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What I've been up to.
Sep. 26th, 2015 04:31 pmI recently took care of my grandmother's wine recipes, and have been slowly been putting them online. My grandma was a keen vintner, and I have fond memories of demijohns bubbling in the corner of the room, so I was keep to recapture that feeling.
Having no experience, I started with a quick mead which I bottled today. I felt that would give me an idea of how I was doing relatively quickly.
I also have an elderberry wine and an apple wine in demijohns fermenting, and hopefully I'll be OK to keep a demijohn or two on the go while sampling my wares. I'll let you know how the mead is when I try it!
ETA:Verdict: it has the appearance of a rose, and in taste, medium dry and fruity/spicy. Very pleasant, I'm really pleased.
Oh, and I'm also keeping a mental list of who gets wine based on who gave me fruit :) I'm assuming that the best wine is pumpkin, or maybe marrow. So I'm thinking next year I might mostly try to grow squash.
That's the other thing I've been doing, I started growing things in our tiny front garden. We'd previously thought nothing would grow there, then last year I learnt why - the council had been spraying it with weed killer. So I fenced it off, and they didn't spray this year. Some of my plants lived - I've a reasonably small herb patch now, thyme and tarragon and chives and parsley, my rosemary didn't live but I'll try again with that next year. Also some soft fruits, which just need a couple more plants, and the rhubarb I planted for harvesting next year is growing nicely. We had some tiny carrots and onions, and my garlic is still growing. My broccoli mostly got eaten by slugs or something, but it was my first go.
I'm actually doing really well at not despairing that it wasn't perfect, and planning to improve next year.
Having no experience, I started with a quick mead which I bottled today. I felt that would give me an idea of how I was doing relatively quickly.
I also have an elderberry wine and an apple wine in demijohns fermenting, and hopefully I'll be OK to keep a demijohn or two on the go while sampling my wares. I'll let you know how the mead is when I try it!
ETA:Verdict: it has the appearance of a rose, and in taste, medium dry and fruity/spicy. Very pleasant, I'm really pleased.
Oh, and I'm also keeping a mental list of who gets wine based on who gave me fruit :) I'm assuming that the best wine is pumpkin, or maybe marrow. So I'm thinking next year I might mostly try to grow squash.
That's the other thing I've been doing, I started growing things in our tiny front garden. We'd previously thought nothing would grow there, then last year I learnt why - the council had been spraying it with weed killer. So I fenced it off, and they didn't spray this year. Some of my plants lived - I've a reasonably small herb patch now, thyme and tarragon and chives and parsley, my rosemary didn't live but I'll try again with that next year. Also some soft fruits, which just need a couple more plants, and the rhubarb I planted for harvesting next year is growing nicely. We had some tiny carrots and onions, and my garlic is still growing. My broccoli mostly got eaten by slugs or something, but it was my first go.
I'm actually doing really well at not despairing that it wasn't perfect, and planning to improve next year.
