Dandelion Wine
When Jeff and I were in France last year (2025) staying at a friends' in Curemonte, in the Dordogne Valley, it was all walnuts and Rosè and cheese... but there was a little shop in the village that sold this! Dandelion Wine! I'd only ever made my own so had nothing to compare it to. That happens often in fermentation doesn't it? We often haven't even tasted the thing or actually - anything like the thing - we are making. Nothing to compare it to. It tasted good. Lemony. Giving Straw...like you could hear grass crunching underfoot. Feel the sun on your back. One time I made it and someone said 'cat pee'. So.. I hope those lovely tasting notes help. Apologies for the blurry photo but perhaps you'll get a sense of how relaxed we were. x
OK onto the recipe! The picking is hard work but poetic (see my Journal entry post on this, please). :)
Makes about 4 litres
This is wild fermentation in its truest form - you're relying entirely on the natural yeasts present on the flowers and in the air. No commercial wine yeast needed. Just patience and faith in the invisible world.
What you'll need:
- 4 litres (1 gallon) dandelion flowers - just the yellow petals, not the green sepals
- 4 litres water
- 1.5 kg sugar (raw or white)
- 2 oranges, zested and juiced
- 2 lemons, zested and juiced
- Small handful of raisins (optional, adds complexity and extra yeasts)
- Large pot
- Clean bucket or fermentation vessel
- Muslin or clean tea towel
- Patience
The work:
Day 1 - The Picking
Go out in the morning after the dew has dried but before the heat of the day. You want flowers that are fully open, bright yellow, vital. Pick only from areas you know haven't been sprayed with chemicals. You'll need about 4 litres of loosely packed flower heads.
Sit somewhere comfortable. Put on music or a podcast or just listen to the birds. Now comes the meditative part: pull the yellow petals from each flower head, discarding all the green bits. The green is bitter and will make your wine harsh. Just the sunshine-yellow petals.
This takes time. An hour, maybe more. Your fingers will turn yellow. Your back will tell you about it tomorrow. This is the bending-over part. The remembering-you-have-a-nose part. Don't rush it.
Day 1 - The Brewing
Bring the 4 litres of water to a boil. Pour it over your dandelion petals in a large, clean bucket or pot. Cover with a clean cloth and let it steep for 2-3 days, stirring once daily. The water will turn deep golden, like sunshine in liquid form.
Day 3 or 4 - The Feeding
Strain out the petals (compost them - they've given their gift). Pour the golden liquid into your pot and add the sugar, citrus zest, and citrus juice. Heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely. Don't boil - you don't want to cook off the delicate floral notes.
Let it cool to body temperature (around 20-25°C). This is crucial - if it's too hot, you'll kill the wild yeasts. If it's too cold, they won't wake up.
Pour into your fermentation vessel. Add the raisins if using. Cover loosely with muslin or a clean cloth - the wild yeasts need access to come and colonise, but you don't want fruit flies joining the party.
Days 4-14 - The Waiting
Now you wait. And watch. And listen.
Within 24-48 hours, you should start to see tiny bubbles forming. That's the yeasts waking up, starting their ancient work of turning sugar into alcohol. You'll hear a gentle fizzing if you lean close. The liquid will become cloudy as the fermentation gets active.
Stir it once a day with a clean spoon. Smell it - it should smell fruity, yeasty, alive. A bit funky is fine. Rotten is not (though this is rare if you keep everything clean).
After about 7-10 days, the vigorous fermentation will slow down. The bubbling becomes gentler. The liquid may start to clear a bit.
Week 2 - The Bottling
Strain the wine through muslin or a fine sieve into clean bottles. Don't fill them all the way to the top - leave some headspace. The fermentation will continue slowly, producing a little CO2.
Cap loosely or use airlocks if you have them. If you seal tightly too soon, bottles can explode (exciting, but messy).
Months 1-6 - The Maturing
This is where patience becomes your teacher. Young dandelion wine tastes... well, young. A bit rough. A bit sharp. Give it time.
"Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in."
Store your bottles in a cool, dark place. Check on them occasionally. After a month, taste it. After three months, taste it again. After six months, it will have transformed into something golden and smooth and surprisingly complex - honey notes, citrus, a whisper of flowers, a hint of funk from the wild yeasts.
This is wine made from what most people call weeds. Wine made by bending over and getting your hands dirty. Wine made with time and trust in invisible forces.
A note on wild fermentation:
Sometimes the wild yeasts don't wake up. Sometimes the fermentation stalls. Sometimes you get flavours you didn't expect. This is the nature of working wild - you're in conversation with forces you can't fully control.
If your fermentation seems stuck, you can add a pinch of commercial wine yeast to help it along. No shame in that. Even wild fermentationists need backup plans sometimes.
If it tastes a bit funky or vinegary, that's likely acetobacter (vinegar bacteria) getting involved. It won't hurt you, but it might not be delicious. Trust your nose and your taste buds.
Peering Through at Winter
Bradbury writes about what happens when you open a bottle of dandelion wine in the depths of winter: (it's more romantic than my tasting notes!)
"And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, colour sky from iron to blue."
This is what fermentation gives us. Not just probiotics. Not just flavour. But the ability to hold time. To capture a moment - a summer afternoon, a lawn full of dandelions, your hands stained yellow with pollen - and preserve it. Transform it. Turn it into something that will sustain you when the world turns cold.
Every time we lose a fermentation tradition, every time someone's grandmother dies without passing on her recipe or her methods, all the times we have anihilated a people or race, or shamed traditional foods, banned a food or drink, the world is bankrupted of that specific knowledge. That specific touch.
I guess this is why I am drawn to teach. Tell stories, write books or here on this site... not knowing if anyone will read it. And more romantically, why I bend over dandelion patches and remember I have a nose.
Not because fermentation is trendy or because probiotics are having a moment. But because these are practices that connect us - to our ancestors, to each other, to the invisible world of bacteria and yeasts that makes life possible, to the simple act of touching something and changing it into something like us.
Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher, Bradbury said.
But so is fermentation.
Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows - but there you are, thinking things through, alone with your dandelions and your buckets and your ancient, invisible allies.
There you are, doing work that women have done for thousands of years.
There you are, bending over, remembering you have a nose.
There you are, making wine from weeds.
There you are, holding summer in your hand.
