Sauternes Style Wine
Members Recipe Class 19 2020 National
Supplied by Chris Pinnock

I’ve based this wine recipe on one from Bill Smith’s book Making Award Winning Wines at Home for two reasons. Firstly, Sauternes is a family favourite, particularly of my Grandfather who enjoyed a glass or two. Secondly, this recipe was developed by the Chiltern Masters in 1975, my birth year. Clearly it was a good year – at least for the development of good wine recipes. The method below is slightly involved but I know you all love a good challenge.

Ingredients
370ml White Grape Concentrate
225g Honey
1l Apple Juice
115g Strawberries
57ml Glycerol
595g Sugar
905g Rhubarb, chopped, rinsed in metabisulphite & frozen
Yeast, nutrients and pectolase
The recipe in Bill’s book recommends Gervin #6 yeast (strain 8906).


Method
1. Build up a yeast starter with the apple juice and yeast
2. Thaw the Rhubarb and press gently through a sieve to extract the juice into a fermentation bucket
3. Add the grape concentrate, sugar and starter to the juice fermenting at a volume of approximately 2.8l (5 pints)
4. When most of the sugar has been used, gently pasteurise the honey and strawberries and allow to cool
5. Strain the honey and strawberry mix, add to your favourite 1g/4.5l demijohn with the 2.8l of fermenting juice, add the glycerol and pectolase and ferment to dryness
6. When clear, stabilise if necessary and sweeten to SG 1020 with sugar rounding off with white grape juice or concentrate to SG 1030

Thanks to James Smith who helped me with the choice of recipe and to Bill Smith for allowing me to use it.

Return to Top of Page