Ingredients
- 3 quarts dandelion petals*
- 1 gallon water
- 2 oranges, with peel
- 1 lemon, with peel
- 3 pounds sugar
- 1 package wine yeast or champagne yeast
- 1 pound raisins
Directions
- Collect the blossoms when they are fully open on a sunny day. Remove any green parts.
- Bring the water to a boil
- Put the flowers in a large crock or pot and pour the hot water over the flowers.
- Cover with a towel to keep dust out and let steep for three days.
AFTER 3 DAYS …
- Prepare the oranges and the lemon by zesting about half of the rind and peel off thee oranges and lemon and remove the rest of the peel in thin strips. Minimize the amount of white skin you leave on the peel since it is bitter and will give your wine a bitter taste.
- Peel the white skin off the fruit and then slice the oranges and lemon into thin slices.
- Add the lemon and orange zest to the flower-water mixture and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, strain out solids. Dissolve the sugar in the flower water. Allow to cool to room temperature.
- Add the yeast, orange and lemon slices, and raisins to the liquid. Put everything into a crock (or wide mouth carboy with airlock) to ferment. I cover my crock with a clean cotton towel held down by a rubber band to keep dust and bugs out. Stir daily with a wooden spoon or non-reactive stir stick.
*For dandelion wine, use the yellow flower petals only. Leaving the petals attached to the green base of the flower will result in a bitter, unpleasant wine. Also use 3 quarts of loosely packed yellow dandelion petals. not 3 quarts of flower heads…3 quarts of petals only.
If you don’t have enough dandelion petals from one picking, go ahead and freeze the petals until you have enough