I’m at that point in the spring where I just seem to be anxiously awaiting my plants to grow. We’ve harvested just a few small things (more on that next time), but are otherwise just watering, watching, and waiting. WWW.
Well, another “W” I’ve been working on in the meantime is wine. A while back, I posted that I had picked hundreds of dandelions from my yard. We made them into fritters, sautéed the greens, and pickled some of the buds. But since then, I’ve also been working on dandelion and honeysuckle wine!
The recipe I’m using states to make sure you separate all those little petals from the base of the flower, or the wine will be impossibly bitter and icky. So yep. I spent hours sitting on the patio, listening to podcasts, and pulling millions of little yellow petals off of dandelions. You then make a dandelion tea of sorts, and let that sit for 3 days.
In come some oranges, lemons, and raisins. I thought that was a little strange, but don’t know much about wine making, and apparently you need the acid and something or other that the raisins have (tannins? I don’t know, I’m not a scientist). Those go in in a few different stages, along with sugar and champagne yeast, then sit in a crock for a week or so before bottling.
You’re not done yet! Because the fermentation process isn’t fully finished at this point, we put balloons on the tops of the bottles before corking. Once the balloons have remained deflated for 24 hours, you know it’s safe to screw on that cap or shove in that cork. While the recipe is for dandelion wine, the honeysuckles around my house were so abundant and smelled so lovely, that we decided to try a batch using the same recipe, but those instead of the dandelion petals.
I wish I had a final product to review for you, but we have to wait 6 whole months to try them! I’ll be sure to update you around the holidays, and until then, let’s hope we all age like fine wines.
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 