George Wright is a Past President of the EDWG.

This is not a recipe but follows what I did. Notes give suggestions on how I could improve it next time. Just for the record, you don't get nettle stings on your throat when you drink it.

I used:
• One twenty litre bucket of stinging nettles fairly densely packed
• Water (20L)
• Sugar
• One large Ginger Root
• White wine yeast
• Yeast nutrient (DAP)
• PMS
• Two 20L buckerts
• Two gloves
• One hammer

Process:
This pre-supposes you want to get rid of the nettles. Wait till after a good drop of rain to loosen the soil around the roots. Admire the green colour of the nettle patch. Vivid green...a pity to eliminate them, actually. Glove up! Up-root the nettles and cut off the roots for disposal. Place the nettles tops in two buckets (10L per bucket).

Note: If you like the green colour of nettles in your garden, top the nettles and leave the roots. As a rule of thumb, when making wine from things like nettles or grass only take the recent juicy tips, discarding the harder partly- lignified growth. If I do this again, I'll discard more of the lower parts of the nettles because I used all of the above- ground parts for my wine.

Heat 20L water and dissolve in sufficient sugar until the Baume is 12.5. (I wanted a wine of 12.5% alcohol). There is a scientific way of calculating this, but I'm always too lazy...you use the Brix scale on your hydrometer . Bring to boiling and pour 10 L boiling water containing the dissolved sugar into each bucket of nettles.

Smash the ginger root with the hammer and throw the pulp into each bucket. The amount of smashing required is directly proportional to the extent you think your friends need to be smashed to take up your offer to drink some stinging nettle wine.

A teaspoon of yeast should be enough, but I always tend to give it a bit more to be safe. Re-hydrate the yeast and when cool add some of the liquid from a nettle-bucket (after it has cooled down) to the re-hydrated yeast to start to acclimatise it to the environment of the nettle mixture.

Wait one day, but don't know why. Many country wine recipes say to wait one day. I suppose I could make a learned statement about improving the extraction, but I won't.

Add one heaped teaspoon of DAP to each bucket (2x4gm). Pitch the yeast into each bucket.

Note: After a couple of days I tasted the developing wine and decided that it could do with a bit more ginger taste so I added some commercial dried ginger-root flakes and this improved the taste to my fancy.

When the ferment starts to slow down strain off the nettles and ginger-root pulp and discard. Place the wine under an airlock to finalise the ferment.

After the bubbles stop burping, rack off and add PMS (1/2 teaspoon to each bucket – 1.5gm) to inhibit any subsequent ferment in the bottle. Sweeten to taste.

Note: I sweetened with sugar but next time I might try glycerol (food-grade) for better mouth-feel as well as taste.

Bottle and label.

Note:  I pity the commercial winemakers who are required by law to insert voluminous information on their labels. I feel unconstrained and have fun with each wine I make. In this case I made a label using an ancient form of Japanese poetry, Haiku. My interpretation of the essentials of the modern form of Haiku is that it is structured around three lines of verse in simple language with the syllables sounding pleasant. Each poem must have two unrelated subject areas and the Haiku is achieved by the listener relating those two subjects. I think I achieved a double Haiku with the poem on my label:

Stinging Nettle
Weed the garden
Cheers

Recommendations for use of Stinging Nettle Wine:
Drink with bickies and Gouda cheese. It's sometimes difficult to match some Asian foods with wine. This one should go well with an Asian dish with a ginger-base flavour.