Making Wine

We grow some fruit - strawberries, raspberries, melons, apples, plums, Nanking bush cherries, elderberries.  And with all fruit, there are some culls - fruit that is soft from rain or apples with a soft spot.  Those fruits go into something processed - like applesauce or plum jam, vinegar, or wine.

Last season we had a new pest in the raspberries and that meant more culls.  I froze them and last week I started making wine.  Many people make a large five gallon batch of wine in a carboy, but I like to make smaller and varied batches.  Here is a dry raspberry, a sweet raspberry and a honey based raspberry melomel.  This morning I moved from primary fermentation in five gallon buckets to gallon jars with air locks for the secondary fermentation. As I siphoned them off, Ken asked if I would be "drunk before noon" as he remembers a time when I made several large batches and bottled all at one time!