Strawberry Wine Recipe

Does anything scream 'summer' more than a glass of Strawberry Wine? And whilst homemade won't be ready to drink during the same summer in which you made it, when you do come to enjoy it the fragrance will transport you right back there. This Strawberry Wine Recipe is great for beginners. You don't have to wait years for it to be ready to drink and it is straightforward to make. If you grew your own strawberries to make it, well that's 'plot to glass' exciting. Or if you picked your own in a field, the fragrance will take you back to the field.

This is a reader-supported site and I am an Amazon affiliate. That means that if you purchase a product or service using my one of my links, the company compensates me at no cost to you. I only recommend books, products and services I personally use. And this is a bucket of strawberry wine in the making. The fragrance of crushed strawberries in a bucket is hard to beat.

Of course shop bought fruit works fine too. In fact when you walk into the supermarket on one of those days when they have boxes and boxes of strawberries reduced, consider turning them into wine. If the berries are slightly pappy looking (not mouldy) that's fine, you can freeze them until you're ready to make your wine as freezing only helps to extract more juice by breaking down the cell walls in the fruit. For that reason, freezing strawberries before turning them into wine is recommended. And if you don't have quite enough, freeze the ones you have until you find more to add to them.

Strawberry wine is a rather more exciting way to preserve these luscious fruits than jam, don't you think? And it still counts as preserving.

Strawberry wine clearing in a glass demijohn

Strawberry Wine Recipe

Makes 4.5 litres/6 bottles

It may be that you already have a 6 bottle winemaking kit such as the one below, which includes most of the equipment and some of the additives you need.

6 bottle wine Fruit Wine Starter Kit. The kit includes cleaner/steriliser, and the pack contains small sachets of ingredients needed to make a number of fruit wines plus some recipes too. But if you've made wine before you may have much of what you need already.

Ingredients

• 4lb/2kg ripe strawberries, the riper the better

• 3lb/1.5kg sugar

• 1 teaspoon citric acid

• Half teaspoon grape tannin

• 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient

• Half a sachet of white wine yeast

• Up to 4.5 litres of water. If you use a 5 litre bottle of water you could then turn the empty bottle into a spare demijohn

• Optional: fermentation stopper and Campden tablet (see recipe)

  
  

You will also need

• Cleaner/steriliser such as VWP or Milton

• 1 straining bag

• 1 x 5 litre food grade bucket with lid and bored hole, fitted with grommet

• a clean tea towel

• a standard 4.5 litre demijohn (with bored cap if it's a PET demijohn, a bored rubber bung if it's a glass demijohn)

• an airlock

• a stirring spoon

• a potato masher

• a syphon

• 6 wine bottles, corks (with corker if standard corks) and wine labels

Method

• Sterilise all equipment which will come into contact with the wine, using a cleaner/steriliser such as VWP or Milton.

• Remove the strawberry stems and wash the fruit.

• If you have time, freeze the strawberries for a few hours or overnight. This will help to extract the maximum juice from them.

• Put the strawberries into the straining bag and put the bag into the bucket.

• Mash the berries well with the potato masher. Do this whilst they're inside the straining bag, and the straining bag is in the fermentation bucket, so you don't lose any juice.

• Add the sugar to the bucket with 2 litres of water.

• Swirl the straining bag around in the sugar water mix to ensure it is well mixed.

• Tie/peg the top of the straining bag to the side of the bucket to keep the whole thing from falling in, ensuring the fruit is kept below the liquid surface.

• Cover the bucket with the clean tea towel to keep dust and fruit flies out, and leave for 24 hours.

• Raise the straining bag and tie it higher up so the liquid in the bag drains out, or tie on a chairback/similar. Leave the bag to drip its contents into the bucket. Alternatively you can squeeze the bag to get the strawberry juice out, but that may make your wine cloudy. 

• Remove the bag and discard/compost the strawberry pulp.

• Pour the liquid into the sterile demijohn. 

• Add citric acid, tannin, yeast nutrient and yeast.

• Top the demijohn up with water until the liquid level reaches the shoulders.

• Fit the airlock with water in it.

• Leave to ferment for at least a month. 

• If there seems to be a lot of sediment in the bottom, rack the wine after a month or so leaving the sediment behind and refit the lid and airlock.

• Leave for 2-3 months more.

• When you are confident fermentation has stopped and the wine has cleared, prepare to bottle. Optional: add a crushed Campden tablet and fermentation stopper to be certain.

• Bottle your wine.

• Label and leave to mature for at least 6 months.

  
  

Strawberry wine is best drunk young, as the beautiful strawberry colour, flavour and fragrance can deterioriate 12-18 months from the bottling stage. It will still be drinkable, just not quite as lovely. You'll be able to tell because the pinkness will start to change to brownness, as in the image below when I left it to see what happened. The answer is it's fine, just not as delicious as it was. So make sure you drink it early before it goes over.

Strawberry wine which has faded from pink to golden which means it's probably been waiting around too long before being drunk. Because some wines don't benefit from being left to 'mature' for too long, and strawberry is one of them. Still drank it though...

Want inspiration and recipes for Cooking with Wine?

Book recommendation:

If you're looking for more inspiration or recipes to cook with wine, The Wine Lover's Kitchen by Fiona Beckett is a beautiful book. Over 70 recipes that showcase delicious ways of cooking with wine, the magic ingredient.