Long, long ago, in a former saskatoon u-pick that is now more lawn than bush, a friend and I harvested saskatoons by the 5 gal pail and I made wine. Not your usual cooler-esque cheery saskatoon wine, but a heavy, dense, rich, viscous wine, aged with american white oak. That was way back in 2009. That vintage is now 3 … Read More
FROM LOCAL FARMS – En Santé Organic Winery & Meadery
A simple hard truth about living in Alberta: vinifera grapes don’t grow here. [yet]. As a self-professed wine snob, that hurts the feelings a little. For a time I felt pretty good considering the Okanagan valley ‘local enough’ to get my wines, but a recent drive reminded me that 14+ hours isn’t really all that local anymore. Not even all … Read More
A Wild Food & Wild Wine Pairing ‘Moment’
I just had an unexpected notable ‘moment’. I have long contemplated the concept of ‘what grows together goes together‘ when it comes to the game meats we hunt. It’s a reasonably undisputed culinary rule. So thinking of moose and elk, it has begged the question of pairing it with saskatoons, high bush cranberry, labrador tea, and other similar items you’d … Read More
Oak Tasting
I’m waiting for some wine samples of batch 2 to come up to room temp from cellar temp to do a tasting/assessment as they are all under different oak treatments at the moment. The two far ones have different toasts of oak going on. The last one has both toasts, but in twice the volume of wine. I’m trying to … Read More
Saskatoon Wine – 2009 Batch 1 Update
Batch 1 of 09 Saskatoon wine was bottled this week, and I figured it would be useful for other would-be-saskatoon-wine-makers to have some thoughts in the otherwise gaping void of online information about tackling this. First, I’m pretty sure this wine will mature nicely. For a long time, the wine had a tart cherry vibe that was awkward, nearly metallic, … Read More
Saskatoon Wine – 2009 Batch 2
Batch 1 Update: has been hangin’ with medium plus toast american oak for a week now, and is showing enough wood to come off in the next few days for this batch. I think. Reality is that I have no guidelines to work with. The infusion spirals are fully extracted at 6 weeks. Where prior to that is a good … Read More
Saskatoon Wine – 2009 Batch 1
As with quite a few other items lately, I’m posting about making ‘Saskatoon Wine’ because there seems to be a hole in online information about the topic. After doing some research, I realized that it’s partly because it’s very Canadiana to even call them saskatoons. Amélanche, juneberry, serviceberry, shadberry are more common names elsewhere. I’ll use the terms interchangeably, just … Read More