One of the recipes mentioned including raisins in the initial fermentation batch - I didn’t end up adding them, but considering what you’ve said (because who doesn’t like tastier wine?) I’m going to add some rasins and/or wine to my next batch. Thanks for your wisdom, Dan!
Cheers to that - and so mote it be!
I’m learning along the way - I’d like to think I know more than when I started, but the road ahead is a long one (and hopefully there’s something yummy at the end! )
Our neighbor brought over a bottle of wine from their friend who homebrews and it was, forgive me, the nastiest wine I’ve ever had the misfortune of trying. The next day, I opened up our dandelion wine because, forgive me again, there was no way it could possibly be worse than the wine we just had. No way to miss the jump when the bar is on the ground, right?
Perhaps it was through comparison, but the dandelion wine was okay! It was really light - no dandelion flavor at all. It tasted like a light white wine. I guess I could have doubled the amount of dandelions used, but picking the small yellow petals was very tedious and long work, so I don’t think I’ll be doing it again haha.
I’ve got two mason jars of the wine sealed to age - maybe the flavors will develop more over the next few months.
I’m glad your wine experiment turned out better than the one you tasted! It would be a tragedy to go through the hard work you did just to have it turn out not good but hooray for it tasting okay!
Blackberry wine sounds like another fun experiment – good luck, whenever you try it out!
I had to chortle when I read that, because I’ve been in the same situation! Did everyone agree that the wine missed the mark or did everyone have to fake it? That’s the worst!!!
We made a strawberry wine twice, because the first attempt was an epic fail, but at our little group tasting we were the first ones to call it plonk.
Congrats on the success of your dandelion wine! If you got a nice light white wine from your experiment, that’s a win! It will be interesting to see how it develops with aging.
Good luck with your next experiment with blackberry wine! Lots more tannin involved - should be fun!
Hmm. I wonder if the neighbor’s was made by skipping the step of separating out the petals. I have noticed that the nasty flavor seems to be in the “milk” of the stem.
Or maybe they did the process later in the year. I’ve heard that only the earliest plants are edible because age intensifies the bitterness.
I’m glad yours tasted good! You can give your neighbor a glass of yours and see what they say! LOL! Hopefully, the blackberry wine will be just as good!
Right!?! I was scared - it took hours to pluck all those little yellow petals! What a waste it would be
At least with the blackberry wine it’d only be the ingredients wasted if the batch spoils or comes out bad. It was probably 10 minutes of picking and washing - way less than the dandelions!
Luckily they dropped the bottle off so we could taste test it privately! I think our neighbor was giving away the wine because they couldn’t drink it themselves
That sounds so neat! How did the second batch turn out? If you have tips about fruit wine, I’d be grateful to hear them!
That’s a good point! I’m glad I did enough research to know to only use the yellow petals (not the green base nor the stem) in the dandelion wine. The wine we got from the neighbor, however, was from grapes, so I’m not quite sure where their batch went astray. A mystery!
You’re welcome! I love seeing everyone’s crafts and projects they share here, so I’m happy to share this little endeavor of my own. I’m happy you enjoyed seeing it develop!
Thank you, Amethyst! Hahaha I only had a gallon of this dandelion wine, so it’s not quite enough to give away. If I can perfect a recipe, I’ll consider in investing in more/larger fermentation jugs. Then there should be enough to share!
)
It would be a tragedy to go through the hard work you did just to have it turn out not good 
but hooray for it tasting okay!
