At my parents’ place in Alfalfa, they have a wild plum tree that produced fruit for (I believe) the first time ever this year. They were small, golden fruits that were terrifically sour as they grew, but ripened and turned a deep pink-purple and ended up being rather sweet.

They picked a bunch of the plums, and then picked a bunch more for me (at my request): I ended up with almost four pounds of them, many very ripe! I debated for a bit on what to do with them and decided to make wine.

I found a plum wine recipe online and went with it (the "basic" recipe at the top of the page); for a gallon of wine, it calls for three to four pounds of plums which worked out just right (four for sweet plums, three for wild—I compromised and used all four-ish pounds). The pitting of the plums was the biggest chore, as many were (over)ripe and almost falling apart, and many others were very small. The rest went fairly smoothly: making wine is easy.

That was about a week ago, and I racked it from the bucket to a gallon-size glass jug tonight for secondary fermentation. I’ll rack it again in about three weeks, and then again about three months after that. Then, of course, I’ll bottle it and (according to this particular recipe) age it for another six to 12 months.

(Making wine is easy—I didn’t say it was quick!)

No idea how the final product will turn out, but I did taste the sample I drew for the hydrometer reading: still fizzy with fermentation and a bit yeasty (especially the smell), it was fairly sweet and—if not for the yeastiness—would make a tasty drink right now.

Nothing to do now but shove it away in the the closet and be patient.