Dandelion Wine Recipe

Dandelion wine captures the very essence of summer in a bottle, and it’s one of those old-fashioned recipes that deserves a spot in your cellar. This recipe is adapted from the Foxfire Books, and I’ve been making it more than 15 years.

Making dandelion wine goes back centuries in European folk tradition, and early settlers brought the practice to America where it became a staple of rural homesteads.

This sweet, floral wine has subtle notes of honey and citrus, and if you’ve ever wondered what sunshine would taste like if you could sip it on a cold January evening, this is pretty close. My recipe is adapted from the Foxfire Books, those wonderful collections of Appalachian folk knowledge that have been inspiring homesteaders for generations.

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If you’d prefer to use honey instead of sugar, you can make dandelion mead instead, which has even more body and complexity.

Just be sure you have actual dandelions before you harvest. I’ve seen plenty of people mis-identify coltsfoot or hawkeye blossoms as dandelions, and those are not tasty at all. This guide to identifying dandelions and avoiding lookalikes will keep you on track.

Notes from my Kitchen

My husband and I made our very first batch of dandelion wine together on our first date, a full 5-gallon batch that we fermented and bottled that spring. I’ll tell you what, there’s plenty of courting you can do while sitting across from each other cleaning dandelion petals for hours on end. By the time we’d finished separating all those tiny yellow petals from the bitter green bits, both of us knew we had something.

We’re still drinking a bottle of that wine every year on our anniversary, 15 years later, with just 5 more bottles left to go. Every sip takes me right back to that warm spring afternoon, sitting on the porch with a bowl of dandelions between us, falling in love over the most old-fashioned project imaginable.

Ingredients for Dandelion Wine

Like all homemade country wines, dandelion wine is really just about creating a balanced fermented beverage with enough sweetness to be tasty, enough acidity to add bright flavor, and enough body to make it feel like a proper wine. The dandelion petals bring the flavor and color, and the other winemaking ingredients fill out the recipe with a balance of acidity, sweetness and body.

• Dandelion petals – You’ll need about a quart of cleaned petals for a one-gallon batch, which comes from roughly 3 to 4 quarts of whole flower heads. Only use the yellow petals because the green sepals underneath have a bitter, milky sap that will ruin the delicate flavor of your wine. Fresh or frozen petals both work well, just clean the petals before you freeze them. Dried petals tend to lose flavor, so freeze them until you have enough.
• Sugar – The dandelion petals themselves don’t have nearly enough natural sugar to ferment into wine, so you need to add sugar for the yeast to convert into alcohol. About 3 pounds (5 to 6 cups) per gallon gives you a nicely balanced wine with some residual sweetness. The yeast eat most of this sugar during fermentation, so the finished wine won’t taste as sweet as you might expect. To convert the recipe to a homemade honey mead, substitute honey which adds its own lovely character.
• Water – This creates your wine base. If your tap water tastes strongly of chlorine, use filtered or spring water instead since chlorine can inhibit your yeast.
• Oranges and lemon – The juice and zest from citrus serves double duty here. First, it provides the acidity your yeast need to ferment properly (flower petals are neutral pH on their own). Second, the bright citrus notes complement the sunny flavor of dandelions beautifully. Three oranges and one lemon per gallon is the sweet spot. Don’t skip it, since the wine needs acidity for safe fermentation.
• Wine yeast – Different yeast strains produce different flavors and alcohol levels, so the strain you choose actually matters quite a bit. See the yeast section below for my recommendations.
• Yeast nutrient – Here’s something a lot of people don’t realize: yeast can’t survive on sugar alone. They need nitrogen and other micronutrients that grapes provide naturally but flower petals don’t. Without yeast nutrient, your fermentation might stall or produce off-flavors. You can substitute a handful of raisins (the yeast will get nutrients from them), but powdered yeast nutrient gives more consistent results.

You won’t need tannin powder for dandelion wine since we’re going for a light, delicate floral character rather than a full-bodied wine. The citrus provides all the structure you need.

