Young country wine is a simple ferment composed of fruit, sugar, water, air and time.
With the help of the naturally occurring yeasts on the skins of the fruits, these simple ingredients can be transformed into a delicious good-time brew…
As with all wild fermentation, you can make this brew a number of ways, and produce a number of results. Get creative and enjoy the many possible flavours.
This recipe is a bit like the wine equivalent of sourdough
You’re not introducing any additional yeasts to do the work – instead you’re working with the wild yeasts in the air, and on the skin of your fruit.
On some fruit, like some plums or muscatel grapes, you can actually see the ‘bloom’ which is the naturally occurring yeasts that the fruit produces to out-compete other microorganisms which might want to grow there.
But other fruits have these natural yeasts on them too, you just can’t see it.
It’s these yeasts, together with those in the air, that you’re working with to create a selective environment with your fruit, sugar and water – an environment that will ultimately result in delicious, home-made hooch!
Crucially, this recipe is about good quality ingredients – you want your water un-chlorinated and your fruit as organic and as fresh as possible to ensure a happy (and healthy) result.
Making Young Country Wine
Gather together:
- One 4 litre jar
- 1 kilo of whole fruit (blackberries and plums are particularly excellent, but whatever fruit is most available to you)
- 2 litres of un-chlorinated water
- 250g of sugar.
First, dissolve the sugar in the water in a separate bowl. Then pour over the whole fruit, which you’ve put in the 4 liter jar. Stir and stir and stir again!
Put on the kitchen bench, leave the jar uncapped, cover with a cloth to keep out bugs, and stir multiple times a day to re-submerge the fruit.
Stirring multiple times a day is central to this ferment.
Every time you stir you are doing multiple things; drowning any moulds that might be thinking about starting to grow on the fruit at the surface, adding air to the brew, and agitating the overall ferment. In a good way.
In a few days (depending on various conditions like the temperature of your kitchen and the natural yeasts on your fruit) the jar will start to bubble!
And a few days later, the bubbling will calm down – at this point, remove the fruit (which will be strangely tasteless) and either drink or proceed to further ferment your young country wine – by periodically releasing the pressure from the lidded jar, or by applying an airlock.
Taste it every week or so until it is to your desired taste and strength. Enjoy.
Note: as with any foodstuff, if something goes awry and your brew smells or tastes badly wrong, don’t eat it – chuck it in the compost, and start again.
The young country wine in the photos above was made by Sandor Katz at our Hobart Fermentation workshop, that time we toured Sandor around Australia (SO GOOD).
Here’s the same wine, two weeks later, happily brewing away…
Big thanks to Sandor Katz who taught us this recipe. Check out the wild fermented hooch forum page on Sandor’s website for discussions on young country wine, mead, cider are more.
Anyone got a particularly beloved fruit or flavour combo for young country wine? We’d love to hear about it.
Good luck, fermenters!
The first 5 photos were taken by the lovely Kate Berry
We tried this last year strawberries and it was to die for. All of it got drunk in the first few weeks but our Redcurrant one is still fermenting and when it is a year old we will drink it while hopefully making more of both and some new recipes. Might try blackberries so thank you. xXx
Thank you so much for the post! I have made some incredible fermented salsa, but as it aged the wine flavor began to emerge. Wine-salsa was not my favorite! I’ve got blackberries that I am going to try fermenting this summer.
What a stunning colour! I had no idea it was so easy to make fruit wine like this. It’s coming into blackberry season here, so I may just have to try this – what fun 🙂
Reblogged this on cossack design and commented:
I’m strangely tempted.
This looks like lots of fun! Does anyone know what the alcohol content is, if any?
This looks amazing! Do you know if it will work with alternative sugars? I’m thinking of using coconut sugar, as cane sugar doesn’t like me very much.
Actually, if you let it ferment long enough, no more cane sugar would be left in the brew, as the yeast had eaten and converted it all, so you’d most likely be fine. Just wait until the bubbles stop completely before drinking.
Thanks for the advice :).
NOw I see this, hopefully next summers mulberries are as prolific as the last.
It’s nice when things sound easy and people don’t say ‘sterilize’ a million times…
Great!! I’ve got an abundance of strawberry guava (that are actually becoming a pest) so I’ve been looking for some alternative uses. Hope it works as it would taste fantastic. The jam made from them is to die for.
I still haven’t made any young country wine but was enjoying a little mead last night (inspired by Mr Katz of course). Blows my mind that something so tasty can come from honey and water.
honey and water and friends…. 😉
I’ve made a delicious drink called apple ale, with apples and ginger. The recipe originated in the original Paupers cookbook by Jocasta Innes.
Hey havent read that one – ta! Will look it up…
Can you use frozen berries, for instance frozen currants? Will the yeast still be alive on the skin of the fruit?
