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Select the main ingredient: Apart from several exceptions, it's generally best to make wine from what's obviously suitable. For instance: of those listed on the previous page (even if more than once), peapod, sage, meadowsweet, burnet, tea & banana, parsley & pepper, grapefruit and rose-petal were all pretty DUFF. Some were horrible, undrinkable even - not due to any kind of fault, you understand, but because they were just stupid things to make wine from - like the most obvious one: sage! Can you imagine what sage wine tastes like? Peapod wasn't much better, and also had to be chucked, as did the other flower wines (they were just so insipid) - except dandelion, and elderflower which was probably the best wine of all: if made with care it's truly fabulous, like good Champagne. No joke! And don't bother with banana wine either. Sounds good, nice strong flavour - or so you'd expect - but for some weird reason it has even less flavour than the most insipid flower wines. BUT they do give 'body' to a wine. You could never accuse a wine that includes bananas of lacking body. AND here's another surprise: they actually help a wine to clear. It's true!

 

Decide the style: This usually depends more on how the wine's made than what you make it from. But even here it's worth selecting what's obviously most likely to be suitable. For instance, if you want a light table wine, then go for parsley, dandelion or maybe plum, elderberry, blackberry or sloe in preference to rosehip, parsnip or other vegetable. With a little experience, however, you can make any kind of wine from the fruits, especially, mentioned in the previous paragraph: from light-dry (11% alcohol), say, to heavy-sweet (18+% alcohol), and any variation between. Rosehip - which makes a superb desert wine (dry or sweet) - has a slight viscous texture which makes it unsuitable as a table wine. The vegetable wines too belong more in the sherry or desert league, though depending on the vegetable these have flavours, most apparent when dry, that tend more towards that of whiskey.... if still remaining a long way off, alas! But all these I mention here (in this purple box) are well worth making. Some are bloody hard work, some are a cinch. And the work isn't necessarily at the beginning. Parsley, for instance, makes a superb light table wine with an amazing pleasant flavour - everyone was impressed, even people who were normally inclined to give parsley a wide berth. And it's a doddle to make too - the problem comes in the racking, though this is much helped by a banana (or two) per gallon, since it throws a light, fluffy sediment that settles with great reluctance.

 

Then DO IT

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