Rhubarb Wine

There are two things that you have to know about to make good rhubarb wine: 1) Chop up your rhubarb stalks and freeze them in plastic bags for a few days before you make the wine. I really don't understand why this should make a difference, but it does. If you use fresh rhubarb the wine never comes out as good. 2) You have to have patience. Rhubarb wine can taste uninteresting at eight months and really good at ten months. You have to let it mellow. Use frozen cut up rhubarb. Put it in the primary fermentor (a "kitchen-size" clean plastic garbage can works really well) along with the sugar. Cover and let stand for 24 hours. Add the hot water, mix everything together and then strain out the rhubar . Put the liquid back in the primary fermentor and when it is luke-warm add the rest of the ingredients. Cover and leave it to ferment for three or four days. Then syphon the liquid into gallon jugs with fermentation locks. There will be a fair amount of sediment, so when the wine settles a bit (about a month) you will want to rack it. Be sure to top up the bottles. We bottle ours at about 6 months. This last year I made one batch of straight rhubarb and the other batch was mostly rhubarb with about a pound of green grapes crushed and thrown in as well. Both were entirely drinkable, but the one with the grapes added was definitely better.