Gorse Flower Wine

I've said before that we seem to be farming gorse and I'm always looking for a way to do something useful with it - why waste a resource?

So when I saw Gorse Wine on an episode of River Cottage, I was intrigued.  The timing was great too, all the gorse was in flower.

I found the recipe on River Cottage's website and went off foraging.

Three hours later, I hadn't picked anywhere near enough flowers for this recipe, my fingers were bleeding and sore from all the prickles I'd gotten from the gorse and it was time for me to head inside and start thinking about cooking dinner for the family.  So I adapted the recipe to suit the volume of flowers I had.  Mine ended up as:

Gorse Flower Wine



4 pints gorse flowers - approx 2 litres measured with a half-litre jug.
6 litres of water
680g raw sugar
Juice of 2 lemons - my lemons are rather small this year

Gorse flowers heating in pot.

5g sachet of white wine yeast - I had this in the fridge from a previous wine making expedition

Place flowers and water into a stock pot, bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 mins.  Add sugar and stir until dissolved.  Move into a large bucket or brewing barrel and add lemon juice.  When cooled to just above room temperature, add yeast.  Cover with cloth and leave to stand for 3 days.  Strain and pour into demijohn or brewing barrel with airlock.  Bottle when fermentations stops - roughly two weeks.

I'm glad I used a much reduced recipe - this small amount almost filled my stock pot, I wouldn't have had the capacity to do much more.  It smelled like freshly mown grass while it was sitting for those first three days.

Six bottles of Gorse wine on the bench

I make a habit of regularly having a wee taste while my wines are fermenting, I find it interesting to notice how much the flavour can change in even two weeks.  The bottled product tastes to me like a dry white wine, I'm not noticing the coconutty flavours that many people have talked about with this wine - but then again, I'm not a big fan of white wines.