This recipe comes from one of the Eltham and District Winemakers Guild’s gold medal winemakers.
The wine-specific ingredients and equipment can be obtained from a number of local shops, including Costante Imports (based in Preston), Home Make It (based in Reservoir) and The Artisan’s Bottega (based in Epping).
Ingredients
2 kilos raspberries, fresh or frozen
1½ kilos white sugar
1 teaspoon yeast (a red wine yeast is good)
1 teaspoon citric acid (it’s a powder)
¼ teaspoon pectinase (helps clarify and clear the wine)
tap water(as required to top up to 5 litres)
Method
Fact warning: yeast is in the air so if you put the raspberries in a bucket and do nothing else, they will eventually turn in to wine (more or less). But most people want more control and therefore use a particular type of yeast (usually a red wine yeast) for the fermenting, whereby the sugar is turned into alcohol.
Mash the raspberries in a bucket with 800g of sugar.
Pour 2½ litres of boiling water over the mash. Cover with a cloth. Stir it daily for 3½ days (taking the cover off before stirring).
Strain all of this and discard the pulp into the compost.
Add the yeast (having first hydrated it with some of the liquid) and the pectinase. Add the citric acid and then leave for 7 days to ferment.
After the 7 days. add in some sugar syrup made from 700g of sugar (that’s just water and sugar blended with a stick blender). Top up your container to 5 litres with water. This is called a demijon or carboy. Add a bubbler or airlock.
After all the action of the yeast party has ceased, rack off the liquid into another container, making sure to leave behind in the bottom the cloudy sediment. This will give the wine clarity and sparkle.
Do this one more time in a few weeks.
Just sweeten to taste and it’s ready.
Note: all your containers and equipment should be very clean.
Author
Dave Chambers
Eltham and District Winemakers Guild
Doreen