Flower wines take the flavor and aroma of fresh edible flowers and incorporate them into a homemade wine with unforgettable flavor.  I’ll walk you through how to make homemade wine from scratch, using any edible flower.

Summertime absolutely stunning here in Vermont, but it’s painfully short.  We have a frost-free growing season of right around 100 days, which means that every last bit of summer splendor is packed in a short three-month period.

All of those beautiful flowers and their intoxicating aromas come out at once for a short bit, and I’m always looking for more ways to enjoy those summer moments a bit longer.  We make flower jellies from many of the flowers here, but there’s only so much toast you can eat. 

Flower wine, on the other hand, is perfect for sipping year-round, and it’s extra special when you’re snowed in during a long cold January.

My goal here is to walk you through the process of making wine or mead from any edible flower, and also to point you in the direction of further resources if you want to dive deeper into the craft of making homemade flower wines. 

Since many edible flowers are also technically “herbs” with mild medicinal benefits, you might consider taking The Craft of Herbal Fermentation from the Herbal Academy of New England.  They cover wine, mead, kombucha, lacto-ferments, and more in an easy-to-understand online course with plenty of recipes.  All of the information discussed there would also apply to flower wines, as the processes are largely the same.

If you’re new to winemaking, I have a winemaking series that walks you through all parts of the winemaking process.  If there’s something you don’t understand in this guide to making herbal wines, you can refer to any of these more in-depth guides:

• Beginners Guide to Making Fruit Wines, where I take you through all the steps in the winemaking process.
• Small Batch Winemaking can be done for micro-batches, making as little as 1 bottle of wine at a time, and the process and equipment are a bit different with super tiny batches.
• How to Make Mead (Honey Wine) is mostly the same, but there are some particularities when working with honey.
• Equipment for Winemaking, which covers all the durable equipment you’ll need to make your first batch (besides your ingredients).
• Ingredients for Winemaking, which covers all the other things you’ll need (besides yeast).
• Yeast for Winemaking can get complicated quickly, and there are dozens of common strains (and hundreds of obscure ones).  Picking the right one is actually pretty important, but I’ve broken them all down for you.
• How to Make Wine from Grapes, though not necessarily for beginners, but everyone always asks about this one first!
• Winemaking Recipes can be hard to find, but I’ve put together a list of more than 50 to get you started.
• Meadmaking Recipes are even more obscure, but I’ve got you covered there too.

Ingredients for Flower Wines & Meads

The ingredients for making a basic flower wine or mead are quite simple, and not all that different from making fruit wines.  Flowers are used for flavoring, and also sometimes for their medicinal benefits, but the majority of the fermentable sugar comes from honey or plain sugar.  Since the flowers generally aren’t acidic or tannic like fruits, you’ll also need to add lemon juice (or acid blend) and tannin powder (or black tea). 

Lastly, you’ll need a bit of yeast nutrient powder to feed the yeasts, as they can’t live on sugar alone, and they need the micro-nutrients that grapes would provide if you were making grape wine.

The basic recipe for a herbal or flower wine is as follows:

• 1 cup to 1 quart of edible flowers
• 5 to 6 cups sugar (or 3 lbs honey)
• 4 to 6 cups white grape juice, optional
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1/8 to 1/4 tsp wine tannin
• 1 packet wine yeast

I’d suggest referring to my guide on ingredients for winemaking if you’d like to learn more about why each ingredient is important and what you can substitute if you don’t have that specific thing on hand. 

Still, I’ll cover the basics for each ingredient so you better understand the winemaking process.

Flowers

The type and amount of flowers to use in winemaking depends on your goals.  Some flowers have a delicate flavor, and you’ll need a good bit to really taste them.  Other flowers are more intense, and you’ll want to be a bit more reserved.

As a general guideline, you need about 1 quart of cleaned flower petals to make a gallon of wine.

When you’re working with fragrant roses or lilacs, a quart is about right.  With something more intense like lavender, you’ll want to go with about a cup of flower petals.

