Elderberry Wine 2009, The Harvest

September can be a busy month for the amateur winemaker. It’s at this time of year that the Elderberries start to ripen. Elder trees grow pretty abundantly in the Irish countryside and hedgerows and I am lucky enough to have a few growing in my back garden.

Elderberries, or ‘Englishman’s Grapes’, as they are affectionately known, have been used to make wine for hundreds, possibly thousands of years and have also been used as an additive to many fruit, berry and even grape wines to add colour, body, tannin and flavour complexity. However, by themselves and in the right quantity, elderberries can make a rich, flavoursome wine full of body and character.

Composition

Elderberries contain roughly 8% sugars (sucrose, glucose and fructose), are rich in Vitamin C and contain lots of anthocyanins, which are antioxidants. They are also a good source of vitamins B1, B2 and B6 and contain anti-inflammatory agents. The main acid is Citric acid and they contain about 3% tannin.

Harvesting

Elderberries grow in umbrella shaped clumps. As the fruit begins to mature the clump starts to droop. When the clump has inverted the berries are absolutely ready to be picked however, to prevent soiling by birds, you may want to pick them slightly earlier.

For me, harvesting is a two stage process, that I call the ‘Pick and Flick’. In the ‘Pick’, the ripe berries and stems are plucked from the trees. My mate Morco helped and over the course of a couple of days (some berries were ripe while others weren’t) we had picked roughly eleven kilos of berries and stems. 

TheMerryWino 'Flicking' Elderberries

The most arduous and time consuming part of the harvesting is the ‘Flick’, where the berries (and only the berries) are ‘flicked’ very carefully from the stems using the back of a fork. Perfectly ripe berries should just fall off the stem without too much effort whereas slightly underripe ones may break off part of the stem with them. These stems will have to be fully removed before making the must.

After many hours of ‘Flicking’, the help from Coll was very much appreciated, and after a couple of glasses of  young Elderflower and Rasin wine I had made in June, we managed to get eight and a half kilos of berries (just enough to make 5 (6 US) Gallons of wine) which we weighed into one kilo bags and put in the freezer. Freezing the elderberries helps break down the cell structure of the berries and allows juice to be released more easily, which will give the wine better colour and flavour.

With the harvest complete, it was time to relax and open a bottle of red. This week’s red was Faustino I 1994 Gran Reserva. Mmmmmmm fruity!