Why Hedgerow Wine Rewards the Patient Forager

Late August into October is the generous stretch of the year for anyone who lives near a hedge. The sloes are colouring, the elderberries are hanging heavy and black, and the brambles are groaning with fruit that will never all be eaten fresh. This is when country wine comes into its own. A gallon of homemade elderberry or blackberry wine costs little more than a bag of sugar and an afternoon's walk, and it keeps far better than jam.

Country wine is not instant gratification, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not made it properly. These wines need a year in the bottle before they show their best, but they are forgiving to make, and the process is simple enough for a complete beginner with a clean bucket, a demijohn and a little patience.

Elderberry: The Dark, Full-Bodied Classic

Elderberry is the wine that turns sceptics. Made well, it is deep, almost inky, with a flavour somewhere between port and blackcurrant, and it improves for years. The fruit must always be cooked — raw elderberries and their stalks can cause stomach upset — and it is best stripped from the stems with a fork rather than picked berry by berry.

For one gallon (4.5 litres) you will want roughly:

• 1.5 kg ripe elderberries, stripped from the stalks
• 1.3 kg sugar, added in stages
• Juice of two lemons, for acidity
• A mug of strong cold tea, for tannin
• Wine yeast and yeast nutrient

Simmer the berries gently in about 3.5 litres of water for twenty minutes, then strain and cool. Pour into a sterilised bucket or fermentation bin, add the lemon, tea, half the sugar and the yeast, and ferment on the pulp for four or five days, stirring twice a day. Strain into a demijohn under an airlock, then feed in the remaining sugar dissolved in a little warm water over the following week.

Blackberries: Reliable, Adaptable and Forgiving

If you are making your first country wine, start here. Blackberries are almost impossible to misidentify, they freeze beautifully, and the wine is drinkable within six to eight months. Use about 1.4 kg of fruit per gallon, a kilogram of sugar, and a teaspoon of pectic enzyme to help the wine clear. Blackberry wine has a soft, rounded fruitiness and a lower tannin bite than elderberry.

It also blends superbly. A gallon made with roughly two-thirds blackberry and one-third elderberry gives you the best of both: the bramble's softness with the elder's depth. Add a handful of rosehips to the same bucket, and you have what older country winemakers used to call a hedgerow blend — the whole lane in a bottle.

Rosehips: Delicate, Pale and Worth the Prep

Rosehips make a beautiful wine, pale gold and faintly apricot-scented, but they demand the most work. Wait until after the first frost, when the hips soften and sweeten. Take about 1.5 kg per gallon, top and tail them, and halve each one. Do not crush the seeds: the fine hairs inside are a notorious irritant, and they will cloud the wine besides.

Pour boiling water over the prepared hips, leave to steep for two days, then strain and proceed as before with around 900 g of sugar — rosehips bring plenty of their own acidity. The result is light, dry and elegant, and it goes down far too easily on a cold afternoon.

Identification and Safety Before You Pick

Careful identification is not a formality. Pick only what you can name with certainty, using a good field guide or an experienced forager alongside you.

• Elderberries: clusters of small black berries on reddish-purple stalks, with opposite, pinnate leaves. Leave dwarf elder, which grows low in grassy places.
• Blackberries: unmistakable, but check for maggots in warm dry spells. Soak the fruit in lightly salted water for twenty minutes before use.
• Rosehips: bright scarlet and oval, from dog rose and briar. Discard anything shrivelled, mouldy or blackened.
• Where to pick: above dog height, well away from busy roads and sprayed verges, and never from land without permission.

Equipment, Hygiene and the First Rack

Good wine is mostly good housekeeping. Sterilise every bucket, spoon, jug, airlock and demijohn before it touches your must — a Campden tablet dissolved in water does the job cheaply. Add pectic enzyme to the pulp a day before the yeast, so it has time to work. Keep the ferment between 18°C and 21°C, and get the must under an airlock within hours of adding yeast.

After about a week, rack the wine off its sediment into a clean demijohn, topping up to the neck to limit contact with air. Rack again every two to three months, tasting as you go, and bottle only when the wine is clear and has stopped dropping sediment. Label the bottles with the date — and open the first one next autumn, when it will taste of the lane it came from.