It's been a great season this year for hedge fruit. Raspberries, wild strawberries and brambles have all done amazingly well, and we are right into the bramble season just now. By bramble, I mean the wild blackberry that is found on waste ground, although international readers may refer to many hedge fruits as brambles. You may wish to have a look at the wiki entry on brambles as it all gets confusing. I didn't know there were so many varieties.
Home winemaking has started to take off again, pioneered my small health food shops, such as my main supplier, Stirling Health Foods. Even the larger stores such as Tesco and Lakeland are getting in on the act, but you can't beat speaking to an expert, when it comes to getting started. Boots used to have a large part of their stores reserved for home brewing, but that went a long time ago. If you want to get into the hobby, you can get a starter kit for £35 which will make around 6 bottles. After that, most of the kit is reusable, so you could experiment with the free fruit that is bursting forth just now.
The best places to find brambles are railway embankments (disused preferably) or Victorian graveyards. If you happen to have a west facing railway embankment that borders a Victorian graveyard then you can pick a couple of kilos of fruit in about 30 minutes. Or so I am told....
Why not have a look at my recipe for bramble wine...
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