What to do with last years hedgerow wine?

[HighHops]

It's not very often I venture in to the other brew section of the forum, but I've just found last years experiment in to hedgerow wines at the back of the shed and I'm not sure what to do with them.

Had a quick snifter! The two demi-johns of blackberry wine are beautiful, with medium sweetness. They've got an inch of pink sludge at the bottom of each one, so I'm about to rack them off to a bottling bucket to be left overnight for bottling tomorrow. Do they need to be left to mature in the bottle and if so for how long?

I've also got 4 gallon of elderberry, which is very dry. Too dry for me! Is there anything I can do with this? Is it ok to just add sugar after a year in the shed. I'm thinking that the yeast must be long gone and there should be no chance of the feremtation kicking off again. What do you guys think?

[Geezah]

i'd add a tsp of potasium sorbate first to make sure the yeast is dead.

You will find that the elderberry is still high in tannin and will need another year or so to mature to an apreciable bottle.

[oldbloke]

Do they need to be left to mature in the bottle and if so for how long?

If it tastes good, drink it.

You could use a non-fermentable sweetener on the elderberry, such as Splenda.
If you use sugar, you're supposed to use a Campden with the pot sorbate to avoid the dreaded geranium smell.
My elderberry wasn't too high in tannin, by some miracle, so have a taste of yours and see if it needs to be left for a while or if you can just neck it now.

[fatbloke]

Stabilise it (the hedge row), with sorbate and sulphite. Rack, then filter if you have one, and bottle.

The elderberry ? Pretty much the same, but I'd back sweeten to about 1.010 - then either bottle it or bulk store it.

[HighHops]

Right well this is what I did! I'm not set up for wine so I bottled the bramble wine with swing top grolsh type bottles. It's a real beauty! We had a bottle with dinner round at my dads on Thursday and it was bursting with fruit with that classic late after taste of hedgerow. Not sure what you mean by sorbate and sulphite. Will this wine get better over the next year if I preserve it and if I don't will it go off. I don't think I will get round to drinking that much elderberry and the tannin's just put me off, so I racked it off and gave the lot to my dad and told him it would mellow out over the next 12 months. I've made 15 gallon of beer in the last two weeks so I've got my hands full at the moment.

The blackberry wine is a cracker though! I've got 3kg of blackberrys in the freezer at the moment and I'm just wondering what to do with them. My blackberry porter was a beauty last year so I'm not sure.

[oldbloke]

Not sure what you mean by sorbate and sulphite.

Potassium sorbate stops the yeast. Sodium (or potassium) metabisulphite (aka Campden tablets) slows yeast down a bit, but is an anti-oxidation thing as much as owt.
Sorbate can give a geranium smell/taste if used without sulphite.
If you don't use them and the yeast hasn't quite eaten all the sugar, you may get a sparkling wine, or an exploded bottle.