Ginger wine recipe

From Ian Ball - "Wine making: the natural way"

Strong, warming wine. Ready to drink 10 months after the fermented wine has been transferred to a storage vessel to clear and mature. Alcohol content about 13% by volume. Sultanas (dried white grapes) give extra flavour, body and smoothness to this wine and nourish the wine yeast, encouraging maximum efficient in alcohol production.

Ingredients (Country recipe, includes sucrose sugar)

• Root ginger: 170 grams
• Sultanas: 450  grams
• Granulated sugar: 900 grams
• Strong tea: half a cup
• Oranges: 5 (or about 200ml pure orange juice, not from concentrate, and no stabilisers/preservatives)
• Pure malt extract: 1/4 teaspoon (marmite is fine too)
• Wine yeast
• De-chlorinated water to 4.5L (you can use a water filter, boiled tap water first, or let tap water stand overnight)

Step 1

Bruise the ginger by beating it. Put ginger in a 5-ish litre bucket. Rinse sultanas in warm water, chop or mince them, and add them to the bucket. Cover the bucket. Warm half a litre of water in a large saucepan, and dissolve the sugar and marmite. Cover the pan and let it cool, then pour the contents into the bucket.

Make the tea, then pour half a cup in; add the juice from the oranges, sans pips etc. Your mixture should get to about 18°C (up to 24°C is probably alright), and certainly not over 30°C - add the yeast, then top up to 4 litres with cold de-chlorinated water. Cover. Leave in a warm place for 10 days; stir twice daily.

Step 2

After 10 days (and not more - it'll start to rot), rack the wine from its sediment and strain into a narrow-necked 4.5L FV (fermentation vessel) (e.g. a demijohn). Throw out the remaining solids (good fertiliser). Top the FV up with cold chlorine-free water, and cover, probably with an airlock. Leave to ferment to dryness - this might be 4-5 weeks, at an even temperature of 18°C.

Two weeks after fermentation has ended, rack the wine from its sediment into another demijohn. Top up to the neck with a dry white wine or cold water. Fit a cork and leave it somewhere cool for 8 months to clear and mature. After storage the wine should be ready for bottling, but a longer storage period could improve it.

When bottled, the ginger wine needs a further 2-3 months to condition and mature. It reaches peak perfection about 24 months after being racked to clear and mature (16 months after bottling).