Pea Pod Wine

Every so often I run across a mention of pea pod wine, or a recipe in a book or magazine. Recipes are similar to most wines made from odd garden ingredients--the recipe calls for sugar, citrus fruits, and sometimes raisins. I am not a winemaker although I dabble a bit but I generally stick to cider and mead. That being said I am certain accomplished winemakers may cringe when reading about my process but most of the published accounts of pea pod wine seem very rustic, unrefined, and not all that sanitary. When I was younger my mother made a lot of wine but I was more interested in my fathers brewing than I was her wine making, now it seems I should have payed closer attention.

I would have loved to have more pea shells and I had been saving the majority of these in the freezer since I picked and shelled them from the greenhouse the previous spring. I was hoping for a bumper crop in mid-late summer, but it didn't happen. I tried to stretch my ingredients to get a 3 gallon batch making it worth my while even though the amount of peas I had were likely appropriate for half that amount.

The process I used was a combination of those I had read but in the end I just made it up as I went along in an order that made sense to me. Tasting Notes Here:

Pea Pod Wine Recipe:

Specifics:
3 gallon batch

Tea:
3 gallons water
2 lbs. pea shells
6 c sugar
Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes then cut heat adding the following:

1 orange thin sliced
2 lemons thin sliced
Cover and let steep for one hour. then strain into fermenter adding the following:

2 c raisins chopped
2 c dates chopped
1/2 c dried blueberries chopped
Added enough ice to bring to 3 gallons of liquid and cool to 70F and pitched yeast and additions:


Red Star Premier Cuvee, Dry Wine (blue packet)
1/2 tbs grape tannin
1/2 tbs fruit pectin
1/2 tbs yeast nutrient

Notes:
I also added a bag of mixed fruit (apples, grapes, strawberries) with the citrus fruit. It was leftover from a sangria party the night before at the bar and I didn't see any harm dumping it in. I only ended up with an OG of 1.042 but I assume the the sugars in the raisins, blueberries, and dates will raise the gravity to wine levels. Fermentation started almost immediately.