the end of summer is fast approaching, I picked the first of our fall raspberries the other day.

The Tiny Surgeon

Gosh darn it. The other day I noticed the tops of my raspberry canes were starting to wilt. At first I thought it was bacterial wilt caused by the cucumber beetles, which are a big problem for us this time of year. I inspected the tops again today and amazingly, they snapped off with the slightest force. A closer look revealed two dark circles about a half inch apart around the base of where the wilting starts. It was the same on each cane affected. Always two circles and always a half inch apart.


Now the canes look like this. I hope they will go on to develop side shoots or else we can forget about eating raspberries this fall. Does anyone have any clue as to what is responsible for this and what their motive is?!

Garden Notes - Cukes and Beans

My Asian cucumber is starting to flower. I don't know the exact name of this variety because the information on the packet is written in Chinese characters. By the looks of things, I'm guessing the cucumber will be long and skinny.


My Spacemaster cukes are also doing well. I have a feeling this plant will be prolific. I don't know much about cucumbers but I'm guessing that like zucchini, it has male and female flowers and rely on insects to a certain extent to cross-pollinate. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a single honey bee so far this year despite the fact that there's an apple farm down the road from us. Bumble bee sightings have been scarce as well, which makes me want to ask "Am I the only one noticing this?"


On the bean front, out of an entire packet of Contender Bush Beans, only 8 seeds germinated. Beans have been a real issue for me this year. I started off by pre-sprouting them, which in my experience, just stresses the seed and prolongs germination. Most of my pre-sprouted seeds never even broke the surface. Then I tried soaking my seeds for 12 to 24 hours before sowing them. No luck there either. Fed up, I decided to plant some Dragon's Tongue beans straight out of the packet and sure enough, germinate was fast and almost 100%. Sometimes you just have to stick to the basics.


On the heels of my snow peas, a few of my Fava beans are just about really to be picked. They are not nearly as prolific as I've seen on other blogs but then again, I only have 7 plants. Also, I don't think the mini-heat waves we've had this spring suited them all too well. I noticed that quite a few flowers would drop after a hot spell.

Finally, something has been putting holes in the leaves of my raspberry plants. Ugh.

Last Weekend's Other Chores

This past weekend, I also transplanted a couple of scraggly looking raspberry plants from the old garden. When we came to visit what was then our future home back in June, I noticed that these plants produced golden raspberries, which were small and a bit moldy at the time.

I gave them a good dose of compost and minerals and planted them next to the strawberries. Hopefully they will like their new location.


I also found a HUGE clump of chives (or what I think are chives). I had never seen them get this long and scraggly, but I guess this is what happens when you don't harvest them all summer. I dug up about half of it to transplant in the garden.


I gave the clump a severe hair cut, divided it into three smaller pieces and planted them next to my garden gate. Hopefully they will have to time to settle in to their new location before the weather gets too cold.


Finally, I am planning on purchasing shallot seeds to sow this spring but decided this past weekend that I would plant a few bulbs right now for fun (and hopefully for an earlier crop). This variety is called "supermarket". HA!