How to make elderberry wine

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Elderberry wine, made correctly, is every bit as good as wine made from its cousin the grape. Aged, oaked and mellowed, wine from elderberries bears a close resemblance to some of the huskier, more brooding red grape wines; Mourvedre and Petit Verdot spring to mind. Elderberry wine is a wonderful drink when the weather turns cold and you find yourself in front of a fire with friends and food. Balance is what to seek. Fine wine has acidity, alcohol, and tannin all in proper proportion. One of the prime problems in fruit wines is lack of balance. Some fruits are too acidic. Some too sweet. A few are too tannic. Grapes are the fruit closest to achieving perfection all on their own, which is why they “won” in the great winemaking game of life. Elderberries have excellent tannin levels, wonderful color, and reasonable amounts of sugar and acid. All you need to do is adjust these levels and you are on your way to making a wonderful wine. As you read these instructions, keep in mind that this method also works with other fruits. Other good wine fruits include plums, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries, apples, and pears. Oh, and for the record, only make wine from the Western blue elderberry, Sambucus Mexicana. You can also use the Eastern blue elderberry, S. nigra. Do not make wine from red elderberries. You want to pick elderberries that are at their peak of ripeness. How do you know when that is? For starters, the elderberry season runs from July to early October, depending on where you are. Within that period, you will get some bushes ripening before others, and even on the same bush, you’ll have some clusters riper than the ones next to it. Look for a cluster that is fully ripe, no green berries, and whose stem has turned pink. If you want to get extra picky, only choose those clusters that already have a few elderberry raisins on them because these will be the ripest. Snip off the whole cluster with shears and put them in paper grocery bags. A lot of people prefer to freeze the fruit before stripping the berries. This does make the process, which can be tedious, a lot faster, but you absolutely must thaw only a few clusters at a time. Once thawed, the berries get mushy. But either method works fine. Now you need to juice or crush your fruit. I normally do this in a clean five-gallon bucket. You can do it all by hand, or crush it with a potato masher, a blender, or your very clean feet. Watch out, though, elderberries will stain your skin for days), or even a blender. Be careful with blenders or food processors, though, as you will want to avoid crushing too many seeds. Seeds contain bitter elements that can overwhelm your wine. Crush just enough to get broken-up fruit. Elderberries are not pectin-rich, but many fruits do contain a lot of pectins. Pectin is great for setting jam, but not for wine. To prevent your wine from jelling, buy pectic enzyme for these fruits. The enzyme eats up the pectin and using it also extracts more flavor and color from the fruit skins. Fruits high in pectin include citrus, blackberries, apples, cranberries, gooseberries, and plums. Other low-pectin fruits include apricots, blueberries, cherries, elderberries, peaches, pears, raspberries, and strawberries. Once you have crushed your fruit, you will need to add water for volume. My recipe below is for 3 gallons, which is a good starter volume. Three gallons makes 15 bottles. For experienced winemakers, 5 gallons is better. Once you have added water, it is time to break out your hydrometer and acid test kit. Mix the juice and water and pour a little into your hydrometer’s test tube. Drop the hydrometer into the tube and read the scale. Most hydrometers have several ways to measure sugar levels on them, and I prefer Brix (pronounced “bricks”), which is the scale professional winemakers use. Ideal red grape juice is made into wine will have a Brix rating of about 24.5; an ide Become a supporter of this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roger-keyserling/support This podcast is sponsored by The Black Tux

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