Gooseberry Wine 1

Started 30th April 2012

I'm not very keen on white wine, but the missus likes white wine in the summer. As we had about 16lbs of gooseberries in the freezer and loads of red wines started, we decided we should get some white wine on the go. Gooseberry wine seems to take a whole year to ferment and mature, so starting it now means it should be ready for next summer.

We used a slightly different method for the gooseberry wine. We crushed the gooseberries and soaked them in water for a week before straining and adding the sugar and yeast. This meant we were adding sugar and yeast to the fruit juice without the pulp. The idea was that firstly, without the fruit pulp, hopefully we could get a more precise specific gravity reading so we knew how much sugar to add, and secondly, that we'd have a full 1 gallon of liquid to transfer to the demijohns.

Gooseberry Wine 1
Step 1:
Top and tail 4lbs gooseberries into a bucket
Crush fruit
Add 1 teaspoon pectolase to break down the fruit and extract colour and flavour
Add 1 pint water
Cover and leave for 1 week, stirring and crushing again every couple of days

We used home grown gooseberries that we had picked last year and frozen. I've always found it easiest to top and tail gooseberries when they are frozen. Trying to top and tail ripe gooseberries can be very difficult - it's easy to squash them and make a mess. Frozen gooseberries don't get squashed and can be topped and tailed simply by scraping with a fingernail. The downside is cold fingers!


Step 2:
Strain the gooseberries through a sieve into another bucket. Squeeze the fruit pulp to get as much juice out as possible.
Dissolve 3lbs sugar in warm water and add to the gooseberry juice
Top bucket up to 4.5 litres (1 gallon)*
Test SG and add sugar if necessary to 1090
Add 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
Add 1 teaspoon Champagne yeast
Cover and leave for a week

* At this stage, the SG reading was exactly 1090 - this is the ideal SG for starting wine - this is also the lowest SG reading we've had so far from our wines

Step 3 - lovely colour and smell

Step 3:
Strain through sieve into demijohn
Top up to 1 gallon if required
Fit bung and airlock
Leave in demijohn for 6 months

Step 4:
Add finings to help clear the wine and leave for a week
Rack off into 2nd demijohn and leave for another 6 months *
We may want or need to use a filter at this stage, depending on how cloudy or hazy the wine is

Step 5:
Bottle and drink!

We're hopeful for this wine. It should be fairly dry, but  we won't get to find out for another year ....