I'm interested in learning to make wine from readily available fruits like apples, peaches and some berries. I understand "balloon" wines were popular some years ago, but I can't find a recipe. Mary

-- Mary (sweep@gateway.net), January 29, 1999

Answers

If you'll e-mail me privately, I'll be happy to help you out.

-- HB (jimp7@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999.

Went surfing and found this useful site:

http://geocities.com/NapaValley/1172/plants.html

Making Wines from Wild Plants

In Stalking the Good Life, the late naturalist Euell Gibbons wrote about wild berries. "Actually," he wrote, "I begin picking berries about the time the last spring snow melts away." He then describes in one chapter a succession of harvests of wild wintergreen berries (teaberries), strawberries, red raspberries, black raspberries, wineberries, dewberries, blackberries, blueberries, huckleberries, squaw huckleberries (deerberries), and elderberries. Elsewhere in the book he describes harvests of wild barberries, black haws, cherries, chokecherries, cranberries, grapes, juneberries, wild raisins, squashberries, shadbush berries, serviceberries, sarvisberries, sugar pears, and sugar plums. These are just some of the berries -- but a sampling of what is out there -- growing in the wild and available to be harvested and turned into wine.

No matter where you live in the world, you live but a short walk or drive away from more edible wild plants than you probably ever imagined. Ancient man was successful as a species because he was capable of eating a very large variety of plants and animals. Many plants bear fruit or other components that can be made into wine suitable for just about any palate. On the pages that follow, I will be describing but a few of the thousands of wild edible plants in the United States and Canada which are suitable in one way or another for winemaking. Readers living outside this geographic area should not turn away. Many of the plants featured herein have relatives scattered all over the globe, and I have consistently tried to identify the genus (and species) of each plant featured so that distant relatives can be identified and recipes adapted to suit them. See "Adapting Recipes," below, for tips on how to do this. . . .

At the end of the text portions of this section, I have listed a few recipes for making wine from wild edible plants. This list is presently small, but will grow in time. Please check back from time to time to see how it has grown. If you want to see a particular recipe there that isn't, send me an email requesting it. I may not respond immediately, but I will respond.

-- HB (jimp7@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999.

Sorry, on reading that post it looks as if I'm the one with the wine from edible plants info--please look at the top of the last post where you'll find the link to the site with that info.

-- HB (jimp7@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999.

HB - Thanks for the fabulous site!! It's exactly what I was looking for plus you gave me a bonus about the edible plants. I had wanted information about that too. Thanks again and God bless. Mary

-- Mary (sweep@gateway.net), January 29, 1999.