Kupinovo Vino

the dark country blackberry wine of Serbia and the Balkans: ripe wild kupina fermented slowly to a deep, softly tannic ruby-black wine, drunk at the table and warmed against the winter

Origin: Serbia

From the journey of Blackberry.

In Serbia and across the Balkans the blackberry, kupina, is a fruit of the countryside and the smallholding, gathered wild from the Dinaric hills and grown in the garden beside the raspberry, and its most cherished form is kupinovo vino, blackberry wine. This is a true country wine, fermented from the ripe fruit rather than from the grape, and it belongs to the deep Balkan tradition of the domašnji, the home-made, in which every rural household keeps its own rakija still and its own demijohns of fruit wine in the cellar. Blackberry makes one of the finest of the fruit wines, deep ruby-black in the glass, softly tannic, and carrying the dark, brambly scent of the fruit; it is drunk young at the table, offered to guests as a mark of hospitality, and, in the cold months, gently warmed and spiced as a restorative, for blackberry wine is held across the region to be strengthening and good for the blood. It is joined in the Serbian home by the blackberry cordial and the fierce blackberry brandy of the still, but the wine is the fruit's most convivial form, the dark centre of the Balkan welcome.

Ingredients

  • 2 kg ripe blackberries
  • 1.3 kg granulated sugar
  • 4 litres water, boiled and cooled
  • 1 sachet wine yeast (and yeast nutrient), or a natural ferment
  • 1 whole lemon, juiced

Method

  1. Pick over and lightly crush the blackberries with clean hands or a masher in a large, sterilised fermenting bucket. Dissolve half the sugar in a litre of the just-boiled water, let it cool to lukewarm, and pour it over the fruit along with the rest of the cooled water and the lemon juice.
  2. When the must is at room temperature, stir in the wine yeast and nutrient. Cover the bucket with a cloth and leave in a warm place for 5 to 7 days to ferment on the pulp, pressing the floating cap of fruit down into the liquid twice a day.
  3. Strain the liquid off the pulp through scalded muslin into a sterilised demijohn, pressing the fruit gently to release the wine. Dissolve the remaining sugar in a little warm water and add it, then top up with cooled boiled water to the shoulder of the jar. Fit an airlock.
  4. Leave the demijohn in a cool, dark place for 6 to 8 weeks, until fermentation has finished and the wine begins to clear, the bubbling through the airlock slowing to a stop and a sediment settling on the base.
  5. Siphon the clear wine off its sediment into a clean demijohn or into sterilised bottles, taking care to leave the lees behind. Cork or seal, and mature for at least two or three months before drinking. Serve at cool room temperature, or warm gently with a little sugar and spice in winter.

Notes

Home wine-making rewards patience and scrupulous hygiene above all else; a Campden tablet added to the must a day before the yeast, and another at bottling, will guard against spoilage and is standard practice. The sugar quantity gives a medium wine of moderate strength; more sugar makes a sweeter, stronger wine, less a drier one. Warmed with a cinnamon stick, a clove or two, and a spoon of honey, kupinovo vino becomes the Balkan answer to mulled wine, drunk against the mountain winter.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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