Our plum wine finally finished fermenting over the weekend. After two weeks of gently bubbling away in the outhouse it breathed its last and fell silent. It was quite erie.

That meant it was time for the last stage – putting an absolute stop to any further activity in the liquid and then bottling it up. Obviously you want to make sure that there is no possibility that any further fermentation can take place once the cork is in, or things could get explosive, as we found out to our cost when we made elderflower champagne.

So this time around we added some campden tablets. These kill off any further bacteria in the wine and stop it picking up any contamination from the syphon during the bottling process. It’s toxic stuff when used in concentrated proportions, but in wine making you dilute it thoroughly, adding just one tablet for every gallon of wine. We had 10 litres, which is 2.6 gallons, so we crushed and dropped in two and a half tablets.

When all syphoned off, those 10 litres made a dozen good bottles of very pretty pink wine that we now have to leave for six to nine months before we start to drink. That’ll take us up to next summer. It feels an awful long way off.

Related posts:

1. Our nettle wine has finished fermenting
2. We’ve opened our first plum wine
3. Making plum wine