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5 from 35 votes

Rhubarb Wine Recipe

Use fresh rhubarb to make a clear golden dessert wine. Great for early spring rhubarb harvests.
Course Dessert, Drinks
Cuisine American, British
Keyword Rhubarb, Wine
Prep Time 2 hours
Cook Time 36 days
Total Time 36 days 2 hours
Servings 6 Bottles
Calories 120kcal
Author Tanya Anderson
Cost $30

Equipment

Ingredients

Fermenting

For after fermentation

To sweeten the wine

Instructions

Prepping the rhubarb

  • Wash the rhubarb sticks and cut them into half-inch or thinner slices. Place these pieces in a clean, sterilized tub and pour in the sugar. Stir it well, then cover the tub with a clean towel or plastic wrap and leave for 24 hours.
  • After that time, the sugar will have drawn the moisture out of the rhubarb, creating a rich syrup.
  • Bring four quarts of water to a boil, hold it there for five minutes, then let it cool to lukewarm. While it cools, make a large mug of strong black tea and let it cool, too.
  • Pour the lukewarm water over the rhubarb and sugar. Stir well to dissolve any of the sugar at the bottom of the tub. Pour the liquid through a strainer* into another clean tub. Discard the rhubarb pieces (or use them to make rhubarb pie).
  • Pour the tea into the rhubarb liquid.
  • If you want to know exactly what percentage of alcohol your wine is at the end, take a reading with a hydrometer. This is optional but will give you a better idea of what your wine is like in the end. You'll probably get a reading of about 1.1.

Initial fermentation

  • Next, add yeast* and yeast nutrient to the rhubarb liquid. Stir well then cover the tub with a clean towel and allow it to sit undisturbed at room temperature for five days. If you want to be more professional in this step, you can use a primary fermentation bucket with an airlock. Fermentation will be pretty violent in this stage though so it can get messy if the container doesn't have enough headspace.
  • At the end of the five days, rack the liquid through a sterilized siphoning hose from the tub into your clean demi-john. The way I do it is to set the tub on a kitchen counter and the demi-john on the floor. Place one end of the siphoning tube in the tub, about halfway deep, then suck on the other end until the liquid begins coming through. Hold the end of the tube over the demi-john's opening so that it flows inside. You could put it inside too, but be careful to not let the tube touch the demi-john. There could be germs from your mouth at the end. Alternatively, you can use an auto-siphoning tube.
  • As the liquid flows into the demi-john, adjust the hose in the tub so that it's able to get all the clean liquid out. Just ensure the tube doesn't suck up the mucky residue at the bottom of the tub. If a small amount gets in that's fine, but the less you get in the better.
  • Fill the demi-john so that there's no less than an inch of headspace from the top of the rhubarb liquid to the bottom of the bung that you'll insert in the next step. You'll likely have less liquid than this at this stage, though.

Second Fermentation

  • Once the rhubarb liquid is in, fit a drilled bung into the demi-john's opening. Next, pour a little boiled, cooled water into the airlock's chamber before inserting it into the drilled hole in the bung. This airlock lets gas escape but keeps air and potential contaminants out.
  • Leave the wine to ferment in a place that's at least room temperature, if not warmer. A dark-to-dim place is also best, but I usually ferment wines in my kitchen and haven't had any issues. Light can potentially oxidize the wine, though.
  • The ideal temperature the wine should be at during fermentation varies depending on the type of wine yeast you're using. Look at the wine yeast sachet for this information. A good way to ensure that the wine is at the correct temperature is to stick an LCD thermometer strip on the demi-john.
  • When your wine gets fermenting, you'll know it by the blip, blip, blip, of the water in the airlock. Fermentation usually begins immediately but can take a few days to start. Keep an eye on the temperature of the room and be patient.
  • It will take about three to six weeks for fermentation to complete. By this time, the airlock may only be releasing a bubble of gas every minute or so or none at all.

Aging the Rhubarb Wine

  • Rack the wine from the demi-john into a clean tub using the siphoning hose. Like before, avoid sucking up the sludge at the bottom. It's basically yeast residue and will make your wine look and taste pretty bad.
  • Add a crushed Campden tablet. Crush the tablet and mix it with a small amount of water, then pour it into the wine. Campden tablets contain sodium or potassium metabisulfite, which kills off any remaining yeast, bacteria, and other microbes, prevents oxidization, and stabilizes the wine for bottling*.
  • Pour or siphon the wine into a clean and sterilized demi-john. You can use the same one you've been using if you clean it, but a second one that's prepped and ready to go is even better.
  • If the wine doesn't come up to the bottom of the demi-john's neck, top it up with simple sugar syrup*. Too much oxygen exposure during aging can adversely affect the wine's flavor.
  • Add the potassium sorbate now, too. If the Campden tablet didn't remove all the yeast, it will stop the yeast from multiplying and fermenting the sugar you've just added. Mix the powder with a small amount of water and pour it into the wine.
  • Fit a closed bung in the demi-john's opening and then allow it to age for six months or longer. During this time, it should be kept in a dark place at a constant cool temperature, and the demi-john should be stored upright.
  • After six months, the wine will be pale golden in color and likely quite dry (unless you added sugar syrup).

To Sweeten the Rhubarb Wine

  • Taste it, and if the wine's flavor is too dry for your liking, you can sweeten it with simple sugar syrup before bottling it. This is an optional step.
  • Dissolve 1 cup of sugar in 1/2 cup of boiling water. Boil for a few minutes to evaporate a little of the water. Allow this strong simple sugar syrup to cool to room temperature.
  • Rack the wine into a clean tub, then add the sugar syrup and the potassium sorbate* and stir well. The sugar will sweeten the wine, and the potassium sorbate will keep any remaining yeast from reactivating and fermenting this newly added sugar. If you leave out the potassium sorbate, your bottles of wine could eventually explode from the pressure of refermentation. Take another hydrometer reading if you'd like to work out the alcohol content.

Rack the wine into bottles

  • If you use the hydrometer to measure the liquid's specific gravity again, you can calculate the alcohol content. It's likely that you'll get around 0.998 in this second reading, making the wine about 13.39% alcohol (if your initial reading was 1.1). If you want to leave it this way, you can skip the next section.
  • Siphon the wine into clean and sterilized wine bottles and cork them. You could technically drink it immediately, but it's better to let it age for a month or longer.

Video

Notes

*Any rhubarb pieces left in the wine after this point may mold, so remove all that you can.
* I tend to add the yeast directly to the must, but you can also follow the instructions on the sachet and activate it with water and sugar beforehand.
*If you do not use a Campden tablet, you risk your wine losing its color, fermentation starting up again, and/or tasting terrible.
* Make a simple sugar syrup by dissolving 6 oz (170 g) white sugar in a pint (454 g) of boiling water. Allow it to cool to room temperature before adding.
* If you previously added potassium sorbate, you don't need to add it a second time.

Nutrition

Serving: 150ml | Calories: 120kcal | Carbohydrates: 5.5g | Protein: 0.1g