Blackberry Brandy and vintage flower wine

Visiting some friends yesterday I was treated to two rather lovely and yet very different drinks.




The first was a flower wine. You may notice I am not specifying the flower. 30 years ago when this bottle of wine was made it grew in enough profusion that picking flowers in the quantity required was sustainable. I can’t currently recommend it as this plant is not so common now due to habitat loss. There will be other flower wine recipes forthcoming when plants begin to flower again in the spring. What was interesting was how well the smell and taste of an early summer day was caught in the old dusty bottle decades after having been made.



The second drink was Blackberry Brandy. The blackberries are not so luscious now that it is October. But if you see some on a dry sunny day it will be worth picking them. My friends had experience of making blackberry brandy in two ways. The first method was putting sugar, blackberries and brandy together and simply leaving them to soak for a few weeks. The second and recommended method was to very gently warm the blackberries in a pan with sugar until the sugar had just dissolved. Then adding this to the brandy to soak a few weeks before straining out the blackberries. You will know the mixture is ready for straining when the blackberries have lost their colour and the liquid is a rich dark purpley red. There is no weighted recipe; they used volume five parts brandy, three parts blackberries and one part sugar.