Cherry Blossom Wine

[weepete]

Hi guys, the cherry blossoms are out up here now after a wee warm spell so I thought I might try a cherry blossom wine. After a wee online search I discovered cherry blossoms were in facct edible and not poisionous - off to a good start then! So I managed to get a recipe for some rose petal wine (couldn't find a recipe for cherry blossom one!) off the web and based my recipe on that. I used:

600g of cherry blossoms
600g Sugar
500g Sultanas chopped
1 lemon roughly chopped
5 litres water
Half a glass of apple juice
Teaspoon Strawberry Jam
1 Camden tablet

Me the wean and the missus spent a fair while after dinner seperating the petals from the stems into a bucket where they were rinsed and drained. Sultanas were rinsed in hot water and chopped, the lemon was chopped into a few rings and and all added to the bucket. I dissolved 600g of sugar in 3l of boiling water and topped up to 5l and brought back to the boil, where it was added to the bucket with a crushed camden tablet, half a glass of AJ and a teaspooon of strawberry jam.

I'll leave it to steep for a bit and decide tomorrow if I want to strain it before adding some yeast. It may turn out to be stone soup or alco-water but I'll find out in a month or so!

 

[oldbloke]

Doesn't this mean you won't get any cherries?

 

[weepete]

Nah mate, its a flowering cherry, meaning it doesn't bear fruit anyway, and its from two very old established trees in my parents garden, they could be over 100 years old so what I took never even made a dent in the flowers anyway, plus I was pretty careful to leave a resonable amount of flowers still on the bits I took from and to leave the new buds.

 

[weepete]

Strained and pitched the yeast in tonight with a little tannin, a pinch of acid mix, and nutrient. Fitted airlock, so we'll see what its like in a month or so. It did have an aroma of petals but now its strained it smells more like sultanas!

 

[weepete]

Pulled off a sample today and it was down to 1.000, fermentation seemed to have stopped so I chucked in the finings. Had a wee taste and smell and it does have floral notes and a slight perfume charicter to the flavour though I'd say needs aging to get to its best. Glad that the petals are there though