With delicately flavored dandelion blossoms, a quart is a minimum for a gallon of wine, and ideally, you’d have more like 6+ cups of cleaned petals.  That is, if you have the patience to clean the petals.  With many flowers, and dandelions included, you need to clean the blossoms to remove all the stem and sepal parts (or green parts) since they’re bitter, and you only use the fragrant petals.

We especially love dandelion wine, so we make it by the 5-gallon batch.  That means a lot of cleaned dandelion petals!

Sugar or Honey

Most wines require somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 pounds of sugar or honey per gallon.  We generally go with around 2 1/2 pounds if it’s sugar, and 3 pounds if it’s honey.  You can always add more if your wine finishes too dry, but it’s harder to fix an overly sweet wine.

But believe it or not, the sweetness in a finished wine has less to do with the sugar, and more to do with the yeast.

Wine Yeast

The finished flavor and residual sugar will largely be determined by the alcohol tolerance of the yeast you’ve chosen.  Yeast continues to work until they either run out of sugar and go dormant or reaches its alcohol tolerance and dies out. 

If yeast has an alcohol tolerance of 14%, they’ll all die out when the wine reaches that ABV, and the rest of the sugar in the wine will stay as residual sugar, sweetening your glass.

The same recipe, but using yeast with an 18% alcohol tolerance will result in a dry wine, as the yeast will continue working much longer, resulting in more alcohol but less residual sugar.

Yeast also contributes other flavors like fruity or floral esters.

When working with flower wines, I think the best choices in yeast are below, and they offer you a range or alcohol tolerances from 12% up to 18%:

• Red Star Cote des Blancs (Geisenheim Epernay) ~ Brings out the fruit character and sweetness of both red and white wines.  A slow fermenter with low foaming, it’ll take longer to finish but help to maintain volatile esters and subtle flavors.  Often selected for apple wines and ciders, as well as sweet white wines like chardonnay.  Low alcohol tolerance, especially when fermented at low temperatures, means more residual sugars.  Alcohol tolerance to 12-14%, ideal temperature range 64 to 86 F.
• Lavin D47 ~ Adds a strong fruity, floral character to wines with spicy aromas that would add complexity to any fruit wine.  Specifically adds tropical fruit and citrus notes.  Only a moderately vigorous fermenter, and may start slowly.  Alcohol tolerance to 15%, ideal temperature range 59 to 86 F.
• Lalvin K1-V1116 ~ A dependable fermenter that works well in difficult fermenting conditions (low/high temperatures, low nutrients, etc).  It’s also known for contributing more fruity and floral esters than other types of wine yeast.  It’s generally used with “uninteresting” juices that can use a bit of perking up.  High alcohol tolerance, up to 18%, and an incredible temperature range from 50 to 95F.

If you’re curious, you can read my guide to choosing wine yeast for more options.

White Grape Juice

Wines made with just sugar and flowers tend to lack body, so using a bit of white grape juice can help to round out the body of the wine.  If you’re making mead instead, the honey give the mead plenty of body naturally, so you don’t need the grape juice in that case.

If using grape juice in place of part of the water, reduce the total sugar by 1/2 to 1 cup.

Lemon Juice

Yeast requires a mildly acidic environment to complete their lifecycle, and you’d already have that naturally if you were making fruit wines.  Flowers have a neutral pH, so you do need to add a little bit of citrus juice to drop the pH slightly.

Lemon juice is pretty neutral, and a bit of acidity helps balance the residual sugars in the finished wine.

You can also use lime juice or orange juice, as some recipes do, but they’re not as acidic as lemon, so you’ll need a bit more.

Sometimes, a bit of fruit juice like strawberry or blueberry is added for color.  Lilacs don’t give up their color easily, so I add just a few blueberries into my lilac wine, and when it mixes with the acidic lemon juice, it turns a lovely pink color.

Yeast Nutrient

Grapes naturally have all the nutrients that the yeast needs to survive, but anytime you’re working with another fruit (or in this case, a flower), then you’ll need to feed the yeast more than just sugar.