Equipment for Dandelion Wine

Beyond your ingredients, you’ll need some basic winemaking equipment:

• Wide-mouth glass carboy or fermentation crock (the wide mouth is essential for flower wines since you’ll be fermenting with petals in there, and they’re much easier to clean out afterward)
• Narrow-neck glass carboy for secondary fermentation
• Airlock and rubber stopper to seal the container so CO2 can escape during fermentation, but contaminants can’t get in to turn it into vinegar
• Auto-siphon for moving the wine to a clean container to leave sediment behind, and for bottling.
• Wine bottles, corks, and corker (or flip-top Grolsch bottles for small batches)
• Brewing sanitizer to keep everything clean

If you’ve ever tried to clean flower petals out of a narrow-neck carboy, you’ll understand why I’m so insistent on the wide-mouth option. Those petals will glue themselves to the inside of the neck and you’ll be scrubbing with a bottle brush for ages.

Start with a wide mouth carboy until the petals come out of the container, then transfer to a narrow neck if possible to minimize the surface area in contact with air during the next stage of fermentation. (A wide mouth carboy will work for both in a pinch.)

How to Make Dandelion Wine

The process here follows the same basic method as any small-batch fruit wine or flower wine. If you’re brand new to winemaking, I’d recommend reading through my beginner’s guide to making homemade wine first, which walks you through everything in more detail. For mead variations with honey, check out my guide on how to make mead.

Harvesting and Cleaning the Petals

The real work in making dandelion wine isn’t the picking. It’s the cleaning. You need to separate just the yellow petals from the bitter green sepals underneath each flower head, and there’s really no way around the fact that this takes a while. A quart of cleaned petals takes about an hour of patient work, so plan accordingly and maybe enlist some help.

Kids are excellent dandelion pickers, and I’ve successfully bribed mine with promises of dandelion ice cream, dandelion cookies, and dandelion gummy bears over the years. There’s a reason I have so many dandelion recipes and specifically, dandelion flower recipes in my back pocket, and that reason is wine.

The simplest method starts by breaking the dandelion flower in half (vertically, through the stem). Once it’s open like that, it’s easy enough to pull out the petals and discard the green sepals.

Mixing the Must

This recipe uses a cold infusion method, which preserves more of the delicate floral flavor than making a dandelion tea first. Bring your water and sugar to a boil on the stove, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely, then let it cool to lukewarm.

Place your cleaned dandelion petals in your sanitized wide-mouth fermentation vessel along with the citrus juice and zest, then pour the lukewarm sugar water over everything.

Add the yeast nutrient and stir to combine.

Pitching the Yeast

Once your must has cooled to room temperature (anything below 90°F is fine), rehydrate your yeast by sprinkling it into a small amount of warm water and letting it bloom for 5 to 10 minutes.

Pour the activated yeast into your fermentation vessel, then top off with enough water to fill the carboy while leaving about an inch of headspace for bubbling.

Seal with an airlock.

Primary Fermentation

Within a day or two, you should see active bubbling as fermentation kicks in. Let the wine ferment with the dandelion petals in there for about 10 to 14 days.

The petals will float to the top, and that’s perfectly normal. If they bubble up into your airlock and clog things up, just remove the airlock, clean it out, and put it back on.

Racking to Secondary

When the bubbling slows down (usually after 10 to 14 days), it’s time to rack the wine into a clean narrow-neck carboy for secondary fermentation. Scoop the floating dandelion petals off the surface first, then use your siphon to transfer the liquid while leaving the sediment at the bottom behind. Pop an airlock on top and stash it somewhere cool and dark.

Let it ferment in secondary for at least 6 to 8 weeks. Check the water lock periodically to make sure the water hasn’t evaporated.

Bottling and Aging

Once secondary fermentation is done and your wine has cleared, give it a taste. If it’s too dry for your liking, you can backsweeten by stabilizing the wine first with a Campden tablet and potassium sorbate, then adding simple syrup to taste.

Siphon the wine into clean bottles, leaving the sediment behind one more time, and seal with corks or flip-top lids. Try to let your dandelion wine age for at least 2 months before drinking, though honestly, 6 months is even better. The flavors really smooth out and integrate with time, and by January you’ll have liquid sunshine in a glass just when you need it most.

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4.41 from 143 votes

Servings: 20 glasses (1 gallon, about 4 bottles)

Dandelion Wine

By Ashley Adamant

Dandelion wine captures summer in a bottle with its sweet, floral flavor and subtle honey notes. My recipe is adapted from the Foxfire Books, and I've been making it for 15 years.

