Elderberry galore

[Crickleymal]

Last year we spied a goodly number of elder bushes on one of our walks. So I sent my wife off to pick a few elderberries whilst I was at work. She came home with a bin bag full. That's one of those big black bin bags. It turned out to be enough to make 20 litres (after racking off) of elderberry wine which I've just bottled this evening.

We've found that corkable wine bottles are getting increasingly rare as a lot of wine is in screwtop bottles nowadays. These bottles' necks are wider than the corkable bottles so corks can't be used and I can't find a suitable stopper. Buying enough bottles is getting expensive so we have taken to reusing 2 litre plastic cider bottles. They seem to work well enough. The wine keeps for at least two years without any off tastes. In fact I found some 3 year old wine the other week that was just fine and dandy.

[frozenthunderbolt]

You would only need 2kg(ish) of strigged elderberries per gallon of wine unless you are planning on a 4-5 year storage to let it mature - a black bin bag full is likely to be a bit much, even across 4 gallons you may want to blend with a less full bodied wine before bottling to make it drinkable sooner.
This said, if you have the patience it will make an exceptional wine longer term.
Re Screw tops: If you are careful not to loose the little foil seal out of the cap, and you sterilize with metibisulfate these can be reused many times as well - some of mine are on their 6th use at least with no perceivable problem - you just need to remember to store upright, not lying sideways as you would for cork stoppered bottles.
With delicate white wines in particular it might be advisable to wax dip screw tops to help impede any oxygen that could cause deterioration of the wine, this said i've never bothered thus far.

[MKG]

PET is more permeable (for oxygen) than is glass - but that doesn't mean a lot in terms of bottling wine. Glass will keep oxygen out of wine for forty or fifty years, but there are very few wines which you'd want to drink at that age for reasons other than oxidisation. I'll go out on a bit of a limb - I think I'd bet that a good, high-alcohol wine would be OK in PET bottles for ten years or more as long as it's kept in the right conditions (cool, out of strong light etc. - a bit like a wine cellar). Apart from that, you're not going to get any cork spoilage. Or breakages.

Mike

[frozenthunderbolt]

PET is more permeable (for oxygen) than is glass - but that doesn't mean a lot in terms of bottling wine. Glass will keep oxygen out of wine for forty or fifty years, but there are very few wines which you'd want to drink at that age for reasons other than oxidisation. I'll go out on a bit of a limb - I think I'd bet that a good, high-alcohol wine would be OK in PET bottles for ten years or more as long as it's kept in the right conditions (cool, out of strong light etc. - a bit like a wine cellar). Apart from that, you're not going to get any cork spoilage. Or breakages.

Mike

Mike i would respectfully disagree.

I've had PET bottle go all floppy after just having 2-3% elderflower champagne in them - attributed in my mind to it leaking out the plasticizers. I definitely would not put high alcohol in pet and would not even leave low alcohol in i for more than a month or two tops

[MKG]

Yes, I remember you saying that, Jed. Very odd. The tech. data on PET claims high resistance to alcohol and mild acids. Maybe it's the particular manufacturer's PET formulation?

Mike

[Crickleymal]

All I can say is, that in my experience and that of a friend whose idea it was to use PET bottles for wine, in over 5 years collective experience we have not had any problems with the bottles. Mind you it's fairly rare for any of our wine to make it past two years. Any wine that is older than that in our house has been lost somewhere during a tidy up and has only come to light by chance.