This comes in the form of powdered yeast nutrient, which is usually added at a rate of 1 tsp per gallon.  You can also add about 1/4 cup of raisins to the batch instead, but they will impact the flavor.  For less impact, you can use golden raisins or sultanas.

Still, the most neutral choice is yeast nutrient powder.  This is a specialty winemaking ingredient, and it’s different from the “nutritional yeast” that you see in health food stores.

Wine Tannin

Tannins give a wine a more rounded mouthfeel, which is important in flower wines that are often light-bodied.

Generally, tannins are added in the form of winemaking tannin powder, but you can also add tannins in a few other ways:

• 1 cup of strongly brewed black tea is about equal to 1/4 tsp tannin powder, but it’ll darken the wine
• 3-4 Grape leaves or currant leaves (unsprayed) also work

The most dependable method is tannin powder, and it won’t color your finished wine as some of the other methods will.

Equipment for Herbal Wines and Meads

The equipment for winemaking can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.  Almost all of the equipment you “need” is optional, and there’s likely something in your kitchen that will work in place of specialized carboys and the like.  My guide to winemaking equipment walks you through each thing, and provides substitutions using common kitchen equipment instead.

The basics include the following:

• One Gallon Glass Carboy (x2) ~ A narrow neck fermentation vessel, also called a carboy, will hold the flower wine while it ferments.  You’ll need two since the wine needs to be moved to a clean container (leaving the sediment behind) after 7-10 days of active primary fermentation.  They often come in a kit with a rubber stopper and water lock together.
• Rubber Stopper and Water Lock ~ Basically a one-way valve that allows CO2 to escape, but prevents contaminants from entering the fermentation vessel, and it helps prevent the wine from turning to vinegar.
• Brewing Siphon ~ Used to move your flower wine from one container to another, and for bottling.  
• Wine bottles ~ The best option for bottling, wine bottles will allow the flower wine to be stored for longer periods.   Beer bottles and Flip-top Grolsch bottles will sometimes work in a pinch for short-term storage.
• Bottle Corker ~ If you’re using wine bottles, you’ll need a corker as well.  Be sure to use clean, new corks for bottling the wine. 
• Brewing Sanitizer ~ A one-step, no-rinse brewing sanitizer cleans and sanitizes all equipment before use.

With flower wines, I tend to use a wide-mouth fermenter for the primary, since the flower petals can clog the narrow neck of a traditional carboy and be a mess to clean.

Making Flower Wines and Meads

This basic process can be used to make flower wine with any edible flower.  The total amount of flower material used will depend on the flower you’ve chosen, but generally, the process is the same regardless of the type.

To make a mead, you use honey instead of sugar and allow the wine to ferment a good bit longer (the yeast convert honey to alcohol a bit slower than they work on sugar).

Infuse the Flowers

I usually opt for “cold infusion” with flower petals, as it helps them retain more of their volatile aromas and flavors.  That can be tricky in a traditional narrow-neck carboy, so I usually start the fermentation in a wide-mouth fermenter.

This is how I make my dandelion wine each year, as the petals can mat together in the fermenter and clog the waterlock, preventing all the bubbles from escaping…and eventually resulting in a big mess.

Place the flowers in the fermenter.  Next, bring the water and sugar to a boil on the stove, stirring to dissolve.  Allow the mixture to cool completely, and then pour over the flowers in the fermenter (along with the remaining ingredients, except the yeast.  This includes yeast nutrients, lemon juice, and tannin powder).

Add Yeast

Yeast is added right before fermentation, and it’s rehydrated in a bit of plain water first. 

Dried yeast can “shock” if it goes directly into your sugary wine mixture.  Be sure that the wine mixture is at room temperature before adding the yeast (if you heated the water to make a warm flower tea, rather than a cold infusion).

The mixture should start vigorously bubbling within 24 to 72 hours.

Primary Fermentation

For the first 7 to 14 days, the wine is in what’s known as primary fermentation.

The yeast are working fast and rapidly multiplying, it’s often vigorous and creates a lot of sediment at the bottom of the fermenter.

