Cranberry Wine and Frozen Fruit Wine

This is the easiest wine in the world, really tasty too so it’s a good one to have in your repertoire. Usually I like to forage for ingredients for wine as that makes it more free, and therefore better, however at this time of the year ingredients are a bit thin on the ground and frankly it’s too muddy and cold for me to be bothered to get them, so I cheat. This wine uses just bog standard cranberry juice from concentrate from the supermarket, 4 litres of the stuff.



You will need…
Steriliser
1.3kg sugar
3-4 l juice
1 sachet or a heaped teaspoon of dried wine yeast.
1 sterile glass
Cling film
1 campden tablet
A demijohn
A funnel
An airlock and bung
A large spoon for stirring
A large sterilised saucepan
A solid bung


Sterilise everything before you start. Weigh out the sugar in the saucepan. I know what you're thinking, that's an absolute bum load of sugar. It is, but hopefully most of it's going to become alcohol soon.



Add 1 litre of cranberry juice and stir over the hob until all the sugar is dissolved into the juice. It'll be a translucent syrup when done. Don't let it get too hot, cool it a bit before using too.



Pour 1 litre of cranberry juice into the demijohn, then add the syrup, then another litre of juice. You won't fit another whole 4th litre in, just fill up to the shoulders of the demijohn.



Crush and add the campden tablet. Now fit the solid bung and give the demijohn a really good shake. Pour out a little of the juice into a thoroughly sterilised glass and add the yeast. Cover the glass with cling film and leave it for the yeast to re-hydrate and activate. After a while the cling film should start bulging and there will be bubbles on the surface of the liquid in the glass.



When the yeast is ready pour the contents of the glass into the demijohn and fit the airlock. Move the demijohn to a nice dark warm place and let the yeast do its thing. Done! I’ll fill you in on the next part in a few weeks.



As I mentioned, it’s too cold to go out foraging, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use ingredients I foraged last year and have been keeping frozen! These sloes and damsons I picked in about October/November time and they’re good for making a 2 plum wine. I picked and froze nearly 2KGs of them.



Firstly defrost them in a sterile food grade bucket (or big saucepan if you don’t have one) and when they are defrosted put the lid on and rattle them around to severely bruise them. Now pour in 1 gallon of boiling water, either from the kettle, or as I like to do it on the stove so I can add it all in one batch.



Leave this for 4 days, stirring or moving around twice a day. When you are done you will have a “must” that is the extracted concentrate of the fruit. Strain this through muslin to get out all the little bits of fruit and dead insects etc, then pour about a litre of it into a saucepan. Add the sugar as you did with the cranberry wine.



Pour it back in the demijohn, make sure it’s not warm to the touch and add the yeast and campden tablet as described in the cranberry wine.



Swirl it around, fit an airlock, and yer done. There’s another couple of gallons of wine that’ll be ready to enjoy at the beginning of next year (I’ve got last year’s to keep me going until then).