Bottling Season

Tis the time to bottle the blackberry! In late summer I picked a ton of wild blackberries and began brewing a batch of blackberry wine. It's finally done fermenting and has fallen clear. I love the color. It smells like fresh blackberries. It's not a sweet wine, but I did add a little extra sugar to accentuate the blackberry flavor. I tried to stop fermentation on this batch at 11%. The yeast were having no part of my plan. Despite two efforts to kill 'em all off with sulfur dioxide...they kept eating the sugars and producing alcohol. The did so until they were eventually poisoned by their own byproducts (the alcohol). Alcohol starts to becomes poisonous to the particular yeast I used at around 14%. The little buggers plodded on until the A.C. hit 15%, and then they finally died off and settled to the bottom of the carboy leaving me with really strong, really dry wine. I siphoned it off the sediment and added back some of the sugar that the little guys had devoured. Last night I bottled a portion of it. Look at that color! This is the first batch of wine I've made from actual fruit as opposed to juice or a kit. As far as non-kit wines go, I think it's my best work yet!