There’s little alcohol at this point, so primary fermentation is often done in an open bucket that’s just covered with a towel.  An airlock isn’t strictly required at this point.

Still, I think things are a bit cleaner if you use a wide-mouth fermenter with an airlock, especially if you have kids or pets at home.  Anything without a lid is subject to problems with cats in the house…

Racking

After the initial vigorous fermentation is complete in “primary,” the wine is “racked” into a clean container.

This is done with a siphon to avoid stirring up the sediment or “lees” at the bottom of the primary fermenter. If wine is left on the lees, it can develop off flavors.

At this point, the flowers are filtered out of the mix, and you should just have a liquid that’s moved into the next step.

Secondary Fermentation

Once the wine is racked into secondary, it’s sealed with an airlock. That’s a one-way valve that prevents oxygen from getting in, but allows the CO2 produced during fermentation to escape.

This prevents the alcohol that’s produced from turning into vinegar.

Secondary usually lasts about a month, but can last much longer depending on the recipe.  With mead, secondary is usually 2 to 4 months as honey takes longer for the yeasts to digest.

The wine should be kept at a cool room temperature, and in a dark place without direct sunlight.  Ideally, a basement or back closet that’s about 65 to 68 F (18 to 20 C).

Tasting and Adjusting

After secondary, it’s time to taste the wine and adjust as needed.

At this point, it’ll taste very “rough” as it hasn’t bottle aged at all, but it should give you a rough idea of the final flavors to expect.

If it’s very dry, this is where you’d add some sugar or honey, or if it’s too sweet, you can consider adding some acidity to balance (or pitching in a more vigorous yeast strain to eat up more of the sugars).

You can add more tannin or really anything that might be needed.

Or, if it’s good, just go right to bottling.

Tertiary Fermentation (optional)

If you have made adjustments, you’ll need to rack the wine into another fermenter for another couple of weeks to allow things to settle out before bottling.

Bottling

To bottle, use a brewing siphon to move the wine into wine bottles and seal them with corks.

Some people opt to sterilize their wines with potassium sorbate at bottling, which prevents additional fermentation in the bottle.

I do not sterilize, I just make sure the secondary is long enough that the yeast has died off, and I’ll rack into tertiary if necessary to get any last activity out of the yeast.

Flower Wine & Mead Recipes

I’ve included a basic recipe for Flower wines or meads in the printable recipe card below.  That said, sometimes it’s nice to work from specific tested recipes with the specific flowers you’re going to be using.  Some recipes are a bit different and specifically designed to bring out the flavors of the particular flower you’re working with.

My lilac wine recipe, for example, includes a few blueberries for color and adds a bit more lemon juice so it comes out floral/fruity.  Dandelion wine includes lemon and orange zest, to bring out the sunny flavor of dandelion petals.  You get the idea. 

In that case, take a look at any of these specific flower wine recipes:

• Dandelion Wine
• Lilac Wine
• Rose Petal Wine (and Mead)
• Elderflower Wine (and Mead)

Yield: Makes 1 Gallon (or about 4 Bottles)

Flower Wine (or Mead)

Prep Time: 1 hour

Primary Fermentation: 14 days

Secondary Fermentation: 28 days

Total Time: 1 month 11 days 15 hours

Flower wines capture the flavor and aroma of fresh edible flowers, and can be sipped year-round.

Print

Ingredients

• 1 cup to 1 quart of edible flowers
• 5 to 6 cups sugar (or 3 lbs honey)
• 4 to 6 cups white grape juice, optional, see note
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1/8 to 1/4 tsp wine tannin
• 1 packet wine yeast (see notes)

Instructions

Decide whether you're making a flower wine (with sugar) or mead (with honey). The ingredients for both are the same, except that honey is used in place of sugar in mead. In wine, it can help improve the body of the finished wine if you add 4 to 6 cups white grape juice in place of part of the water, but that's optional. Mead naturally has a nice full body, so you don't need the grape juice if using honey. If using white grape juice, use about 1/2 cup to 1 cup less sugar.

