I don’t think we’ve ever actually followed up on our experiments in home-brewed wine, the results of which we’ve been drinking since Christmas now. The fact that we’ve lasted that long clearly means it’s not killed us yet.

The results, now they’ve had time to mellow and mature, are surprisingly good. We did cheat a bit by using a kit and brewing it in our existing beer-making fermenters, but it still required days of carefully watching the fermentation, stirring in the sugar, adding the finings and, eventually, getting it all into the bottles without making a sticky mess of the kitchen floor.

Over the 10 weeks or so we’ve been drinking it, its taste has slowly mellowed, drifting from a slightly sharp but refreshing tang – a little too sweet for my taste – to a more balanced, rounded and fuller drink that goes down very easily.

Between us and the neighbours (we gave away four bottles in the hampers we left on their doorsteps on Christmas morning) we’ve drunk about half of our stock now and at 90p a bottle you really can’t complain. A second brewing is almost certainly on the cards, and perhaps we’ll try red next time, too.

Related posts:

1. Home-brewed wine
2. Drinking the Elderflower Champagne
3. We bottle the nettle wine