Today is about three and a half months from when I made an attempt at apple peel wine, so it was time to bottle it. Doug handled the capper and helped me manage the siphon. The apple=peel vintage managed to be herbal yet vinegary yet alcoholic (Note to self: do not try this again. Just compost the peels. You are not a Norman peasant). Actually, I think it would be ideal for certain kinds of upset stomachs. There were also three gallons of dandelion wine from 2009 and 2010, and some rose petal. The rose petal didn't taste like much when I racked it, and it still didn't. So I mixed it with couple of pounds of honey, improving it beyond recognition, and it if it isn't too active I'll bottle it next week. To be properly traditional, I should use sugar of lead, or possibly wood alcohol, but we don't have the facilities for adulteration our foreparents did and we must just make the best of it.
The dandelion wine was much much better. I added a hint of ginger to one batch, which only made it taste 'hotter,' more alcoholic. Not really a good idea. I have one more gallon of dandelion with cherries in it (what was I thinking?) that we racked (decanted to get some of the sludge out before letting it settle once more before bottling). It didn't seem either awful or the warm, round, cheery mouthfeel of the basic recipe. Dandelion wine is labor intensive -- you have to get all the little green bits off the flowers before you cover them with sugar, and prepping the blossoms takes forever. But the basic dandelion recipe is probably worth the trouble.
We can drink it in September. Wine is one of those things like daffodils; by the time you get to drink it, it's so long after the initial effort that it seems quite easy.
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