After making two batches of apricot jam, and with our neighbours still offering more fruit, we decided to look for other methods of apricot preservation. One of my first ports of call is always Brian Leverett’s Winemaking Month by Month book. As usual it didn’t disappoint.

Leverett’s standard apricot wine recipe calls for sultanas to improve the body of the wine. However, he does offer a variation of the recipe which doesn’t use any sultanas, instead using more sugar than the standard recipe. Leverret says that wine made by this variation of the recipe lacks the body of the standard, but it allows more of the apricot character to come through.

Such good companions – apricots and sugar

We decided to try the variation of the recipe. If we had grown and preserved our own sultanas then I’d have loved to have included them. But my default position is always to try to use mostly homegrown (or in this case neighbour’s homegrown) produce, and to try to use as few shop bought ingredients as possible. However, I’ve come to learn that the best results come from following Leverett’s recipes to the letter. In this case he gave us the choice, so I opted not to include the sultanas.

Of course this argument doesn’t really add up, since we had to use more sugar, which was shop bought. But minced sultanas do make the must more difficult to syphon, which is certainly an argument in favour of the recipe variation. Of course the promise of more of the apricot character coming through just tips the scales in favour of the latter recipe.

The start of a delicious story – apricot wine must

So we followed Leverett’s recipe to the letter and after a week syphoned the must to a demijohn. After syphoning I had the opportunity to sample a small quantity and I must say it was delicious! Often there’s not much to speak of at this stage, as the flavours haven’t matured. It was still quite sweet (and the airlock has been going crazy since it’s been in the demijohn), but there was a hit of both alcohol and apricot – definitely a lot of promise in this wine. We’ll post back in a few months when we’ve tried it.

Homemade apricot wine fermenting in a demijohn