Which wine?

Is an easy one to get started nowish? Preferably hedgerow kinda one, and preferably soo easy that I can do it.... I'm not terribly good at adding extras at the right time so the easier the better

Hmmm hello Lottie...Do you have any fruit in your freezer from last year ( or even the year before.... ) as a good way to use it up is to make a "mixed fruit wine"...frozen fruit has had the cell walls ruptured by the freezing process so the juice gets out very easily...and it can make very nice wine...

Otherwise, there is not much fruit available now...apart from apples...do you fancy making some cider or apple wine? Cider is easiest...crush apples, extract juice, put in to a demi john with an airlock, leave for natural yeasts to get it going...when it stops bubbling, transfer into another demijohn ( or not.. we often don't!) ...leave until it has stopped ( usually after apple blossom time next year..as you get a secondary fermention then..) then put into bottles ( plastic is better, from an not-exploding-POV.....)

and drink

So, as Gus would have said...what's your poison?

Rosehip should be still very doable now. In fact I have just done a batch this week. Likewise sloe.

ooh yes Billy! Rosehip and sloe..but I don't make sloe wine so didn't think of it!
I tend to make "freezer" wine.. a bit like 'fridge soup"...where everything left over gets thrown in!

You could make teabag wine..any time of year..or wine from bought in fruit juice?

Rhubarb wine is good, and Very Easy to make.
It's good for making sparkling wine too, in fact until surprisingly recently Frenchies used to add rhubarb to their Champagne in order to ensure plenty of fizz.

Not much Rhubarb in the hedgerows though !

As Billy says, Rosehip wine is good too.
When I used to make my own wine I'd extract maximum juice and flavour by cooking up the hips in my Slow-Cooker and then thouroughly sieve the pulp into Demi-Johns.
That saves a whole load of racking off nonsense and also means you can't leave the fermenting pulp in there too long and risk spoilage or bitterness.
Easy to do when you're a beginner.

I have just turned much of my redcurrant crop into wine. It is very easy. Just boil them to get the juice out and add the rest of the ingredients. I do like mixing ingredients, though. Elderberry and blackberry make a good mixture.

We used to make gallons of redcurrant wine back when we had several well established redcurrant bushes at our old place. Sadly it will be a couple more years yet before the new ones here are producing enough. We had just enough fruit to make three jars of jelly this year.

Just set another 3 gallons of raspberry on though...

I have 23litres of Cabaet shiraz in the demijohn and my Marachal Foch vines are coming along beautifully

Oh my God, I'm moving in

I'm awaiting the marigold to stop it's stuff on Sunday night, then the buckets will be free, then I can make a start on marrow wine, I'm gonna use some squash, hope that works OK..

Billy, do you use the rasperry wine straight? Or mix it? The 900 year old book I've got, says use it to mix, but this confuses me even more than the hydrometer did.. mix what with what? And how much? And why? And.. oh so many questions..

I reckon that many traditional country wines used mix fruits, as villagers might not always be able to rely on sufficient supplies of a particular fruit at a specific time. Raspberries and redcurrants are available at about the same time, so they are an apt mix.

I quite often blend hedgerow wines once they are ready - blackberry is rich but a bit cloying on its own, elderberry has huge body, sloe a little acerbic etc but blended together they become very nice. You can't tell until they have fermented though.

Many fruits mix well with apple. I must try plum and apple this year.

I found strawberry interesting, it made a lovely wine, but there was quite a lot of residue, a thick layer of white at the bottom of the jar, as the white flecks on the strawberries settled.

The redcurrant wine started slowly and last night I was convinced that the yeast was dud; but this morning I came down to see it bubbling. This teaches the value of patience. I am soon to work on the rhubarb. Do any of you have any ideas about how to enhance the flavour of rhubarb wine?