1. Add about half a gallon of water to a stock pot and bring it to a boil on the stove. Add the sugar or honey and stir to dissolve. Allow the mixture to cool completely before proceeding. If you're hot infusing the petals, add them once you've removed the pot from the heat. For a cold infusion, add them into the primary.
2. If doing a cold infusion of flowers, add them into the primary fermenter and pour the cooled sugar water over the top of them.
3. Add the remaining winemaking ingredients (except yeast), and stir to incorporate.
4. Add cool water to the fermenter to nearly fill the container. Mead will require more water since there's no grape juice. Make sure the mixture is cooled, and no hotter than 90 degrees F, but ideally around room temperature.
5. Once cool, dissolve the yeast packet in about 1/4 to 1/2 cup room temperature water and allow it to rehydrate for 10 minutes. Add the yeast water to the fermentation vessel.
6. Fill with water (if necessary) to reach the neck of the fermentation vessel, and seal with a rubber stopper and water lock.
7. Allow the wine to ferment for 10 to 14 days until fermentation slows (primary fermentation).
8. Use a siphon to transfer the wine to a clean fermentation vessel, taking care to leave any sediment behind. Filter out the flower petals at this point, and switch to a narrow-neck fermenter if you've been using a wide-neck fermenter. Re-cap with a water lock. For wine, allow it to ferment in secondary for about 4 to 6 weeks. For mead, a minimum of 4 months.
9. Bottle the wine or mead. Allow wine to bottle condition for at least 2 weeks, and wait at least 2 months for mead. Flip-top Grolsch style bottles will work for short-term storage, but wine bottles are better if stored for more than 2-3 months.

Notes

This is a generic "choose your own adventure" recipe for flower wine. Be sure you're working with edible flowers before you begin, as not all flowers are safe for consumption. And obviously, make sure no one has an allergy to the particular flower you're using.

Most flowers have bitter stems and sepals (green parts), and it's best to just use flower petals. Be sure to clean and sort your flowers before beginning.

The sugar amount is generally 2 1/2 to 3 lbs, or 5 to 6 cups. Use more if you're using a yeast that's a stronger fermenter with a higher alcohol tolerance. For mead, I'd suggest around 3 lbs honey.

For yeast, you can use any winemaking yeast. I'd recommend the following varieties specifically for flower wines:

• Red Star Cote des Blancs (Geisenheim Epernay) ~ Brings out the fruit character and sweetness of both red and white wines.  A slow fermenter with low foaming, it’ll take longer to finish but help to maintain volatile esters and subtle flavors.  Often selected for apple wines and ciders, as well as sweet white wines like chardonnay.  Low alcohol tolerance, especially when fermented at low temperatures, means more residual sugars.  Alcohol tolerance to 12-14%, ideal temperature range 64 to 86 F.
• Lavin D47 ~ Adds a strong fruity, floral character to wines with spicy aromas that would add complexity to any fruit wine.  Specifically adds tropical fruit and citrus notes.  Only a moderately vigorous fermenter, and may start slowly.  Alcohol tolerance to 15%, ideal temperature range 59 to 86 F.
• Lalvin K1-V1116 ~ A dependable fermenter that works well in difficult fermenting conditions (low/high temperatures, low nutrients, etc).  It’s also known for contributing more fruity and floral esters than other types of wine yeast.  It’s generally used with “uninteresting” juices that can use a bit of perking up.  High alcohol tolerance, up to 18%, and an incredible temperature range from 50 to 95F.

Winemaking Recipes

Looking for more winemaking recipes?

• Apple Wine
• Banana Wine
• Blackberry Wine
• Blueberry Wine
• Cherry Wine
• Lemon wine
• Cranberry Wine
• Rose Wine
• Lilac Wine
• Dandelion Wine
• Peach Wine
• Raspberry Wine
• Strawberry Wine

Mead Recipes

How about a few more mead recipes?

• Lemon Balm Mead
• Rhubarb Mead
• Blackcurrant Mead