Gooseberry Sparkling Wine

As a celebration tipple on Christmas day we enjoyed cracking open one of my 2016 bottles of Gooseberry Sparkling Wine.

The wine itself was made using this recipe

http://www.carllegge.com/2014/02/currant-champagne-recipe-quick-fizz/


Instead of using mixed fruit I used just gooseberries.  The method is pretty simple, as you can see from his recipe, only 24 hours before pitching the yeast I used a crushed Campden tablet to kill any natural yeasts and bacteria and I also used pectolase.

After leaving them to ferment for a week, I sieved away from the fruit and transferred into a demijohn to carry on fermenting. Once the bubbles were slow I added the final batch of sugar in water solution and racked to a demijohn I racked the wine every month or so for about 3 months.

After this I siphoned the wine into used champagne bottles(thoroughly cleaned and sterilised). I added 1 tsp per bottle of regular sugar and sealed with champagne corks and cages. After this I left the champagne in a warm place for about 6 months to let the residual yeast turn the extra sugar into alcohol and cause bubbles.

I chilled the wine before serving and it was a great hit.