Prep: 1 hour hr

Fermentation Time: 60 days d

Total: 60 days d 1 hour hr

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Equipment

• One Gallon Wide Mouth Carboy
• One Step Sanitizer
• Winemaking Auto-Siphon
• Wine Bottles
• Wine Corks
• Bottle Corker

Ingredients 

1x2x3x

• ▢ 3 quarts water, approximate, more to fill
• ▢ 3 pounds sugar , roughly 5 to 6 cups
• ▢ 1 quart cleaned dandelion petals, packed, from roughly 3-4 quarts blossoms
• ▢ 3 medium oranges, juice and zest
• ▢ 1 medium lemons, juice and zest
• ▢ 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• ▢ 1 packet wine yeast, see notes

US Customary – Metric

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

Instructions 

• Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a saucepan. Stir to dissolve the sugar and cool to lukewarm.
• Place the dandelion petals, citrus juice and zest into a one-gallon fermentation vessel. Add the yeast nutrient and pour the lukewarm sugar water over the top.
• Dissolve a packet of champagne yeast or other wine yeast in lukewarm water. Allow it to stand for 5 minutes to rehydrate and then pour it into the wine. Top off with a bit of extra water to fill the carboy, but be sure to leave at least an inch of headspace.
• Cap with an airlock and ferment for 10 to 14 days, or until fermentation slows significantly.
• Scoop off the floating dandelion petals, then siphon the wine into a clean container, leaving the sediment behind. Allow the wine to ferment in secondary for at least 6 to 8 weeks, checking the water lock periodically to ensure the water hasn’t evaporated.
• Bottle the dandelion wine in corked wine bottles for longer storage, or flip-top Grolsch bottles for small batches you’re not planning on storing long.
• Allow the wine to age in the bottle at least 2 months before drinking, ideally 6 months or more. During aging, keep bottles somewhere cool like a basement or closet on the north side of the house (65 to 68 degrees F is ideal, but room temp is fine).

Notes

Choosing Yeast: Different yeasts produce different flavors and sweetness levels. Red Star Cote des Blancs is my top pick for dandelion wine because it’s a slow fermenter that preserves delicate floral notes and has a lower alcohol tolerance (12-14%), leaving more residual sweetness. Lalvin D47 adds fruity and floral character with hints of spice (15% tolerance). For a drier wine, use Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast (18% tolerance). One packet treats 5 gallons, so use about 1 teaspoon per gallon. Never use bread yeast.

Cleaning Dandelion Petals: Only use the yellow petals. The green sepals underneath have a bitter, milky sap that will ruin the delicate flavor of your wine. This is tedious work, but it’s absolutely essential. Plan on about an hour to clean a quart of petals. Freeze cleaned petals if collecting over multiple days.

Small Batch Option: Divide the recipe by 4 for a one-quart batch using a mason jar and fermentation kit. Use only 1/4 packet of yeast for a quart batch.

Mead Variation: Substitute 3 pounds of honey for the sugar to make dandelion mead. Honey takes longer for yeast to digest, so expect 2 to 4 months in secondary instead of 6 to 8 weeks. The finished mead will have more body and complexity than the sugar-based wine.

Backsweetening: If your finished wine is too dry, you can backsweeten it. First stabilize the wine with 1 Campden tablet and 1/2 teaspoon potassium sorbate per gallon to prevent refermentation. Wait 24 hours, then add simple syrup to taste. Rack again before bottling.

Cold Infusion Method: This recipe uses a cold infusion, meaning the sugar water is cooled to lukewarm before adding to the petals. This preserves more of the delicate floral flavor than making a hot dandelion tea first.

Aging: Dandelion wine tastes rough when young. Give it at least 2 months in the bottle, though 6 months or longer is ideal. Store bottles somewhere cool and dark, like a basement or closet on the north side of the house.

Yield: Makes approximately 1 gallon (4 standard wine bottles, about 20 glasses).

Nutrition

Serving: 1glass, Calories: 166kcal, Carbohydrates: 8g, Protein: 0.4g, Fat: 0.04g, Saturated Fat: 0.01g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.01g, Monounsaturated Fat: 0.005g, Sodium: 10mg, Potassium: 177mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 4g, Vitamin A: 45IU, Vitamin C: 13mg, Calcium: 26mg, Iron: 1mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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