Ida, to be honest I don’t know the answer.
While the cold most certainly slows the bacterial decomposition and doesn’t kill the bacteria, I don’t know if the same applies to the yeasts.
Still, there are wild yeast in the air which can “attack” the fruit and initiate fermentation.
My dad used to make his own beer as we do… my step father made wine from mariposa plums and also Apple champagne which was incredible…
Thanks so much for sharing this recipe/method! I’m excited to use it for my next batch of fruit wine.
We once made wine with apricots and totally forgot about it for about 6 years. It was well sealed and when opened it, WOW it tasted like apricot schnapps! Everyone loved it!
i’ve just done a feijoa, ginger and honey mead! most excellent tasting, and very easy 😀
I followed this method using blackberry and plum and it came out fantastic, although it never bubbled furiously, at some point I tasted it and it was good, so I took out the fruit and put it in the fridge. Terrific stuff! But my second batch I made with grapes and plum, and I did get the super yeasty bloom and many days of crazy bubbling. I wanted the wine a bit sweeter than the first batch, so when the bubbling started to calm I went ahead and strained out the fruit and the yeasties, but…this time around I’m getting… Read more »
Some would say the difference between wine and vinegar is a matter of taste! But if yours has gone vinegary, then yes, you left it too long – the yeasts ate up all the sugars and after that, it went acidic. One of the factors of wild fermentation is that it is a little un predictable in terms of timeframe –
Thanks Kirsten! But the strange thing is, it’s sweeter (considerably) than my first batch was, and it was still bubbling pretty wildly when I stepped in, just less than it had been before. Hmm. Maybe it is just a matter of taste. Will it continue to ferment a bit in the fridge? It would be interesting to see if the flavor mellows somewhat…
Hi, does anyone have an idea of the alcohol content of the wine?
‘it depends’- on sugar content and on when you drink it – one friend who has a meter thingy clocked his orange country wine at 11%…
I’m looking forward to trying this method. It’s time for blackberries and plums in the Inland Northwest. (We were trying this with yeast and storing it in an old freezer that was being used for an outdoor storage cabinet. A bear came and tore the door off the freezer and stole the gallon of hooch :-))
Wow. Happy bear!
Can anyone tell me if the plums need to be sliced and pitted or if the whole fruit goes into the mix? Thanks!
we’ve done it which whole fruit
Any idea how this would work with tropical fruits? I live in India currently and I’d like to try this with mango or banana but I don’t see that working without peeling them.
Hmm well it’s partly the wild yeasts on the fruit skin that’s used here so… i’d ask a good fermentation group like this one about that! https://www.facebook.com/groups/WlidFermentation
Can these be aged?
yes they can
Hello! Thanks for this recipe. It looks nice and easy, can’t wait to give it a go! Can I use a crockpot to ferment in, or does it need to be a glass container? Thanks. 🙂
Hi, I have attempted this wine after a large wild blackberry forage. It has been doing quite well but yesterday I was bedridden with a fever and so it was not stirred! It has been really hot and so when I went to taste it today, it had a slight vinegar taste. Not wanting to waste it I decided to strain out the berries. Now it is strained it does not taste as vinegary but is still fizzing, did I strain too soon?! This is the first ferment I have ever done. How do I know if I have made… Read more »
Can you do this with tropical fruits like paw paw? Or mango? Or do you need fruits with their skins on?
Dear Kirsten another great article on fermentation from you guys. I do struggle to get suitable large jars for this and kombutcha? Can you suggest online sources? All the Best Nina
Nina I know a lot of the online kitchen stores have the big ones that folks use for cordial sometimes?
Will watermelon work the same
[…] This link is to a pot about a way of making a young fruit wine. It basically uses fruit sugar and water. Sandor Katz has many recipes that don’t require much specialized equipment in his book Wild Fermentation, which I highly recommend. Even if you don’t try his recipes it is a fascinating read. […]
We used strawberries, plums and blueberries. Turned out great. Love our kitchen wine and ready to start a new batch.
Addition of sugar ruins the whole deal. Nyet.
Just let the juice sit, maybe 60 days,…. and there’s some wine.
yep, that’s another way to do it 🙂 – but sometimes you need a finished product quicker, or you’re working with less sweet fruit, or a variety of other scenarios 🙂
this may be a silly question, but should the fruit be washed? Will the yeast be washed off since the natural yeast is on the skin of the fruit?
not a silly question at all 🙂 – a quick rinse is fine (it won’t dislodge most of the good bacteria) – just dont scrub the heck out of it 🙂 – though the lacto-bacillus is also present IN the outer layers of the fruit/leaf (not just ontop) so you should be right 🙂