Rosehip wine at home from fresh and dried fruits

Rosehip wine is protected by a whole army of fans around the world, most of whom believe that it is second only to grape wines in quality. Other oenophiles, of course, are perplexed by such loud statements, but none of them can deny the fact that a well-made, ripe wild rose wine is worthy of all praise. Well, let’s put in our 5 kopecks, having figured out how to make rosehip wine at home, worthy of “silver”.

Rose hips are a natural concentrate of vitamin C, as well as vitamins A, B1, B2, E and K, flavonoids, tannins and organic acids. In traditional medicine, rosehip extracts are used to restore metabolism after colds and treat a large list of ailments. In order to use this storehouse of useful substances, mankind has learned to dry fruits, prepare juices, syrups, jams and, of course, the highest quality wines, which in their character resemble Hungarian wines and many southern ones, such as sherry, for example.

By the way, more vitamins and microelements are preserved in rosehip tinctures and liqueurs, because the raw materials are not subjected to heat treatment, but this is a completely different story …

Before embarking on winemaking, you need to stock up on fruits for the future. They usually ripen in October, but it is better to start harvesting after the first frost, in mid-November, when the fruits soften and the juice separates more easily from them. Cryodestruction can be done by yourself by placing the rosehip in the freezer for 1-2 days.

After harvesting, the fruits must be thoroughly washed, dried and !necessarily free from cuttings and sepals (blackened leaves, echoes of a once beautiful flower), which will certainly give bitterness to our wine. So, the preparatory work is done, the hands are torn into blood (to be afraid of thorns – do not drink wine), it’s time to start!

Classic rosehip wine recipe

It is classic not because someone said so, but because the recipe is based on traditional winemaking technology, which almost always allows you to get a good result. If you read an article about making grape wines, you will realize that the differences are minimal. The only thing is that mature rose hips in the amount used to make the must cannot provide normal acidity, so you always need to add citric acid (it can be replaced with the juice of one lemon or tartaric acid).

And, of course, you will need to help the yeast with top dressing, which can be a handful of good raisins, but this will certainly affect the taste of the finished product, so it is better to get by with top dressing from a liquor store. But most importantly, ready the wine must be aged in the bottle for at least 1,5 yearsto unlock your potential. Young wine will be almost undrinkable!

You can also use the following proportions, calculated to obtain 10 liters of dry wine of a given strength (approximately, of course):

How to cook:

1. First you need to properly ferment the yeast, as they have not an easy job to do. To properly make a starter, a bag of dry wine yeast must be dissolved in 250 ml of warm water with 1 tsp. sugar, as well as a pinch of top dressing for yeast. Mix well, cover the container with a paper towel and leave for 2 days in a warm place. Every day the starter needs to be mixed well.

2. Cut the prepared rose hips in half and place in a clean, sterile fermenter (they can be placed in a nylon bag beforehand, which will greatly simplify the filtration process), then pour them with 3 liters of boiling water. While the water is cooling to a temperature comfortable for the yeast, boil the syrup from 1,5 kg of sugar and 3 liters of water. As soon as the water with fruits cools down to 22-25^оC, add yeast nutrition (according to package instructions), 10 g citric acid, sugar syrup and the starter prepared earlier to the fermenter. Mix the contents of the fermentation tank well, cover with gauze and leave for 1 day alone – during this time the yeast should multiply.

3. After 24 hours, install a water seal on the fermenter and send the wine for primary fermentation at a temperature of 20-25^оC within 1-2 weeks. Every day, the fermenter must be shaken so that the carbon dioxide accumulated in the thickness of the wort comes out. When the fermentation weakens and a small yeast sediment falls out, the young rosehip wine needs to be filtered (if the rosehip was in a nylon bag, then there will be no problems with this at all, as well as with a convenient filter unit from a filter bag on a metal rack), and the fruits should be squeezed well to extract the maximum amount of juice.

4. While the wine is filtering, boil a simple syrup from 1 kg of sugar and 1 liter of water. Pour the strained wine into the washed fermenter, add the boiled syrup, install a water seal and send the wine for secondary fermentation in a dark place at a temperature of 10-15^оC for a period of 2 to 3 months. About once a month, the wine must be drained from the sediment (or as it forms).

5. When the wine has stopped fermenting, you need to once again drain it from the sediment, pour it into a clean fermenter and install the water seal again. Before that, you can take a sample and sweeten the wine to taste (if you did everything right, it should be completely dry; to get a good sweet wine, add 500 g of sugar, first dissolve it in a small amount of must). In this form, the fermenter should be left for another 3 months at a temperature of 10-15^оC, regularly removing it from the sediment. During this time, the wine should be completely clarified and it can be bottled. If this does not happen, the wine remains cloudy (and this happens often, because there is a lot of pectin in rose hips), it must be clarified artificially before bottling (gelatin is best suited for wine made from rose hips).

6. Ready clarified wine should be poured into clean dark glass bottles and corked. Bottles should be stored horizontally in a dark, cool place. The minimum aging period for such a wine in bottles is 1,5 years, but it is better to leave it alone for 2 years or more.

Dry rosehip wine recipe

Wines made from dried rose hips are in no way inferior to wines made from fresh rose hips and even surpass them in some ways. They always have a deep brown hue and smell like southern wines. They are prepared in the same way, but the fruits need to be used less and the technology for their processing needs to be slightly changed.

To prepare approximately 10 liters of wine:

The cooking process is not much different from the first recipe, mainly at the stage of preparing raw materials. First of all, you need to prepare a wine yeast starter, as described above. Dried rose hips should be washed and soaked for 12-24 hours in 1-2 liters of water. After that, you need to remove all the stems and sepals from them, and then coarsely chop (you can even use a blender). Take 2/3 of the water according to the recipe, boil and dissolve sugar in it (for strong wine, take only half the sugar). Place the crushed fruits in a fermenter and pour boiling syrup over. Wait until the mixture cools down to 22-25^оC, add citric acid, yeast feed and starter, mix well and cover with cheesecloth.

Then follow the instructions from the first recipe, starting from point 3, with the only difference being that after the primary fermentation and straining, the remaining water according to the recipe must be added to the must (or syrup from the second half of the sugar and the remaining water, if we are talking about strong wine ). Wine made from dried rose hips usually clarifies noticeably better, so the terms of secondary fermentation and “fermentation” can be reduced to 2 months. After removing the wine from the sediment after the secondary fermentation, do not forget to taste it and sweeten it to taste (the drink is very strong, so sugar is more a necessity than a whim).

You can also make 2 types of wine at once from one batch of dried rose hips. To do this, take 1,75 kg of dried fruits and prepare as described in the recipe. Next, prepare a wine that matches the ingredients of strong dried rosehip wine (17-18% ABV) using an alcohol-tolerant yeast (Tokai, sherry, Red Star for red wine, etc.). After pressing the fruits, they can be used to make a wine that matches the ingredients of a weak wine (11-11,5% alcohol), using yeast for light wines (Steinberg-Geisenheim for Riesling, universal Klosterneuburg, etc.). The first wine is dark, thick, extractive, and the second is light and light.

Good luck with your winemaking!