Wine Recipes

Throughout this book the general theme has been the making of wine for a purpose. The days when you made wine from a given ingredient and were satisfied when you had made wine and not vinegar are over. With the guidance already given and the recipes that follow you should be able to make good sound wine for all your various needs. Accordingly the recipes have been selected for their suitability to make the different classes of wine and are therefore listed under the appropriate general heading. These recipes, it: must again be emphasised, are, however, only a guide, the quantity and variety of the basic ingredients may be altered as you please.

You will notice, however, that all the flower wines have been included in the 'social' class. This is because in the author's opinion they are best drunk as medium-sweet: wines. When they are dry the bouquet seems to be in contradiction to the body and when they are sweet they tend to be a little cloying. As a medium-sweet wine, however, they all drink very pleasantly.

You will notice from the recipes also that in the main they have each been given as a single basic ingredient as opposed to a multiple blended ingredient. This is because the recipes are not meant to be more than a guide as to quantities and there is no reason at all why you should not put blackberry and elderberry together, or elderberry and apple, or raspberry and strawberry, or indeed any other combination that YOU fancy or can make from the quantities of ingredients that you have available at the moment that you want to make wine.

Unfortunately recipes cannot be given for blended wines, although these are, in the author's opinion, very often the best wines of all. They are a blend of the wines available at any given time, and it just is not possible to recommend the blending of A, B, C and D without knowing a lot more about the individual wines, whether they are sweet or dry, strong in flavour, rich in tannin and so on.

Whilst a few unusual wines have been given for the curious to try, many of the more exotic and unreliable ingredients have been deliberately omitted.