Soaking Corks

Empty Bottles

A five-gallon carboy holds enough to fill 25 750ml bottles.

Siphon

Mulberry Wine

Per gallon:
4 pounds mulberries
4 cups of sugar
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 tsp acid blend
1 tsp pectic enzyme
1 campden tablet
Wine Yeast

Holy cats this is a full-bodied wine. It's the Cabernet of the backyard weed-tree wines. When I first bottled it I really couldn't drink the stuff. And so it sat untouched in my basement. A few years later it finally started to come around. At five years when the last bottle was gone It was still improving and had become quite palatable.

I have a mulberry tree in my back yard that must be forty feet tall or higher. At the height of a productive year the mulberries fall on the ground so thick that you might slip on them. And they stain everything they touch. The only animals that eat them are the birds, and they proceed to leave blue streaks on every surface in the neighborhood.

I lay sheets out on the ground and at peak can collect a gallon of mulberries each day for a week.

Urho's Greedy Grasshopper

Saint Urho is the mythical patron saint of Finland. As legend has it, when giant grasshoppers threatened to destroy all the grape vines in Finland, it took a giant Saint Urho swinging a giant pitchfork to chase them off.



My parents grew up in a Finish town in Central Minnesota, and each year on the 16th of March the town celebrates Saint Urho's Day.


When my father's father bought a farm from one of the original Finish settlers of the area, the farm came with a grape vine. My grandfather took a cutting of the vine with him when he retired and left the farm. My father took a cutting from this new vine.


The wine from these grapes is highly drinkable. I am guessing they might be Concord grapes, as the wine tends to taste a bit like Welch's.