Rosemary

[Ratty]

Just wondering if anyone else has tried making wine from rosemary leaves. Have loads of it in the garden and I thought that I would give it a try.

May pot disill some of it later to see what sort of brew it makes.

Anyone done it? Any tips?

[blanikdog]

I made Oak Leaf wine way back in the 1970's and won first prize with it in our winemakers show.

I made five gallons and use a bucket full of young leaves and poured boiling water over them. The smell was unbelievably divine. I doubt if you would need that much rosemary. I forget how much sugar I used, and can't find my old notes, but I reckon if you made it up to 1.080 sg it would be close. I think I also added some lemon. I would have added nutrient as there isn't much there for the yeast to feed on.

Be interesting to see what happens as we also have a lot of rosemary. Meanwhile I'll continue the hunt for my notes as I have 50 pounds of honey to dispose of - the bees are working well at the moment and will go all summer - and I can't remember my old Mead recipe. The trouble with bee keeping is that one gets so much honey that all you can't possibly eat or sell it all, so the last resort is to turn it into booze. This produces another problem in that you simply change the problem into too much booze.

blanik

EDIT: I just remembered that oak leaf was a fairly 'thin' wine and I added a handful or so of raisins to give it some guts. More when I find my notes.

[Ratty]

What a great idea - I intend to try the oak leaf in the spring. Sounds really interesting. I've come back to this after years; the most interesting white I have made this season - and it's drinkable now - is marrow and ginger. Really good. We had a similar problem with marrows to yours with honey!

I have actually put honey in with the rosemary instead of sugar, so it will be a kind of mead I guess, on the basis that rosemary honey is very good! Smells interesting - I have left it steeping now two days - will take it out tomorrow I think. Have put some prunes in mine for a bit of depth (and a tea bag for a short time!)

All interesting stuff eh?

[sparky marky]

its strange you should mention this...about 3 weeks ago i had the exact same idea! rosemary wine!

im not sure its the sort of thing a person would really like to drink since rosemary is such a pungent herb but i figured it would make a brilliant cooking wine (especially for lamb!)

this is what i did:

i stripped the tiny leaves off a supermarket sized shopping bag full of rosemary stalks (stalks are full of sap and bitter tastes!)
boiled the leaves up in a big pot with about 2 litres of water to make a strong herb tea
then i added 500g chopped raisins and a carton of white grape juice along with about 1.3kg sugar and poured this into a primary.
the next day i added the yeast and some nutrient
after 3 days i strained it all into a 1 gallon demijohn and topped it up with water.

3 weeks on it has just finished fermenting so i took a small taste yesterday and it has a very strong rosemary flavour. As i thought it will probably be very good as a cooking wine but i will probably still keep a bottle back to give drinking it a go in a year or two.

[Ratty]

Very interesting - virtually the same recipe. I left the rosemary leaves (not stem: the same) to maccerate for a week (didn't boil them). Added zest and lemon juice (2 I think) and also put a teabag in for 1 hour. I alsoo added 1 tsp of citric acid.

Mine has not quite finished fermenting yet - I'll ferment it out to <= 1 SG (add sugar back if I need to). Have had a prelim. taste - interesting / unusual taste - I think it it going to be very drinkable.

I may distill a couple of bottles too!

Now I am making my next obscure wine from a load of fennel in the garden that needs finishing! I have used the ferny part and stems, not the root. (That has been put in the freezer to eat!) Smells like pastis!

[Ratty]

Sparky Marky - just noticed your interest in mead and it has just made me remember the other thing I did with the Rosemary wine - I used honey instead of sugar - so it will be a sort of mead. I'll let you know how it does.