Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Hi folks,

I just love my home made wine and sloe gin/vodka, have a few bottles that I was planning to take with me to Calgary. Is this possible??????

I know you can take shrubs and plants, but need to get a permit ( I'm sure I have read this somewhere), so how about Home made wines:confused::blink:

hope someone can help or advise,
many thanks'
Carl:thumbup:

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Our shippers wouldn't allow us to take any drink when they packed our container but I know some people have been able to.

As for plants, I got a permit to bring two plants with me. You can only bring certain plants but no soil. The permit was easy to get and cheap but the problem I had was that the plants have to be tested and I didn't have the time to get this done. I was originally told you just needed the permit but when the permit arrived and I read the samll print I found out the plants had to be tested for disease etc. If you need more info on this, let me know and I can find it out for you.

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Wines and alcohol you can only bring in 1 litre as an immigrant under your duty free status for bring in your goods. Any more and it has to be declared and appropriate duties will have to be paid on it. So it's probably not worth it unless you wish to pay Canadian level duties on the rest of it.

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

If it's home made, why would you want to bring it with you? I mean, simply make some more when you get here. Unless of course Orange Squash and Hair Straighteners are key ingredients.

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Do they have sloes here? ..... I was trying to explain sloe gin to some Canadian friends just the other day ...... :unsure:

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Well they sure as hell have gin. What else would you make it from?

Oh. Hang on. I'm mixing up sloe with juniper aren't I?

My excuse is I only buy the stuff for the OH to imbibe...never touch it myself.

Sorry.

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

I made sloe gin once ..... we could pick sloes in the hedgerows behind where we lived, and one year was a real bumper crop.

You have to prick them and half fill a jar with the berries, which are terribly sour. Then as I remember, you bung in a load of sugar and fill the jar up with gin and give it a shake. Then you leave it in a dark place and shake it every now and then.

I believe you are supposed to keep it for a year or something mad, but in our case we kept opening the jar to taste how the gin was doing ..... then the level had dropped rather alarmingly (funny that) and so we refilled the jar with gin every so often to top it up.

Eventually you get something like a sweet deep red liqueur ...... but ours was mostly gin! :p

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

<snip>

once you've decanted the sloe gin, keep the sloes (the gin flovoured ones) in the jar, add more sugar and then top it off with brandy, and repeat the process for sloe brandy

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Hi all,
I have quite a few bottles that I made over a year ago now. The longer you can leave it the better. Couple of friends, keep it for the minimum of 5 years, then start drinking it and I've got to say, it's bloody good:eek::rofl:

As for the Elderberry wine that I have made (again about a year old now), friends of my have said to make at least a one gallon batch, then bottle it and maybe try one bottle at three months old, then another at six and so on, but try to leave one for as long as you can. I have tried young wines and then tried a glass(or two) of an eight year old and wow the difference was brill, lovely stuff. I have read some where that elderberries have more vitamin c in them than black currents and a glass of elderberry wine a day, keeps many an illness away:eek::thumbup::thumbsup:

So this is the reason I want to bring some over with us.
Will have to find out if it's ok to bring a bottle every time someone comes into Canada, if so, will leave it with my MUM and Dad and everytime family come over, they can bring it in?????

I have made some Sloe gin and some Sloe vodka. The making process has been explained already, so give it a go, Will have to be when the sloes and elderberries are out, late Aug/sept.

I have done some research about sloes growing in Canada, they are of the Black thorn bush or tree. But nobody has actually got back to me and said "yes we have them". You usually find them along the hedgerows, here in the UK, so you would have to look in the woods in Canada.

We are hoping to settle in the Calgary area of Alberta, so might be a good chance of finding them there? And Elderberries?
If not, just wondering if you can mail order them, like you can over here?

Cheers for all this help, please keep it coming.

Oh we are coming to Calgary in March for two weeks, so I could put some in my case, so anybody fancy trying it, give us a shout:eek:

Cheers,
Carl:thumbup:

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

oh good idea, driver once more, will try that:p

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Last year we had a go at changing the recipes around and made a strawberry vodka, much the same way as doing sloe gin. It was really lovely and when we racked it off the strawberries were divided around our friends....needless to say no cream needed with these strawberries.:beer:

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Aahhh that sound good:p

Did you use gin or vodka?

No sloes around by you then? How about Elderberries?

ta ever so:thumbsup:

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

They are indigenous in Europe according to Wikipedia, and it also looks like they are found in NE USA according to this map.

btw, when picking sloes one should wait until after the first frost as the flavour improves, and they are less bitter (apparently!)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._and_sloes.PNG

Hmmm, not Canada though, so you'll have to investigate alternatives!

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

AAAaahhhhh bum! that's a pity.

I have been in touch with a few wine making outlets/shops, asking if you can order sloes, elderberries mail order? waiting for reply. Will let people know what they say if you like.

I have just found an old Plum port recipe, but need to get hold of some port yeast, so I have asked that as well.

cheers

Re: Home made wine, can I put in container
 

Just remembered another one we did and that was blackberry whisky....it was ready for Christmas and very warming flavour:beer: