I have just got round to bottling the cucumber wine which took me by surprise. Given the length of time for which it bubbled off melony aromas I thought that a lot of the bouquet would have been lost. It still smells gorgeous and it has those delightful cool curcubit flavours in it; most reminiscent of Midori or apple Martinis.
I modified a recipe I found for Marrow wine to make the cucumber wine and the original recipe had 5tsp of citric acid in it. I think cucumbers have a little more acidity in them than Marrows so they don't need quite so much. You can of course substitute lemon as suggested by Mike. The great thing about using lemons/orange in preference to citric acid is they contain some additional nutrients, its harder to go too acidic (sprinkling pure citric acid is easy to take too far) and lemons in particular do enhance the flavour of other ingredients. I didn't use any enzyme to break down pectin and the wine has cleared really well. Note that I steeped the cucumber in cold water and didn't use hot water. Heating can bring out the pectin; which is what you want in jam making but not in wine making.
Sadly this year I will not have a cucumber glut since the snails waged an extensive massacre on all seedlings. I have just managed to get a cucumber plant flowering so I don't think the plants will swamp me with cucumbers this year. However I am really appreciating having that cucumbery summer flavour captured in those bottles of wine from last year :)
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