I remember very well how my grandmother made wine from the sweet and fragrant berries – shadberry. Of course, I was too young then and I didn’t have a chance to try this drink, but the aroma that was in the kitchen forever remained in my memory.
I grew up, my grandmother is long gone, I already have my own grandchildren. But one day I came to a friend and felt a sweet smell familiar from childhood – a friend collected irgu and put wine out of it. I couldn’t get away from it without a prescription.
Here is a touching letter sent to me by my subscriber Anna Vladimirovna. I want to share with you her recipe. Suddenly, you have the same memory from childhood.
History in brief
Irga grows very well on our site. The first berries are happily eaten by children, and when they get tired of this delicacy, I collect the rest and make homemade wine.
The idea to use irga as a raw material for making a homemade drink for the festive table came to me a couple of years ago when I tried this drink at a friend’s dacha. As I said, he struck me with a bright aroma and sweet aftertaste.
That time I did not leave without a prescription and for the second year I have been making wine myself. The technology is very simple and the ingredients are readily available. So let’s start cooking.
Necessary ingredients
The main components for making a drink:
- Ripe irga – 5 kg.
- Sugar 0,5 kg (0,6 kg) per 1 liter of juice obtained.
- Water – 1 l.
For the preparation of homemade wines, it is not recommended to use wine starters, yeast. Berries contain “live bacteria” that can start the fermentation process. In order for the wine to turn out good, it is important to properly collect and prepare the raw materials.
Irga must be collected in dry weather, trees should not grow near the road, they should not be dusty. We choose ripe and even slightly overripe berries. Most importantly, no rot. The use of such berries will lead to spoilage of the final product – the wine can turn sour and become vinegar.
After picking the berries, we do not wash them, we preserve natural bacteria. That is why it is so important to take clean, dust-free samples.
The cooking process
As I said, the technology for making wine from shadberry is simple. Just follow the instructions:
- Grind or crush the berries, leave for a day. I wrinkle my hands, I really like this process. But you can also use a meat grinder.
- A day later, squeeze the cheesecloth juice and add 1 liter of water. The pulp can already be thrown out.
- Add sugar at the rate of 0,5 kg per 1 liter of the resulting liquid. At first, you can put not all the sugar, but add it to your taste in the finished product.
- Mix the resulting mixture and pour into a fermentation container. I use XNUMX liter jars. Install a water seal or put on a rubber glove on top.
- Fermentation lasts about a month. All this time, the water seal gurgles merrily, and the glove rises and affably waves us over the bottle. The process may end earlier, you need to watch. The end of fermentation is evidenced by: the absence of bubbles, a deflated glove, a sediment is observed at the bottom, and the solution becomes transparent.
- Pour the wine carefully without shaking the sediment. Or filter through a thick cloth.
- You can evaluate the taste and, if necessary, add more sugar 0,1 kg per 1 liter of product. Here, see for yourself who likes it. You will get a sweet or semi-sweet wine.
- We keep the young wine for another month in a cool place, let it “ripen”.
Result
I prepare light wine, it tastes like juice, so I keep it for a short time. We start using it in the fall. That is, 1-2 months after filtration. The taste is very delicate, berry, the color is rich burgundy-red.
Its fortress is quite small. But I like it the other way around. But my girlfriend is a lover of stronger wines. Therefore, after filtering, she added a little vodka, but this, in my opinion, is no longer the same. I am for the naturalness of drinks.
This wine goes well with fish and meat dishes. We go with a bang under the barbecue. I serve it chilled, in a misted decanter. It goes well with “snacks”: chocolate, cake. In principle, it can also be served with vegetable, cheese, meat cuts.
And my friends and I love to drink it after the bath, sitting on the veranda, having “small talk”, watching the autumn sunset. If earlier I associated this wine with my childhood and my grandmother, now it has become “autumn”. I smell in it the smell of leaf fall, the warmth of the last days of Indian summer.
Wine is easy to prepare, practically inexpensive. All you need is berries, sugar, a little time and a piece of soul, of course.
Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to your health. Take care of yourself!
And what do you think, do “light” alcoholic drinks have the right to life? Drinks over which it’s nice to just talk? Drinks not for a noisy company, but for tete-a-tete gatherings? Or do you still love stronger?