Rhubarb Wine

This is a great recipe that I have made many years in a row.

I have a couple of rhubarb plants in my garden that I use to build up my supply of rhubarb. I pick, wash, and slice the stalks through the early months of the year. It is good practice to bag them up and freeze them until there is enough (after a few crumbles) to make a decent sized batch of wine.

I am making a 4 gallon batch here.  My recipe consists of the following ingredients per gallon:

900g rhubarb stalks
225g of raisins or sultanas (I am using sultanas)
900g of sugar
3.5 litres of water
Campden tablet
Tea spoon of pectolase
Wine yeast
Wine yeast nutrient

First start by weighing out the ingredients to the correct amounts.

Sterilise a fermenting bucket and rinse out, add the chopped rhubarb stalks and the raisins.  Some people add the fruit in sterilised mesh bags, and chop the raisins. Personally I don't bother. I have tried this method before but often found the fruit came out of the bags anyway.

Add the water (hot) to the fruit and give a mix.  It should smell lovely already!

Once this has cooled, add the pectolase.

The pectolase is an enzyme that works to break down something called pectin that exists in fruit and causes haze in wine. This helps the finished wine to be bright and clear.

Crush the campden tablet(s) in between two spoon and add this to the mixture. The Campden works to sterilise any bad yeast or bacteria that may breed in your must before you pitch your chosen yeast.

Now leave this covered for 24 hours. This gives the pectic enzyme time to work.

The following day add the wine yeast and the yeast nutrient. Then cover the fermenting bin with a lid and leave to ferment for 5 days.  I like to give the contents a swirl on a daily basis. In the first day, there might not be any visual evidence that fermentation has started.  If you give the bucket a shakeyou should be able to hear the must fizzing and making a slight crackling noise.

After the fifth day, prepare a demijohn big enough for the fermentation by sterilising and rinsing and add the sugar.  This is now the trickiest part of the process - you need to get all of the fruit out of the liquid and the liquid into the clean demijohn with the sugar.

The easiest way that I find to do this is by using a couple of kitchen bowls, a funnel, a nylon kitchen sieve and a plastic spoon.  Make sure everything is sterilised and rinsed.

Use the nylon sieve to scoop out as much fruit as possible and squeeze it with the spoon. Dump the pulp in the bowls and repeat. Once all of the fruit is out, press as much liquid out as possible and funnel into the demijohn. Top back up to the required level with water.

Rinse the sieve off, and put it into the funnel. Put the funnel into the demijohn and pour the wine slowly through. You will have to stop and agitate the sieve if it gets clogged.

Once all of the liquid is through,  I like to give it a bit of swirl to mix it,  although this isn't necessary. The following  day the yeast will start to work on the sugar and the fermentation will become vigorous.

Leave this now to fully ferment to completion.  This will be finished when the bubbling through the airlock slows down to less than one bubble a minute, or stops completely.

Crush another campden tablet per gallon, and add to the wine. This will help to keep the wine sterile and stop any new fermentation.  The wine can now be left to clear on its own, or by using a wine fining.

Once clear, rack the wine off the sediment. I store this in single gallon demijohns for several months before bottling, or tipping directly into a carafe, a bottles worth at a time. If any started demijohns arent going to be used up in a couple of months then I bottle the remaining.

The wine will taste sharp initially, but will mellow into the correct flavour after a couple of months.