Cherry Trees from mature tree root systems

[steev]

One must prioritize. You make wine in the late Summer/Fall; you graft your trees in the late Winter/Spring, sipping the wine cautiously ( that grafting knife is sharp! ).

Once I go live on the farm, I intend to get back to wine-making, but grapes are iffy there, so I'm more optimistic about cider, perry, and applejack. Elderberry wine should work well there.

[mnjrutherford]

We might get enough elderberries to make wine this year. The blackberries will be producing well also, but I want to use them for jam this year.

[steev]

It was a neighbor's wild blackberries that got me into winemaking long ago. He said I could have them, and in a couple of weeks, I picked enough to start one and a half gallons working, eventually producing ~one gallon of wine. The color of the first glass was enough to hook me.

I like elderberry, although I'd say it's definately not a drinking wine, but very nice as an aperitif.

[mnjrutherford]

My best friend is half Korean and she introduced me to soju, Korean "white" whiskey. She is also my blackberry picking partner. The last time we picked blackberries together in a creek in Cupertino, we crushed the berries and used some of the juice for cobbler and some for jam. Then, we wrapped the pulp in cheese cloth and covered it with soju and allowed it to rest for a month. The resulting liquor was a beautiful thing. Sweet without being cloying, the blackberry flavor standing out distinctly. The color was a crystalline black purple. We served it over vanilla ice cream. It was wonderful!

[steev]

While fiddling on the farm Sunday, I noticed sprouts from the rootstock of a cherry tree, figured I'd better get them off, so I grabbed them and they ripped off pretty easily: five rooted suckers of vigorous Spring growth are now potted up for growing on to graft onto this Winter or next.