Wine doesn’t have to come from grapes. In fact, our local elderberries, which are abundant, juicy and full of wild yeast, make an excellent and interesting country wine.

Making your own wine is a fairly simple process: Combine a fruit with a little water and sugar and eventually you’ll end up with a beverage something like a wine. However, with a little technique, you can alter the ratio of ingredients, yeast and fermentation time to create your own unique product.

Not a fan of elderberry? Just about any other juicy fruit will do as well. Other suitable local wild fruits to experiment with include currant, prickly pear, gooseberries, blackberries and wild cherries. You can also experiment with adding herbs and spices as well.

It is worth noting that fruits or berries that start with less sugar and water content will need a little extra of those added in.

While California does have its own native species of wild grapes, they are not as abundant and widespread as elderberry. Always keep moderation in mind when wild harvesting as fruits, berries, nuts and seeds are important food for local wildlife.

Chef Notes: Some country winemakers cook their fruit juice first to pasteurize it and then add a commercial yeast afterwards. This helps to control the fermentation process, but it kills any wild yeast on the fruit. (You’ll notice that elderberries have a white bloom on them—that’s wild yeast.) Other folks like to utilize the natural and unique flavors of wild yeast in their wine so only raw juice is used. Wild fruits just aren’t as sweet as the grapes used for commercial wine so it’s important to add some sugar to help feed the yeast and increase the alcohol content. What kind of sugar? White sugar is neutral in terms of flavor, convenient, affordable and is used most often in fruit winemaking, but you can also use honey, raisins or syrups (do not use artificial or no-calorie sweeteners). When using honey instead of sugar, you’re technically making a “melomel,” which is closer to a mead than a wine. But aside from the technical terms, both are quite tasty whatever you decide to call it.