1 gallon jug
SERVINGS
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound raisins
- 3 pounds organic
- strawberries
- 1 gallon water
- 2-1/2 pounds sugar
- 1 packet wine yeast
Directions
- Soak the raisins in enough water to cover overnight, then chop them, with the water, in a blender.
- Cut up the strawberries. Combine the raisins and strawberries in the fermentation vessel.
- Bring the water to a boil in a large pot. Add the sugar and bring back to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
- Add the boiling sugar water to the mixture in the fermentation vessel. Cover and let cool.
- Stir in the yeast and cover.
- Stir twice a day until fermentation slows, 7 to 10 days.
- Press out the pulp, pour the wine into your secondary fermentation jug, and secure the fermentation lock.
- Check it the next day; if there is a deep layer of lees, rack and filter the wine.
- Rack again every 2 to 3 months.
- The wine should be ready to drink in 6 months. Let it age in the jug for as long as possible before bottling, at least 6 months to 1 year.
Excerpted from Wild Wine Making © by Richard Bender, used with permission from Storey Publishing.
The great flavor of strawberries translates well into wine. My only caution is that you use organic strawberries, because conventional strawberries are heavily sprayed with pesticides. Although organic strawberries cost more, the cost per bottle is still very small compared to buying commercial wines. Friends who have tasted many of my wines claim that my strawberry wine is their favorite.
