Last week I started picking blackberries. By early this week I had gathered over 1.5kg, which was enough to make a gallon of wine. I had also picked just over 1kg of plums so I decided to combine them. I used my electric juicer, poured the juice into the demijohn along with 1 litre of apple juice and 1 litre of grape juice. I also added 700g of sugar. I put the remaining pulp in a fermenting bucket with a litre of water. I will use this to top up the demijohn after I have syphoned the wine off the thick sediment which I always get when I use real fruit to make wine.

Other wine tasting notes:

Tonight I finally got around to tasting the 'berry and ginger' wine I made last year. This was made using odds and ends in the kitchen - mainly jars and tins of slightly out of date fruit in syrup. I added several tablespoons of powdered ginger and some sugar (sadly I failed to record how much I added). The bottles have been sitting in the shed since I made it. The ginger flavour is much stronger than my first attempt a couple of years ago. I think I can only have one glass in a sitting. It might be more appreciated in the winter, when a warming glass of wine would be quite welcome.

Back in february, I tasted my rhubarb wine and noticed that it was very sweet. Last year I made a carrot and orange wine which I didn't like at all - it was fairly unpleasant on tasting but was improved upon sweetening. A few weeks ago I decided to blend the two together. A bottle of carrot wine blended the same amount of rhubarb gives a decent medium white wine. The flavour is a bit nondescript. I prefer wine to be a bit drier so I'll blend the rest of the wine with a higher carrot:rhubarb ratio.